The last major news out of Gaza before the first news of Hamas' surprise attack was the September 22 announcement of the immediate granting of permits to work in Israel to 17,000 Gazans, a number that would rise to 20,000. Everyone was aware of the likelihood that the work permit holder would manage to sneak in a bomb or perhaps stab an Israeli co-worker, but that seemed then a risk worth taking.
After all, Hamas had stopped launching rockets against Israel and seemed busy containing the influence of the Islamic Jihad financed by Iran to spread Shiism, its only competitor in Gaza after the suppression of the PLO. This obvious rivalry was cleverly exploited by Hamas to deceive the Israelis into believing that it was no longer launching rockets because, as a staunchly Sunni organization, it wanted to join the Sunni reconciliation with Israel that was already a fait accompli from Morocco to Bahrain.
Once again, as so many times before, Israeli leaders were deluded into thinking that a Palestinian political leadership harbored any concern for the well-being of ordinary Palestinians, as opposed to concern for their own ideological goal: “Palestine,” for the nationalist PLO (which has always included Christians); and Islamic supremacy, for Hamas.
The leaders of the latter movement have frequently explained that Islamic rule must be imposed not only in Israel, but throughout the world, and that Palestinian nationalism is doubly anti-Islamic: because it includes Christians and because any Islamic nationalism subverts intrinsic way Islamic unity. With Hamas traveling on what seemed a path of reconciliation, only the much smaller Islamic Jihad continued assembling and launching rockets. However, most of these attempts were thwarted by Israeli attacks, guided by precise information provided by a seemingly reliable network of agents. Almost certainly, Hamas itself supplied the “actionable” information transmitted by these agents. This dynamic effectively blinded Israeli intelligence, with a lot of experience in detecting double agents disseminating false information, but unable to suspect agents who provided very precise information.
That was the first Israeli failure: its intelligence analysts did not realize that Hamas's silence was not due to inactivity, but to planning that they could not detect. Such silence was far from normal and should have inspired efforts to find out what was happening. But it was not like that.
On the other hand, there was another failure, of a purely military nature. Even though the secret services reported that everything was going well and that Gaza was moving towards peace, military planners should not have given in to that optimism, and for a very specific Israeli reason. Since the Israeli military relies on reservists, who must be called up and equipped before they are ready for combat (unlike an enemy who can go from peace to war in an instant), another), military planners must always be professional pessimists. They have to be very aware of the minutes it takes to issue an alert, the hours it takes for soldiers already deployed to go into action, and the full 24 hours it takes to mobilize reservists.
On Saturday, October 7, the lack of caution was so extreme that a single tank with four crew members was caught guarding a key segment of the border that was previously manned by a platoon of three tanks. Elsewhere, the 23 high-tech observation points surrounding Gaza's perimeter were manned by a single soldier. All of those soldiers were women selected for being especially attentive, and all of them were murdered by the first infiltrators. The same happened with the lack of security at the rave that was held a short distance from the Gaza Strip and in which 250 young people would lose their lives.
It is true that it was a purely private initiative, but, whatever the case, security is the responsibility of the police; and, although local police did tell organizers not to hold the event so close to Gaza, they did not call for the massive reinforcements that would have been necessary to clear those gathered. Furthermore, the young people who drove to the party were not the typical young Israelis who usually carry weapons in the car. They were too cool for that kind of thing. So when the Hamas killers arrived, there were only a few police officers in the crowd. Very striking with their uniforms, they were immediately shot down.
In retrospect, it's easy to forget how integral that optimistic bias is to the entire Israeli project: pessimists would have stopped praying for Jerusalem 2,000 years ago. Nor is it the first time that Israeli military planners court disaster by grossly underestimating the dangers of war. On October 6, 1973, when the Egyptian army made a surprise crossing of the Suez Canal with an initial wave of thousands of men, there were fewer than 441 soldiers on the Israeli side who were expected to hold a chain of 16 widely spaced fortifications. each other.
That time, Israel's lack of caution reflected the calculation that the Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat was an intelligent man who understood that Egypt would ultimately be defeated once there was a complete mobilization of the Israelis. That was very true: the war that began on October 6 ended on the 23rd of the same month with the Egyptian army destroyed, tens of thousands of Egyptian soldiers surrounded and Israeli troops just 101 kilometers from Cairo. Now, where Israeli intelligence failed was in understanding that Sadat did not need a real military victory to achieve his objective, which was to activate American diplomacy to end the conflict with Israel.
At the moment, the penetration of Israeli columns into Gaza has not yet begun. They cannot be expected to find the Hamas leaders, who have had years to prepare secret bunkers, duly equipped and known perhaps to Israeli agents, but also real hiding places known only to themselves. Nor can they be expected to find the Israeli hostages, who could die before their eyes if they get too close. What they can do is destroy Hamas' rocket factories, weapons depots, and deep underground headquarters; in fact, the decision to enter depends on how many such targets have been identified and not yet bombed.
If the incursion occurs, the world will see for the first time a novel deployment of vehicles, weapons and techniques that will greatly reduce the number of Israeli casualties. And, among other elements, the largest and best protected armored vehicle in the world, the 65-ton Namer, which has active defenses capable of intercepting rockets and anti-tank missiles, as well as reactive and conventional armor.
However, even if all that weaponry is deployed, there are no guarantees of a lasting result. Hamas is a dictatorship of exceptional brutality that is not only directed against the Jews (in 130 years of conflict, very few Jewish children have been deliberately murdered by Palestinians), but also, and indeed primarily, against the population. gazati. Having come to power long ago, Hamas has killed anyone who dared to call for new elections.
And anyone who remains determined to be optimistic would do well to return to October 1973. One can imagine that, like Sadat, Hamas too had a feasible objective when launching its attack. Of necessity, this time it would be about activating Saudi diplomacy, adding a solution for Gaza to its peace plan. After three years of helplessly watching Israel and Saudi Arabia approach the establishment of formal diplomatic relations, Hamas has decided to force its way into the dialogue between the two countries..., and get something for itself. Although this theory could also be too optimistic.
