Israel's security forces face questions after Hamas attack lays bare intelligence gaps

As Israel reeled after a catastrophic onslaught by Hamas terrorists who breached obstacles around Gaza and roamed freely, killing hundreds of Israeli civilians, army leaders faced mounting concerns about how the calamity could have occurred.

A day after the 50th anniversary of the start of the Yom Kippur war in 1973, when Israeli forces were taken off guard by Syrian and Egyptian tank columns, the IDF looked to have been caught off guard once more by a surprise strike.

“It looks quite similar to what happened at that time,” said retired General Giora Eiland, a former head of Israel’s National Security Council. “As we can see it, Israel was completely surprised, by a very well coordinated attack,” he told a briefing with reporters.

An army spokesman said there would be discussions on the intelligence preparation “down the road” but for the moment the focus was on fighting. “We’ll talk about that when we need to talk about it,” he told a briefing with reporters.

Israel has always seen Hamas as its sworn enemy, but since inflicting major damage on Gaza in a 10-day war in 2021, Israel has used a combination of carrot and stick to keep the blockaded enclave stable.

While maintaining a strict embargo and the continual fear of air strikes, it offered economic incentives such as thousands of work permits allowing Gazans to work in Israel or the occupied West Bank.

Despite the fact that violence has raged over the West Bank for the past 18 months, Gaza has been relatively peaceful, save for periodic cross-border battles involving the smaller Islamic Jihad movement, with Hamas remaining largely on the sidelines.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government has always made great play of its security credentials and taken an uncompromising stance towards the Palestinian militant factions including Hamas, which has controlled Gaza since 2007.

“Intelligence failure”

However when the time came, Israel’s security apparatus appeared to break down as a force of Hamas gunmen estimated in the hundreds by the military broke through security fences and scattered into towns.

“This was an intelligence failure; it could not be otherwise,” said Jonathan Panikoff, the U.S. government’s former deputy national intelligence officer on the Middle East, who is now at the Atlantic Council think tank.

“It was a security failure, undermining what was thought to be an aggressive and successful layered approach toward Gaza by Israel,” he said.

For Israelis, images of dead bodies lying in the streets or groups of civilians being driven or marched into captivity in Gaza came as a profound shock.

More than 250 Israelis were killed and over 1,500 wounded, an unprecedented number of Israeli victims in a single day. The military suffered significant losses and Palestinian militant groups said they had captured dozens of soldiers.

The gunmen also seized security posts including a police station in the southern town of Sderot and overran the Erez crossing, a high security facility that channels people entering and leaving Gaza through a tight series of controls.

On Saturday, Hamas media circulated footage showing fighters ranging through abandoned offices and running past the high concrete walls of the site.

“They’ve been planning this for a long time,” said former Israeli National Security Advisor Eyal Hulata. “Obviously this is a very coordinated attack, and unfortunately they were able to surprise us tactically and cause devastating damage.”

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