The Israel-Hamas War: The Intelligence Failure

Flag of IDF Military​​​​​ Directorate

Israel Caught Unprepared
Jericho Wall
Reckoning
A Civil Investigation
The IDF Investigation
The Shin Bet Investigation
Recriminations

Israel Caught Unprepared

In what analysts have called the greatest failure of intelligence, governance, and military preparedness in its history, Israel was surprised by an invasion of an estimated 3,000 Hamas terrorists from Gaza on October 7, 2023, 50 years and a day after the 1973 War. Though compared in the media to the Egyptian and Syrian surprise Yom Kippur, experts noted that Israel did have intelligence that the war was coming before that war started and had the opportunity to mobilize its troops. Israel has said there was no indication a sophisticated land, sea, and air attack by Hamas was imminent. Some reports have suggested Egypt passed on a warning that some attack was likely; others have said that was untrue. The facts will probably not be ascertained until after the war. As in 1973, the day of the assault was a holiday, this time the usually joyous celebration of Simchat Torah marking the end of Sukkot.

As much of a disaster as it was, the Yom Kippur War did not see dozens of civilians, including children, the elderly, and women, slaughtered and taken captive by the enemy. The number murdered on the first day of the war – 900, proportionally equivalent to 32,000 Americans – was the highest one-day Jewish death toll since the Holocaust. By October 12, the death toll had risen to more than 1,300, including 30 U.S. citizens. The terrorists, whose declared goal is the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews, murdered everyone they could, including Arabs, Thai workers, and a nurse from the Philippines.

While the Israeli intelligence failure was highlighted worldwide, less attention was paid to another similarity with 1973, the failure of U.S. (and other nations’) intelligence. The U.S., whose Middle East intelligence capability has long been criticized for its failures (think Saddam Hussein’s WMD, Iran’s effort to develop a nuclear weapon, and unpreparedness for the Arab Spring), was also caught unaware. Just days before the invasion, United States National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said, “The Middle East is quieter today than it has been in decades.”

October 7 did not just represent a failure of intelligence but also the consequence of a deliberate strategy adopted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to prioritize other threats. In 2014, he ordered Operation Protective Edge following the kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank and increased rocket fire from Hamas. Fearing casualties, Netanyahu was reluctant to send ground troops into Gaza and initially ordered only airstrikes. When terrorists began threatening Israel from tunnels, Netanyahu agreed to a limited attack to destroy them. The IDF, however, did not infiltrate far enough to destroy the entire tunnel network, which after October 7 was recognized as far larger than previously thought. The operation also did not destroy all the weapons stored throughout the Strip.

In his autobiography, Bibi, he explained his thinking: “Did I really want to tie down the IDF in Gaza for years when we had to deal with Iran and a possible Syrian front? The answer was categorically no. I had bigger fish to fry.”

“This might have made some sense,” observed Yaakov Katz, “but Hamas interpreted Israel’s limited ground operation as a sign of weakness. Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and his men believed that Israel would never venture deep into Gaza – keep in mind that in 2012 Israel also only attacked Gaza from the air - and that the chance that the IDF would once again reoccupy Gaza was almost non-existent, mostly due to an Israeli fear of casualties among soldiers and civilians.”

Netanyahu believed calm could be maintained by providing humanitarian aid and work permits to enable thousands of Gazans to enter Israel. The government mantra was “calm for calm.” Israel also became more complacent when Hamas began providing intelligence on Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ). With this policy, the government was lulled into a false sense of security while Hamas planned the invasion.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and former IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot had warned that the enemy was drawing inspiration from the Israeli public’s disunity and demonstrations against the government’s proposed judicial reform that included soldiers refusing to report for reserve duties if what many protestors referred to as a “coup” continued. Still, the government did not anticipate the attack.

Shin Bet security service chief Ronen Bar reportedly warned Netanyahu and opposition leader Yair Lapid about the danger of pursuing judicial reform. Bar told Netanyahu, “Today I give you a warning of war. We don’t know the day and time in which it will break out, but this is the indication.”

These warnings were not specific to Gaza, and some appeared to be aimed at stopping the reform effort.

Bar was not specific, and it was unclear if he was referring to Gaza, the West Bank, or the North. The Prime Minister’s Office insisted that Netanyahu “did not receive a warning about the war in Gaza — not on the purported date stated in the article and not a moment before 6:29 a.m. on October 7.”

Jericho Wall

Reports since October 7 revealed the IDF did have some indications that something was afoot. Israeli intelligence had foreseen a possible attack. A document code-named “Jericho Wall” obtained in April 2022 said Hamas was planning to attack on a Saturday, Shabbat, or on a Jewish holiday when fewer soldiers would be guarding the border. Rockets, it said, would provide cover for an assault on Israeli communities and military bases while drones and snipers disabled surveillance cameras. Terrorists would pour into Israel in paragliders, on motorcycles, and on foot.

According to former IDF intelligence chief Aharon Ze’evi-Farkash, the document showed “Hamas was not deterred,” and the information should have been “thoroughly checked.”

Several intelligence officials saw the report, but it was never passed on to the Chief of Staff, Defense Minister, or Prime Minister, and the officials discounted the ability of Hamas to conduct such a sophisticated operation.

In July 2023, an officer in Unit 8200, Israel’s version of America’s National Security Agency, warned that Hamas had conducted a training exercise that looked suspiciously like the plan outlined in Jericho Wall. “It is a plan designed to start a war,” she added. “It’s not just a raid on a village.”

The alert was dismissed. Some Israelis have suggested it was because it came from a woman.

That was not the only warning. “A day before everything happened, I saw people with maps,” one IDF lookout told N12. “They were looking at the fence and pointing at it. I told everyone: ‘Listen, something is going to happen. I see them planning things.’ I noticed that something was different on the front. I even told the person next to me in jest: ‘Listen, they’re going to storm our post.’ It just looked different.”

The lookout said her commanders “discounted” her concerns, telling her, “Hamas is just a bunch of punks, they won’t do anything.”

Concerns were also ignored regarding problems with observation balloons used to monitor the border. According to Haaretz, three balloons broke down weeks before the attack, but repairing them was not considered a priority. Hamas brought down four other balloons on the morning of the attack as part of the coordinated plan to neutralize the army’s monitoring capabilities. Commanders believed that drones were doing an adequate job.

The Times of Israel reported that Kan, the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation, investigated the readiness of the Israeli Air Force (IAF) and found “flaws with the air force’s ability to collect effective real-time intelligence from the sky, problems with keeping sensitive material out of Hamas’s hands, and commanders operating with less information than Israeli news consumers. The head of the Air Force, it said, did not learn of the massacre until ten hours after it started. The IAF had only two fighter jets and two other planes available, and the only surveillance over Gaza was provided by a single drone.

Another bit of evidence that the intelligence services had indications that Hamas was preparing for an attack was provided by the publication of a secret memo written at 2:58 a.m. on October 7 from the Shin Bet to military intelligence, Mossad, and the police that said:

Reckoning

While Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said nothing about who was responsible for the failure to anticipate or be prepared for the attack, Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva, the head of Military Intelligence, Shin Bet security service chief Ronen Bar, IDF Chief of Staff Herzl Halevi, National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, and Education Minister Yoav Kisch were among the defense establishment and government officials who accepted responsibility and expressed remorse. By contrast, Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi said, “I am hearing, ‘apologize, take responsibility.’ For what?”

As the war progressed in Gaza, Netanyahu continued to be asked if he would accept any responsibility. In one interview, he said, “Did people ask Franklin Roosevelt, after Pearl Harbor, that question? Did people ask George Bush after the surprise attack on September 11? Look, it’s a question that needs to be asked… And  I’ve said we’re going to answer all these questions, including me, I’m going to be asked tough questions. There’ll be enough time for that after the war.”

Several Israeli officials took responsibility for the intelligence failure. In April 2024, Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva, Israel’s director of military intelligence, became the first to resign.

As the war dragged on, reports dribbled out suggesting the government received warnings about the threat of a Hamas attack. In May 2024, for example, the Israeli press reported that Israeli intelligence sent four warning letters between March and July 2023, indicating that Israel’s enemies believed that the divisions over judicial reform, during which thousands of reservists refused to report for duty, made Israel more vulnerable. Netanyahu denied he received any warnings about a possible Hamas attack. To the contrary, his office said, “The assessment in the documents that Hamas was not interested in escalation and was interested in a resolution with Israel was consistently shared by all security bodies, who went so far as to claim that Hamas was deterred.”

The Shin Bet’s Southern District head resigned over the intelligence failure in July. “I feel a personal and ethical duty to apologize. To apologize to all those whose loved ones were murdered, whose children were killed in battle, who were kidnapped — those who’ve returned home, and those still in enemy captivity — and all those who are displaced in their own land,” he reportedly said in his retirement speech.

Brig. Gen. Yossi Sariel, commander of IDF Unit 8200, announced he was resigning. The unit, comparable to America’s National Security Agency, is among those blamed for failing to anticipate the attack. Sariel said, “The responsibility for 8200’s part in the intelligence and operational failure falls squarely on me.”

A Civil Investigation

After more than a year of fighting in Gaza, Netanyahu continued to resist the formation of a state commission to investigate the intelligence failure on October 7. Meanwhile, a citizen-led inquiry examined the multi-faceted failures culminating in the attack, asserting that the disaster was not a result of unforeseen circumstances but a consequence of long-standing systemic issues. The report underscored Israel’s detrimental “money for quiet” policy, which fostered a dangerous complacency toward Hamas’s growing military capabilities. It highlighted the failure of intelligence agencies to assess and communicate the escalating threat accurately. This failure was further compounded by an overreliance on technological intelligence, leading to the dismissal of crucial ground observations and warnings. The report also criticized the erosion of military preparedness, evident in the ill-equipped and inadequately trained soldiers stationed at the Nahal Oz base, as well as the government’s chaotic and insufficient response to the attack, leaving citizens, displaced families, and victims’ families without adequate support. Finally, the report attributed much of the blame to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s control over key decision-making bodies, which stifled dissenting voices and hindered comprehensive discussions on crucial security matters, ultimately contributing to the tragic events of October 7.

Channel 12 cited a military report that Hamas had mobilized some 2,000 fighters of its elite Nukhba force to simulate a surprise attack on Israel in May 2023. The terrorists gathered in mosques and planned the invasion. Israel learned of the drill months later after interrogating captured Nukhba fighters and seizing documents from Gaza. Among those who assessed the drill and deemed it a success were Muhammad Deif, then commander of the group’s military wing, and Yahya Sinwar, then its Gaza chief.

The IDF Investigation

According to Haaretz, the IDF investigation covered four issues: 

• The IDF’s approach to Gaza.
• Intelligence and the army’s understanding of the enemy.
• The decision-making process of the night of October 7.
• The army’s use of force from the start of the attack until control of the Gaza border communities was reestablished.

The results were being presented first to Defense Minister Israel Katz and the senior IDF command and then to the different kibbutzim attacked on October 7 and the Nahal Oz military base beginning on February 25.

A leak from the report indicated that only one guard was on duty at the Nahal Oz military outpost on October 7. That morning, 162 soldiers were present; 81 were armed combat soldiers, and 9 were armed but untrained. Hamas had excellent intelligence on the base layout and knew it would be understaffed on Simchat Torah. Unusual movement was detected on the Gaza side of the border, but senior officers decided not to send additional troops. The report said Hamas knew it would find soldiers in bomb shelters because of its missile launches. More than 50 soldiers were killed, and 10 were taken hostage.

Before the public received the report, Brig. Gen. Yossi Sariel, the outgoing commander of Unit 8200, criticized it. He said the senior commanders did not investigate the most important questions and added, “That wasn’t by mistake.”

Sariel appeared angered by the attribution of most failures to the intelligence branch. Still, he accepted responsibility. “When I was appointed commander of Unit 8200, it was expected that such failures wouldn’t occur – but they did,” he said. “I, Yossi, failed. I understand that what’s done cannot be undone. I bow my head and offer my deepest apologies.”

In contrast to the IDF, Sariel said the intelligence branch engaged in “complex, powerful and honest in-depth investigations.” The comments were viewed as a criticism of Chief of Staff Halevi.

Sariel did not reveal the results of those inquiries. He did say that Hamas considered canceling the invasion at the last moment and acknowledged, “We didn’t regard Hamas’ military wing as an army and therefore allowed the group to be on our borders just minutes away from our [southern] communities.” One mistake, he said, was that “We thought we had a double ‘insurance policy’ of [underground] obstacles and intelligence, which wouldn’t only wake us up [in case of an emergency] but also explain what was happening.”

After its release, the IDF reported that Hamas decided in April 2022 to launch an attack, and the date of October 7, 2023, was set in May 2023. The report found that Hamas considered attacking in September 2022 during Sukkot and again in May 2023 during Passover. The IDF did not have an answer for why the date changed. Because of this advanced planning, the report dismissed the idea promoted by some Netanyahu critics that the attack was related to the internal divisions over the proposals for judicial reform.

The failure to prepare was a result of several misperceptions: The IDF did not believe Hamas posed a significant threat to Israel, that it was uninterested in a large-scale war, that its tunnel networks had been significantly degraded, and that Israel’s high-tech border fence would thwart any cross-border threat. Israel believed it could “manage the conflict” with Hamas by improving civil conditions in Gaza while prioritizing the danger posed by Hezbollah. Hamas agreed to cooperate with Israel, not to maintain calm as Israel thought, but to deceive Israel into believing it wouldn’t risk a war.

The IDF had information about Hamas’s intent to launch an attack as early as 2018 but did not take it seriously. In May 2022, the Intelligence Directorate learned of the Jericho Wall plan that called for Nukhba terrorists to break through the Gaza Division’s defenses and invade Israel’s border communities. Three top officials, including the head of the Directorate, dismissed the plan as unrealistic. There were multiple other instances where the Directorate failed to examine Hamas activities more critically.

The night before the attack, the IDF was aware of unusual Hamas activity, including the activation of cell phones with Israeli SIM cards, but it did not believe an attack was imminent. The failure to react was partly a result of intelligence officers’ belief that Sinwar was satisfied with bombarding Israel with rockets and wished to avoid provoking an all-out war with a ground invasion.

The Intelligence Directorate was criticized for having a flawed culture that led to the belief it had intelligence superiority over Hamas when it failed to correctly identify and understand Hamas’s strategy, aspirations, capabilities, and operational plans. The Directorate was also criticized for its limited use of surveillance, abandonment of human intelligence inside Gaza, and overreliance on technology.

The attack unfolded in three waves:

1. First wave (initial 30 minutes): About 1,200 Hamas commandos launched the assault.
2. Second wave (7 a.m.–9 a.m.): Around 2,000 more fighters, including gunmen from other groups, joined the attack.
3. Third wave: A civilian mob, incited by Hamas’s military commander, surged forward.

Israeli military leadership only fully grasped the scale of the attack by 1 p.m. The initial resistance—comprising armed civilians and military personnel acting independently—was inadequate to counter the assault. Several high-ranking officers were killed. It took until the night of October 9 for Israel to regain operational control of the border areas.

Communication broke down after the invasion. Only 767 soldiers faced over 5,000 terrorists. It took hours before the General Staff learned the Gaza Division had been defeated and, therefore, failed to appreciate the severity of the attack. Most of Hamas’s atrocities occurred within the first six hours of the attack when terrorists seized control over Israeli border communities, IDF posts, and roads in the western Negev area.

Among the lessons taken from the report:

1. A conflict with an enemy determined to destroy Israel cannot be managed.
2. Instead of seeking to achieve quiet along its borders, the IDF should remove any threats.
3. The IDF must do a better job of identifying developing threats.
4. Defense of the southern border with Gaza requires surveillance, firepower, and personnel. 
5. The IDF must increase its resources and capabilities.
6. A system for questioning strategic, intelligence, and operational perceptions is needed.
7. The IDF should speed up its preparations for a multi-front war.

The IDF later released reports about what happened at Kfar Azza and the Nahal Oz military base. Regarding the former, the investigation found a series of failures:

1. The absence of any warning gave Hamas the element of surprise.
2. The lack of military coordination and support from the Gaza Division (which was conquered simultaneously).
3. The over-reliance on tech and monitoring of the border fence and the lack of forces in and around the kibbutz.
4. The lack of knowledge of conditions on the ground on the part of soldiers who eventually arrived.
5. The accessibility of weapons kept in the storage area (the army had previously insisted on the storage to avoid the risk of weapons theft from private homes).

The investigation found additional flaws in the defense of Nahal Oz:

1. Dealing with a surprise attack compounded the fact that the base did not function as an outpost and was not prepared for defense or combat capability
2. They had been prepared for rocket attacks but not terrorist infiltration.
3. The battle represented a systemic failure in IDF preparedness for a wide-scale ground attack under rocket fire.
4. Hamas’s invasion plans showed that they specifically targeted the Nahal Oz base as a key objective within its operational strategy.
5. For years, Hamas gathered intelligence on the base through direct observation from Sajayia (which overlooks the site) and information collection from inside the camp via soldiers’ social media posts.

The investigation was conducted during the fighting by units that had failed to anticipate the Hamas attack. They did not address the role of political leaders. Netanyahu has insisted that no inquiry into their role occur until the war ends.

The Shin Bet Investigation

The Shin Bet also investigated the failures on and before October 7. Its report said the political leadership had been told in October 2021, two years before the massacre, that Hamas’s “military capabilities and ties to the Shiite axis [Iran] in Gaza should not be tolerated.” Almost a year later, the organization recommended assassinating Hamas leaders in Gaza but was overruled by Netanyahu.

The domestic intelligence agency said Hamas was able to plan the attack because of the transfer of Qatari money. Among the other factors that convinced Hamas it could strike “were the disturbances on the Temple Mount, the treatment of Palestinian prisoners, and the perception that Israeli society had weakened due to the erosion of social cohesion [over judicial reform].” The Shin Bet blamed the military for failing to warn of a possible war and for placing restrictions on its ability to gather intelligence in Gaza. The report blamed the IDF for identifying “two indications of unusual activity” and not sharing the information with the Shin Bet. Later, the Shin Bet became aware that Hamas had activated SIM cards and issued a qualified warning that “this is an unusual aggregation of factors, and given additional indicative signs, it may suggest an offensive operation by Hamas.” 

The prime minister has consistently refused to take responsibility for the failures of October 7, instead deflecting blame onto the intelligence services, particularly Bar. Netanyahu’s supporters have condemned the report for failing to acknowledge that Bar neither informed the prime minister about the “Jericho Walls plan” nor woke him up on the night of the attack.

Recriminations

In addition to the formal investigations, former officials have leaked information to the media to deflect blame from themselves, primarily toward Netanyahu. For example, Yedioth Ahronoth published a report alleging that Netanyahu rejected a Saudi offer to rebuild the Gaza Strip, expel Hamas, and replace it with the Palestinian Authority after a meeting between the prime minister and Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan shortly after the 2014 war with Hamas ended. A former Mossad official told the paper that Netanyahu was focused on a “divide and conquer” strategy to thwart Palestinian statehood by driving a wedge between Hamas in Gaza and the PA. The PA responded by stopping funding to Gaza, and this led to Israel soliciting money from Qatar to fund projects, according to the paper.

The paper said former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen had publicly warned against the money transfers in his 2021 retirement speech and that current Mossad chief David Barnea opposed them in meetings with Bennett and Netanyahu. 

Netanyahu was also accused of rejecting the advice of his security chiefs to assassinate top Hamas officials, including Yahya Sinwar and Muhammad Deif.

The prime minister’s office denied the report.

Another report in the Israeli media said that Netanyahu was warned at least twice before October 7 that Deif was appropriating $4 million a month from funds provided by Qatar. The head of the Shin Bet and military intelligence reportedly informed him. Again, the premier’s office issued a denial. “No intelligence document has ever been placed on the prime minister’s desk determining that funds from the Qatari stipend were being transferred to terrorism....On the contrary, security agencies consistently determined that the Qatari stipend funds were transferred directly to fuel [payments], needy families and and salaries for government workers.”

Netanyahu continued to oppose a commission of inquiry and persisted in efforts to shift the blame to others, notably Bar, after firing him. The prime minister now claimed Bar knew several hours in advance that Hamas was likely to attack but did not alert him or warn the communities.

Table of Contents for the Israel-Hamas War
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About Mitchell Bard