Analysis |
Failures Leading Up to the Hamas Attack That Changed Israel Forever
Security establishment became enamored in the notion that the enemy is deterred ■ Netanyahu nurtured Hamas, and Israelis looked away ■ The years of ignoring the ramifications of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict exacted a heavy, sudden price
The Coordination and Liaison Office at Erez, on Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip, looked quite drowsy on the morning of August 25. It was a Friday, six weeks and a day before Hamas’ murderous surprise attack, which ignited the war. The sentry opened the gate slowly; not many soldiers were visible on the base. But the commander of the Gaza Division, Brig. Gen. Avi Rosenfeld, looked and sounded as though a cloud of concern loomed overhead. Asked what lay ahead for Gaza, Rosenfeld, a former commander of Shaldag, an Israel Air Force reconnaissance unit, replied laconically: Things won’t get better, at some point they’ll get worse.
The meeting and tour of the area were part of the preparation for an article that appeared in Haaretz on the eve of the Sukkot holiday, based on interviews with five territorial division commanders in the Israel Defense Forces, in the territories and along the country’s borders. The tour of the Gaza border was like the dozens of visits I’d paid there, and to other areas, over the past 25 years. High fences, outposts, observation means, plenty of technological systems – but not many forces on the ground. In the absence of a specific intelligence warning, the level of preparedness and vigilance also didn’t appear to be high.
In a similar visit to the 91st Division on Israel’s border with Lebanon three weeks later, the commander, Brig. Gen. Shay Klapper, noted that Radwan, Hezbollah’s elite unit, had more troops along the border than were present in the IDF’s routine-operation battalions deployed on the other side. When we ascended to the observation post of the Tzivoni outpost, next to Kibbutz Manara, we saw the outpost that Hezbollah had established across the border, adjacent to a battalion HQ of UNIFIL, the United Nations peacekeeping force. A few dozen meters separated the Hezbollah personnel from the Israeli outpost.
The soldier who was with us in the observation facility related that he had seen Iranian commanders there recently. A Farsi speaker, he had held a conversation of shouts with them. The outpost was manned by a Golani infantry brigade auxiliary force, but the initials EAC appeared on the signs: At the instruction of the previous chief of staff, Aviv Kochavi, the name of the veteran auxiliary units had been changed to exposure-assault companies. On a tour of the outpost I was taken aback by the amount of garbage in the corridors. I thought of mentioning this in the article, but decided to drop the idea – no one wants combat personnel to have to spend the weekend on the base because of a nasty comment.
The Coordination and Liaison Office was attacked on October 7 together with all the outposts along the division’s line. A large Hamas force seized the adjacent Erez Crossing, which was closed for the Simhat Torah holiday. From there, within minutes and with no resistance they advanced into the military base, killing and kidnapping the soldiers of the Civil Administration, though a few of them managed to return fire before being hit. A similar raid took place in the nearby moshav of Netiv Ha’asara, where there were serious losses, even though the inhabitants of the village fought heroically against superior forces.
Brig. Gen. Rosenfeld entrenched himself in the division’s subterranean war room together with a handful of male and female soldiers, trying desperately to rescue and organize the sector under attack. Many of the soldiers, most of them not combat personnel, were killed or wounded outside. The division was compelled to request an aerial strike against the base itself in order to repulse the terrorists.
Ahead of breaching the fence, Hamas incapacitated observation means and disabled various command and control systems. The division was effectively blindsided and the warnings did not reach the bases in time, with the result that in some of them, many soldiers were attacked in their beds that Shabbat morning. The precious hours that were lost enabled many hundreds of terrorists to infiltrate the local communities with rampages of massacres and brutalization. Many hours would pass before the IDF recovered and responded. Some of the communities that were captured were not liberated until the next day.
The situation in the northern division is better at the moment. Almost immediately, the IDF mobilized reservists on a huge scale and sent a good many of them to the Lebanon border, to thwart any another surprise attack and to deter Hezbollah from joining the fighting. This activity was bolstered by the direct threat issued by U.S. President Joe Biden, who ordered an aircraft carrier to the region and warned Iran and Hezbollah not to intervene.
But Hezbollah is far from being completely deterred. For more than a week, intensive “days of battle” have been taking place along the border, with the Shi’ite organization firing antitank missiles, launching rockets and dispatching squads to attack the border. The IDF is responding by bombing Hezbollah positions along the line, but is trying to avoid a flare-up that will ignite a second front and a regional war.
False sense of security
It wasn’t only the defensive conception and the intelligence deterrence that collapsed on October 7 in the Gaza Division. Something far more extensive occurred, which dragged Israel into a war it didn’t expect, one that will have profound implications for life here in the decades ahead. The drowsy base on the border, like Kibbutz Nahal Oz, whose western homes were built a few hundred meters from the border fence, was living with a false sense of relative security. Despite the overwhelming hatred from the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, despite the vast disparities in the living conditions on the two sides, and even though Gaza has been ruled since 2007 by a murderous terrorist organization that is bent entirely on the destruction of Israel, we told ourselves a story we would be able to live with.
Even more than behind penetrable fences, Israel lived with high walls of repression around it. We talked about “the villa in the jungle” and took pride in being the only democracy in the Middle East, but we didn’t grasp the meaning of the powder keg whose fuse was lit here. The Arab world spiraled into total chaos as a result of the events of the Arab Spring in 2010. This period allowed Israel to occupy itself with its own affairs for some years and to persuade itself that all was well. But in this period, borders were erased, regimes were supplanted by force, millions of people became refugees and hundreds of thousands were murdered with appalling cruelty.
Organizations such as the Islamic State and al-Qaida won over tens of thousands of active participants and millions of admirers. The few regional taboos, if any such existed, were smashed to smithereens. Israel was relatively protected from the lethal chaos as long as it was perceived to be strong in the regional arena. That image, too, was undermined in Hamas’ attack on October 7.
What we are seeing is the fusion of an old, bloody conflict with the Palestinians, in which the two populations are today almost inextricably intertwined, deep and violent religious fanaticism, and incessant meddling by Iran. The Tehran regime discerned a way to wear down Israel by arming and training armed militias that seek to place the Jewish state in a stranglehold – and all of it without Iran paying a direct price itself. In fact, these forces are far more than militias: in their size, weaponry and combat training, Hezbollah and Hamas have become akin to terror armies. They don’t need warplanes and tanks to inflict serious military harm here, on a scale that undermines Israelis’ feeling of personal security. Rockets, drones and more traditional means of combat used by guerrilla organizations are enough.
As for the terrorists themselves, a dangerous mixture has been created here, because a jihadist fighter is a rather new combination: a professional soldier who is eager to die. The assault from the Gaza Strip was an operation of self-sacrifice. Hamas was not perturbed by the scale of its losses, and is certainly not wasting its time with concern for the rabble that raided the communities after the assault, murdering, raping and looting until they were shot and killed by the IDF.
In the face of this threat, Israel – on the right and on the left – fell asleep at the wheel. Israeli society repressed the ramifications of the Palestinian conflict, persuaded itself that it could go on rolling the problem forward without looking for a solution, and sought lucrative real estate and cheap vacations abroad. The Iranian threat sounded like an abstract story, something the security establishment likes to talk about to get priority for additional funds for their budget. Hezbollah, we thought, is still deterred and cautious. Israel abjectly failed in the previous confrontation with the organization, in 2006, which ended in a gloomy stalemate. But over the years, an alternative narrative took shape: The mistakes were corrected, the IDF returned to its former self and Hezbollah’s secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, took care to avoid another round because he feared that Israel would again destroy Dahieh, the Shi’ite neighborhood in south Beirut.
The IDF, in the meantime, again inflated its command posts, grew slack in its organizational culture and cultivated the service conditions of its personnel. At the same time, the army became enamored of technological solutions and sanctified them at the expense of polishing operational capabilities. The attacks mounted during the period of the “campaign between the wars” in Syria were presented as a dramatic military development, without anyone explaining what Iran was nevertheless able to transfer to Hezbollah by indirect routes. The IDF’s chiefs of staff found themselves being dragged into dealing with dozens of issues that were tearing Israeli society apart – from women’s combat service (a dispute that the heroism shown by women in the October 7 assault and afterward should put to an end) to promoting equal opportunities for soldiers from the periphery.
The icing on this lethal cake was provided by the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Years of corrupting the civil service, advancing cronies and ignoring conflicts of interest, all the while sowing hatred and a schism in the nation, reached their peak when Netanyahu became entangled in criminal matters. From that moment, every means justified the end: to extricate him. That included the encouragement of a cold civil war between the contentious camps, an attempt to enact legislation for a regime coup, and readiness to tear apart the IDF after the chief of staff refused to punish reservists who ceased to volunteer in an attempt to halt the coup.
President Joe Biden meets with victims' relatives and first responders who were directly affected by the Hamas attacks on Wednesday.Credit: Evan Vucci /AP
From a sea of warning signs during the first nine crazy months of this year, two should be singled out. The Bibi-ists’ systematic social media attacks, with the government’s encouragement, on U.S. President Joe Biden; and Netanyahu’s remark to the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth that the country could get along without two air force squadrons, but not with pilots’ and navigators’ “refusal [to serve].” Where would we be now without the backing of the United States and without the air force – two of the foundational pillars of Israel’s security conception?
The far-right government, which fuses Likud, hardalim, or nationalist ultra-Orthodox, and Haredim, knew what the stakes were. As early as last February, all the intelligence organizations warned that Israel’s enemies were detecting internal weakness that stemmed from the huge political crisis, and were considering the possibility of exploiting it. That does not diminish the severity of the sweeping failure of the intelligence community to discern Hamas’ operative plan and the fact that it would be implemented in the immediate future. With all that Hamas achieved – and part of the plan was even more ambitious, but was blocked – it could have been stopped in advance if only the pieces of information had been analyzed correctly and if the intelligence and defensive deployment had been more serious and more thorough.
But this was compounded by the horrendous failure of the political decision-makers. Over a decade, Netanyahu consistently cultivated Hamas’ rule in the Gaza Strip to slough off international pressure to renew the diplomatic process with the competing Palestinian camp, that of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. He ignored a strategic warning issued by the research division of Military Intelligence six years ago, about an explosion that would occur in the Palestinian arena. The prime minister advocated a policy of rounds of fighting, and stopped every significant military operation in Gaza before it got to the ground maneuver stage. To be fair, it has to be noted that all the sides, from both the right and the left (as well as we in the media), played down the scale of the military threat posed by Hamas while fearing a casualty-fraught ground operation.
Palestinians receiving cash as the United Nations begins distributing cash aid, funded by Qatar, to poor families in Khan Yunis in Gaza, 2021.Credit: Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters
Upon returning to power last December, Netanyahu adopted the policy of Naftali Bennett’s, Yair Lapid’s and Benny Gantz’s “government of change” and allowed 17,000 Gazan workers to enter Israel, along with the continuing infusion of Qatari money into Gaza, which had begun under his premiership. The money helped Hamas prepare the war, while the workers photographed the communities around the Gaza Strip and provided the organization with effective operational intelligence ahead of the assault. A detailed diagram of Netiv Ha’asara was found on the body of a terrorist who was killed there. It showed every house in a neighborhood of the village, along with the number of children living there and whether there was a dog in the house. Hamas launched a deliberate operation to annihilate civilians, and tragically, did so successfully.
The total unfitness of the government for its missions, certainly during an unprecedented emergency, is now being revealed in all its severity in the handling of the civilian rear. The southern residents who were evacuated from their homes and the families of the kidnapped and the missing are falling between the cracks and having a hard time getting initial help. In the Knesset, the Haredim are waging a rearguard battle to ensure that the corrupt flow of funds to their voters will not be frozen, despite the fact that the economy is headed for a years-long recession in the wake of the war. This week, Justice Minister Yariv Levin continued to battle by every means against the appointment of new judges. A coalition of thieves and vested interest groups continues to operate here, which is also entangled in endless bureaucracy introduced by a weary and battered civil service, with most of the departments having been purged of their professional directors general in favor of hangers-on and cronies.
Some ministers, who until October 7 wanted to be interviewed in every possible studio, have totally disappeared from the public eye. It’s completely unclear what their role is in the campaign and what they are doing. That vacuum is being filled by civil society organizations, some of which are connected with the protest movement. That is moving and heartwarming, but it’s not how a country is supposed to function. It appears that after the war, it will be necessary to rebuild the state.
Some articles in Haaretz in the past two weeks have expressed hope for change. Wars – and the one we are caught up in is liable to escalate seriously – foment tectonic changes. It’s possible that at the end of the war, a sobering approach will prevail, and will underscore the unifying and shared traits of the squabbling Israeli tribes. The scale of the disaster is also honing the public’s broad understanding of the nullity of the government and is advancing Netanyahu’s fall when the shooting ends.
Palestinian Hamas terrorists leave Kibbutz Kfar Azza, Israel, following the massacre of the Jewish community there on October 7, 2023.Credit: Hassan Eslaiah/AP
All of this is probably correct. But we must not underestimate the importance of other developments. The Islamic State-style barbarism displayed by the Hamas terrorists in the homes of the kibbutzim and at the site of the Nova music festival, has seriously scarred the Israeli psyche. The unmediated encounter with that experience will seriously damage an entire generation and could cause a sharp rightward shift politically. This involves not just disillusionment about the hope of peace with the Palestinians, but also hatred and a desire for revenge. As time passes, we will see more such phenomena in the far-right and in ordinary thugs.
The fear of Arabs, and the appraisals that there are squads that infiltrated from Gaza and are hiding in the center of the country, are engendering a wave of hysterical rumors. On Wednesday, there were rumors that Arabs were photographing buildings in the center of the country, supposedly in preparation for a terrorist assault. There are also acts of revenge against Palestinians by the so-called hilltop youth in the West Bank, increasing severity from the police toward manifestations of protest among Israeli Arabs, and the contribution of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who launched a campaign to distribute a firearm to all comers, with no practical criteria.
We must not ignore the potential danger that lies here on the domestic front, both in a flare-up from the Arab side and in terms of acts of violence by Jewish civilians or army and police forces on the backdrop of the general paranoia.
Grounding the decision
The end of the airlift of Western leaders to Israel, and in particular the conclusion of Biden’s brief visit on Wednesday, mark the onset of the next stage of the war, which will enter its third week on Saturday. Israel is still reeling from the brutal shock of the events of October 7, but in practice, not much has happened militarily since then. After regaining control of the south, the number of incidents with Hamas along the fence declined. The regular army and the reservists who are stationed in the Southern Command are undergoing training and preparations ahead of a ground move.
According to all the declarations by the political decision-makers and by the IDF, the intention is to launch such an operation. This also involves the understanding that the declared goal of the operation – the total annihilation of the Hamas regime – cannot be achieved without a ground maneuver. But the government and the army are not telling the public whether there is consistency between the goal and the means and capabilities, apart from a warning that the operation will have to take months.
Israeli soldiers are silhouetted as they sit astride an Israeli tank near Israel's border with the Gaza Strip, in southern Israel, Thursday.Credit: AMIR COHEN/ REUTERS
Biden’s visit really tightened the security and diplomatic coordination with Israel, but also imposed limitations on Israel. The president promised a continuing presence of the aircraft carriers, security supplies to renew stocks and diplomatic support for Israel’s stance. It’s likely that an American green light, which for the first time is required in the circumstances, was given for a ground operation in Gaza as well. But the United States does not want Israel to occupy the Strip, is warning that a humanitarian disaster could ensue, and is trying with all its might to prevent a war between Israel and Iran and Hezbollah.
Some of the appraisals being voiced in Israel – as if it’s clear that American aircraft will strike in Lebanon if Hezbollah attacks Israel – are overly categorical. And Iran is already making moves to deter the United States, including two drone attacks on American bases in Syria and Iraq in the past two days.
As far as is known, the security cabinet hasn’t yet decided on the scale of the ground operation in Gaza. In the corps below, and in the General Staff as well, there is support for a broad maneuver. The prevailing argument in the army is that Hamas has dented the Israeli iron wall, the concept of defense and deterrence that was developed and rehabilitated here for years, after the shock of the Egyptian and Syrian assault in 1973 (whose impact was dulled because of the IDF’s recovery during the war). This approach holds that there is no alternative to inflicting a staggering blow on Hamas, despite the danger of large-scale casualties on the Israeli side, because any further weakness will tempt Iran to initiate another offensive in the future and will stir the appetite of additional rivals, to the point of causing unquiet on the domestic front.
A shell from Israeli artillery explodes over Dahaira, a Lebanese border village with Israel, south Lebanon, on Monday.Credit: Hussein Malla /AP
The advocates of a broad ground maneuver admit that multiple losses are anticipated but believe that the public is less sensitive to this in light of the total undermining of the sense of security in the wake of the Hamas assault. They are also presenting the ground operation as a jolting move, which will enable the army to score achievements (although much time for activity will be required afterward, at very high cost).
In contrast, others – in the army as well – are recommending that Israel make do with a more limited move. They believe that reasonable achievements can be attained within an allotted timeframe. At the same time, they are worried about the possibility of a trap in Gaza that will lead to an Israeli failure and could also induce Hezbollah to take advantage of the opportunity and join the campaign. The final decision will be made by the war cabinet, but the true influencers in this regard will be Netanyahu, and in large measure, also Biden.
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