While in Israel it is common to see men and women—usually, but not always, in uniform—walking through the streets or riding buses while carrying military-issue rifles, the actual rate of gun ownership is a fraction of what it is in the U.S. But since October 7, over 300,000 Israelis have applied for gun permits, potentially tripling the number of citizens who own firearms. Matti Friedman, a resident of Jerusalem who recently got a pistol of his own, explains why:

For years, we have suffered regular episodes in which Palestinian men go berserk in public places with knives or guns, killing people until they themselves are shot and killed by security forces or an armed civilian. (The most recent instance occurred last week, when a Palestinian stabbed three people at a mall.) But this never translated into gun ownership, certainly not among people I know. We seemed to expect someone else to be on hand to protect us.

This was obviously going to have to change as we absorbed two lessons of the Hamas attack. . . . [E]ven in the weeks of my work on this essay, an Israeli with a handgun managed to kill a terrorist, another Palestinian from Jerusalem, who was shooting innocent people on a road in southern Israel, two of whom died. That was on February 16. On March 14, a noncommissioned officer waiting in line at an Aroma café didn’t notice the Palestinian kid in a black sweatshirt who lunged at his neck with a knife—but did manage to draw his handgun and shoot the assailant, preventing more fatalities, before he bled to death.

A friend from America told me recently that every Jewish person he knows has a contingency plan, sometimes secret or scarcely admitted even to themselves, for where to hide or escape if things get really bad in the diaspora. . . . Mulling this, I asked friends here in Israel if they had a similar plan. No one did. Zionism has clearly failed to change everything in the Jewish condition, but it seems to have changed that, for what it’s worth. I don’t know anyone preparing a hideout. But I do know a remarkable number of people with a new Glock.

In a sense, the most successful negotiation with Hamas was the recent agreement securing the release of Edan Alexander, the last living hostage with a U.S. passport. Unlike those previously handed over, he wasn’t exchanged for Palestinian prisoners, and there was no cease-fire. Dan Diker explains what Hamas got out of the deal:

Alexander’s unconditional release [was] designed to legitimize Hamas further as a viable negotiator and to keep Hamas in power, particularly at a moment when Israel is expanding its military campaign to conquer Gaza and eliminate Hamas as a military, political, and civil power. Israel has no other option than defeating Hamas. Hamas’s “humanitarian” move encourages American pressure on Israel to end its counterterrorism war in service of advancing additional U.S. efforts to release hostages over time, legitimizing Hamas while it rearms, resupplies, and reestablishes it military power and control.

In fact, Hamas-affiliated media have claimed credit for successful negotiations with the U.S., branding the release of Edan Alexander as the “Edan deal,” portraying Hamas as a rising international player, sidelining Israel from direct talks with DC, and declaring this a “new phase in the conflict.”

Fortunately, however, Washington has not coerced Jerusalem into ceasing the war since Alexander’s return. Nor, Diker observes, did the deal drive a wedge between the two allies, despite much speculation about the possibility.