The Israel-Hamas War: Operation Iron Sword
The Intelligence Failure

Flag of IDF Military​​​​​ Directorate

Israel Caught Unprepared
Jericho Wall
Reckoning
A Civil Investigation

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 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 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 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.

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About Mitchell Bard