The Israeli failure mainly revolved around underestimating the Palestinians, according to observers (Government Press Office)

Occupied Jerusalem

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Half a year after the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation on October 7, 2023, which is known in Israel as “Black Saturday,” due to the intelligence failure to prevent the sudden attack launched by the Hamas movement, the initial features of the failure began to become clear, however. The full extent of the intelligence failure has not yet been revealed.

The picture of what happened on October 7 is beginning to become clearer, and as the war on Gaza prolongs, more details of dozens of operational investigations conducted by the Israeli army, the Shin Bet, and the office of Israeli State Comptroller Matanyahu Engelman will be revealed. These are the details. What unites them is that the sudden attack scenarios that were manifested by the “Al-Aqsa Flood” were not foreseen by anyone in Israel before the war.

According to the estimates of analysts and researchers, Israel was not prepared for such an attack, relied excessively on technological warning systems, and suffered from a wrong intelligence policy and a wrong military approach towards Hamas, in addition to tense relations between the political level, army leaders, and the security and intelligence services.

Israeli analyzes and assessments attributed the fact that none of the leaders of the various arms of the Israeli establishment - political, security, military and intelligence - expected scenarios of the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas movement, launching a surprise attack from the Gaza Strip to southern Israel, to limited imagination and considering them unrealistic scenarios, in addition to arrogance. Israel and disdain, and perhaps a degree of contempt, for the Palestinian factions.

Netanyahu's government relied on a faulty intelligence policy towards Hamas, according to analysts (Government Press Office)

Underestimating enthusiasm

In support of these Israeli analyzes and assessments, the military analyst in the newspaper "Haaretz" Amos Harel, in his article entitled "After six months, the pieces of the puzzle of October 7 are coming together", recalled the cumulative failure and underestimation by Israel of the Hamas movement, citing a maneuver conducted by the "Gaza Division." The Israeli army in 2016 simulated a mass attack by Palestinian factions from the Gaza Strip on southern Israel.

The military analyst explained that this year, an unusual exercise was conducted in the “Gaza Division,” where Major Mickey Edelstein, who led the division, developed a scenario in which Palestinian forces would attack the border, from a large number of centers, but the Southern Command of the Israeli army found it difficult. To cope with such a scenario.

According to Harel, some Israeli army commanders claimed at the time that the scenario had drifted into imaginary and unlikely areas, which is known in military language as “submarines in the valley,” saying that “since then it seems that no one has dealt seriously with the scenario of an all-out war in The Gaza Strip erupts following a surprise attack by Hamas.

Conflict of information

“The submarines did not arrive,” says the military analyst, “but there was a flood on October 7. The name given by Hamas to the attack, the Al-Aqsa Flood, was appropriate, as more than 2,000 militants crossed the border, followed by a crowd of civilians, despite warnings from the army’s monitoring unit about... "Worrying changes in Hamas' behavior along the border, which may indicate an imminent attack."

Harel reviewed the failures that unfolded following the sudden attack, when small numbers of security and rescue forces were mobilized to the “Gaza envelope” settlements, which found themselves among crowds of Palestinian attackers, some of whom were killed after they ran out of ammunition.

On the morning of what Israel called “Black Saturday,” three infantry battalions deployed along the Gaza Strip border, along with a smaller armored battalion, but the military analyst says, “The Israeli discussion about the deployment of forces is marred by conflicting information, political biases, and silence on the part of army leaders.”

The Israeli army, according to Harel, “resorted to an additional reduction of its forces on Saturdays and holidays, and tended to grant a large number of commanders and soldiers leave together, and this constituted an excessive risk, just as allowing commanders to invite their families to military bases close to the border.” With Gaza to spend the holiday with them.”

He concluded by saying, “This reality reflects the lack of seriousness of the Israeli army regarding the dangers from Gaza. If the army’s senior leadership believed that an attack was possible, it would have had to do one of two things: strengthen the defense significantly, or pressure politicians to allow it to launch a pre-emptive strike on Gaza.” But neither of these things happened."

The Israeli army was not prepared on the Gaza border and underestimated Hamas (Government Press Office)

Failed strategy

In an assessment of another position entitled “The failure of October 7 is an inevitable result of the Israeli strategy,” prepared by Dr. Shlomo Fischer, a researcher at the Institute for Jewish People’s Policy, the failure centered primarily around Israel’s disdain for the Palestinians in the first place, and not viewing the settlement of the conflict with the Palestinians as part of stability in the country. Israel, and that they are not the key to stability and prosperity in the Middle East.

In other words, Fisher says, “The fact that the Israeli security forces were unprepared on October 7 was not only a flaw in the Israeli system, but a feature of the entire strategic approach.”

The Israeli researcher adds, "It was necessary to ignore the intelligence signals that Israel received before the attack, because recognizing that the Palestinians pose a serious threat means turning the entire foreign and security policy sponsored by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the foreign and security institutions over the past ten years, upside down."

The senior and middle leadership levels in Israel, Fisher says, "allowed the IDF forces to continue sleeping on the morning of Simchat Torah, ignored the warnings of the monitors, did not investigate the malfunctions of the electronic warning system, and did not order the wiretapping of the mobile phones of Hamas members."

He concluded by saying, “The main lesson that must be drawn from the failure is that you cannot eat the whole cake and get it whole. The Palestinians are determined in their struggle for freedom and independence, and that it will be impossible to ignore them or bypass their demands. It is possible to respond to them with confrontation and fighting, as the right suggests, or with negotiations, as The left proposes, but it is impractical not to address their demands.”

Source: Al Jazeera