What happened to cause the Israeli army’s defenses to collapse like a house of cards in the face of the Hamas assault on Saturday October 7? This question will occupy Israel for generations. It will certainly be the subject of a commission of inquiry, which will weigh political and military responsibilities after the war.
But it is already obsessing the former officers of the Hebrew State, who, out of solidarity with their active comrades and with the government, are mostly forced to remain silent, or only express themselves anonymously. .
A first observation is obvious to them: intelligence is in question, before any other force. Such an attack must have been planned at length, but military intelligence and Shin Beth (Israeli’s internal security service) either failed to detect the warning signs, or misinterpreted them.
Also listen Israel-Gaza: the Hamas attack, a turning point in the history of the conflict
A former high-level security official, however, assures that Israel has been able to observe Hamas fighters for a long time training in the use of the weapons they deployed on Saturday, and repeating such maneuvers. “They were visible, we knew. We had already observed each component of their operation. Including the use of drones with which they bombed the security barrier [qui enserre la bande de Gaza], in order to make us blind when they crossed it. But these were small, limited operations. »
However, Hamas has deployed massively. According to the army, its commandos crossed the security barrier at twenty-nine points on Saturday. A large proportion of these men passed through the Erez border post, the crossing point intended for civilians, which they took control of. The barrier’s network of sensors and surveillance cameras, arranged in successive curtains, failed to fulfill its mission or was overwhelmed. The long-distance observation unit which processes the data appears to have been at least partly blinded.
A real Hamas combined arms operation
“Hamas has learned the lesson of the last war in 2014, Judge Yossi Kupperwasser, a former senior military intelligence official. He saw that his rockets, naval forces and attack drones were no longer taking him very far. He understood that the wall was blocking his tunnels. He changed his method by breaking the barrier, and launching as many forces as possible at once, dispersing them to outflank us. » The rocket fire served as a diversion for the commandos: more than 4,000 in three days, compared to 4,500 during the last war in May 2021, which lasted eleven days. The dispatch of a naval unit and microlights added to the confusion. Hamas propaganda organs made good use of it, touting a true combined arms operation.
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