Oct 9, 2023. Posted by Balkan Periscope - Hellas
For Palestinians in Gaza, Israel’s eyes are never very far away.
Surveillance drones buzz constantly from the skies. The highly-secured border
is awash with security cameras and soldiers on guard. Intelligence agencies
work sources and cyber capabilities to draw out a bevy of information.
But Israel’s eyes appeared to have been closed in the lead-up to an unprecedented attack by the militant Hamas group that has killed hundreds of Israelis prompting an Israeli military assault that has all the same killed hundreds of Palestinians and displaced thousands more in the Gaza Strip.
Israel’s
intelligence agencies have gained an aura of invincibility over the decades
because of a string of achievements. Israel has foiled plots seeded in the West
Bank, allegedly hunted down Hamas operatives in Dubai and has been accused of
killing Iranian nuclear scientists in the heart of Iran. Even when their
efforts have stumbled, agencies like the Mossad, Shin Bet and military
intelligence have maintained their mystique.
But the
weekend’s assault, which caught Israel off guard on a major Jewish holiday,
plunges that reputation into doubt and raises questions about the country’s
readiness in the face of a weaker but determined foe. Over 24 hours later,
Hamas militants continued to battle Israeli forces inside Israeli territory and
dozens of Israelis were in Hamas captivity in Gaza.
“This is a
major failure,” said Yaakov Amidror, a former national security adviser
to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “This operation actually proves that
the (intelligence) abilities in Gaza were no good.”
Amidror
declined to offer an explanation for the failure, saying lessons must be
learned when the dust settles.
Daniel
Hagari, the chief military spokesman, acknowledged the army owes the public an
explanation. But he said now is not the time. “First, we fight, then we
investigate,” he said.
Some say it
is too early to pin the blame solely on an intelligence fault. They point to a
wave of low-level violence in the West Bank that shifted some military
resources there and the political chaos roiling Israel over steps by
Netanyahu’s far-right government to overhaul the judiciary. The controversial
plan has threatened the cohesion of the country’s powerful military.
But the
apparent lack of prior knowledge of Hamas’ plot will likely be seen as a prime
culprit in the chain of events that led to the deadliest attack against
Israelis in decades.
Israel
withdrew troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005, stripping it of a
close handle on the happenings in the territory. But even after Hamas took
control of Gaza in 2007, Israel appeared to maintain its edge, using
technological and human intelligence.
It claimed
to know the precise locations of Hamas leadership and appeared to prove it
through the assassinations of militant leaders in surgical strikes, sometimes
while they slept in their bedrooms. Israel has known where to strike
underground tunnels used by Hamas to ferry around fighters and arms, destroying
miles (kilometres) of the concealed passageways.
Despite
those abilities, Hamas was able to keep its plan under wraps. The unprecedented
attack, which likely took months of planning and meticulous training and
involved coordination among multiple militant groups, appeared to have gone
under Israel’s intelligence radar.
Amir Avivi,
a retired Israeli general, said that without a foothold inside Gaza, Israel’s
security services have come to rely increasingly on technological means to gain
intelligence. He said militants in Gaza have found ways to evade that
technological intelligence gathering, giving Israel an incomplete picture of
their intentions.
“The other
side learned to deal with our technological dominance and they stopped using
technology that could expose it,” said Avivi, who served as a conduit for
intelligence materials under a former military chief of staff. Avivi is
president and founder of Israel Defense and Security Forum, a hawkish group of
former military commanders.
“They’ve
gone back to the Stone Age,” he said, explaining that militants weren’t using
phones or computers and were conducting their sensitive business in rooms
specially guarded from technological espionage or going underground.
But Avivi
said the failure extends beyond just intelligence gathering and Israel’s
security services failed to put together an accurate picture from the
intelligence they were receiving, based on what he said was a misconception
surrounding Hamas’ intentions.
Israel’s
security establishment has in recent years increasingly seen Hamas as an actor
interested in governing, seeking to develop Gaza’s economy and improving the
standard of living of Gaza’s 2.3 million people. Avivi and others say the truth
is that Hamas, which calls for Israel’s destruction, still sees that aim as its
priority.
Israel in
recent years has allowed up to 18,000 Palestinian laborers from Gaza to work in
Israel, where they can earn a salary about 10 times higher than in the
impoverished coastal enclave. The security establishment saw that carrot as a
way to maintain relative calm.
“In practice, hundreds if not thousands of Hamas men were preparing for a surprise attack for months, without that having leaked,” wrote Amos Harel, am Israeli defense commentator, in the daily Haaretz.
“The results are catastrophic.”
Allies who
share intelligence with Israel said security agencies were misreading reality.
An Egyptian
intelligence official said Egypt, which often serves as a mediator between
Israel and Hamas, had spoken repeatedly with the Israelis about “something
big,” without elaborating.
He said
Israeli officials were focused on the West Bank and played down the threat from
Gaza. Netanyahu’s government is made up of extremist supporters of
Israeli West Bank settlers whoare engaged in the rising tide of violence
there over the last 18 months.
“We have
warned them an explosion of the situation is coming, and very soon, and it
would be big. But they underestimated such warnings,” said the official, who
spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the
content of sensitive intelligence discussions with the media.
Israel has
also been preoccupied and torn apart by Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul plan.
Netanyahu had received repeated warnings by his defense chiefs, as well as
several former leaders of the country’s intelligence agencies, that the
divisive plan was chipping away at the cohesion of the country’s security
services.
Martin
Indyk, who served as a special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations
during the Obama administration, said internal divisions over the legal changes
was an aggravating factor that contributed to the Israelis being caught off
guard.
“That
roiled the IDF in a way that was, I think, we discovered was a huge
distraction,” he said.
by Ahram
Online