Analysis: How Israeli Intelligence Failed to Anticipate the Hamas Attack
October 16, 2023 1 Comment
SEVERAL DAYS HAVE PASSED since October 7, the day when Hamas stunned Israel with a surprise attack against several settlements near the Gaza border. It is now clear that Israeli intelligence was in possession of warning indicators about the attack, and that these indicators were misjudged.
The IMI and ISA Assessment
It is important to note that the intelligence division of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), known as Israeli Military Intelligence (IMI), and the Israel Security Agency (ISA), have been monitoring Hamas for years. These two agencies are believed to have conducted a situation assessment approximately two weeks before the October 7 attack. The assessment concluded that Hamas was deterred and had no interest in changing the status quo by attacking Israel in the short run. This assessment was communicated to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant.
It appears that this assessment was not supported by concrete intelligence. The agencies that produced it relied primarily on monitoring the recent behavior of Hamas, including the fact that it was allowing Palestinians living in Gaza to work inside Israel. Additionally, the assessment noted the fact that Hamas was receiving funds from Qatar to help the poverty-stricken residents of Gaza. In retrospect, this assessment appears to have been based on wishful thinking.
The Egyptian Warning
It is now known that Abbas Kamel, Director of the Egyptian General Intelligence Directorate, sent a warning to Israel a few days before Hamas’ attack. Kamel allegedly warned of “something unusual, a terrible operation”, which was about to take place from the direction of Gaza. The warning was 
forwarded to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office. The Israeli newspaper that published this report, Yedioth Ahronot, is known for its serious reputation and quality sources inside the Egyptian establishment. According to the report, Kamel was told by the Israelis that they were focused on preventing terrorist attacks in the West Bank.
Yet, in a speech that Netanyahu delivered immediately after the October 7 attack broke out, he denied claims about the Egyptian warning and claimed that they were fake news. However, American Congressman Michael McCaul, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said on October 11: “We know that Egypt […] warned the Israelis three days prior that an event like this could happen”. Speaking to reporters following a closed-door intelligence briefing on the crisis for American lawmakers, McCaul added: “I don’t want to get too much into classified [details], but a warning was given”. An Egyptian government source also asserted that Egyptian intelligence officials warned their Israeli counterparts that Hamas was planning “something big” ahead of the October 7 surprise onslaught. But this intelligence appears to have been ignored. Read more of this post
THE HAMAS-LED OPERATION al-Aqsa Flood, which began on October 7, marked the first large-scale conflict within the borders of Israel since the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. However, unlike the coalition of Arab armies it faced in 1948, Israel now confronts an alliance of sub-state groups. Led by Hamas’ military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, this alliance includes the Syrian- and Iranian-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad and a number of secular groups, such as the Fatah-aligned al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP).
IN A RARE MOVE, Israel released the identity last weekend of a special operations officer who was killed by Islamic Hamas during a 2018 covert mission in the Gaza Strip. As intelNews 
Militants in the Gaza Strip have accused Israel of assassinating a Palestinian engineer based in Malaysia, who was shot dead on Saturday by unknown assailants riding motorcycles. The victim has been identified as Dr. Fadi M. al-Batsh, 35, from the town of Jabalia in the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian enclave controlled by the militant group Hamas. Al-Batsh is believed to have completed undergraduate and Master’s degrees in electrical engineering at the Islamic University of Gaza. In 2011 he enrolled as a PhD student at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, from where he subsequently received his doctorate in electrical engineering. He was then employed as a lecturer by the University of Kuala Lumpur’s British Malaysian Institute. The Institute is located in the Jalan Gombak neighborhood of the Malaysian capital, where al-Batsh lived with his wife and three children. Some reports from Israel said that al-Batsh worked on drone technology and that he had authored scientific articles on the development of drone technology, as well as on the technical specifications of transmitters used to remotely control drones.
An employee of France’s consulate in Jerusalem is under arrest for allegedly smuggling weapons from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank, according to French media reports, which have been confirmed by Israel. The consular employee has been identified by the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security agency, as Romain Franck, 23. He reportedly worked as a driver at the consulate, a job he managed to secure through a prestigious “international volunteer” program sponsored by the French government. The elite program allows recent French college graduates to gain work experience in various countries around the world. Although he had a relatively junior post at the French consulate, Franck carried a diplomatic passport, which allowed him to move through international borders without being searched, due to his diplomatic immunity privileges.
The sophistication behind the killing of a senior Hamas official, who was assassinated in his home in the Gaza Strip on Friday evening, points almost certainly to Israel, according to observers. Mazen Faqha, 38, helped plan several lethal operations by the Palestinian militant group, including a 2002 suicide bombing that killed nine and wounded over 50. Following an extensive manhunt, Israeli authorities arrested Faqha in the West Bank and in 2003 convicted him to nine life sentences. But in 2011, Faqha was among 1,027 Palestinian and Arab-Israeli prisoners that Israel released in exchange for Gilad Shalit, a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces, who was held prisoner by Hamas. Since that time, Faqha had lived in the Gaza Strip, the Hamas-controlled Palestinian enclave that has been under strict Israeli blockade since 2006.
The Israel Defense Forces told a press conference on Wednesday that hackers belonging to the Palestinian militant group Hamas lured Israeli soldiers by posing as young women online. Wednesday’s press conference was led by an IDF spokesman who requested to remain anonymous, as is often the case with the Israeli military. He told reporters that the hackers used carefully crafted online profiles of real Israeli women, whose personal details and photographs were expropriated from their publicly available social media profiles. The hackers then made contact with members of the IDF and struck conversations with them that in many cases became intimate over time. At various times in the process, the hackers would send the Israeli soldiers photographs of the women, which were copied from the women’s online public profiles.
A senior member of the military wing of Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that governs the Gaza Strip, is believed to have defected to Israel. News of the rumored defection first appeared on the website of Al-Hayat al-Jadida, the official newspaper of the Palestinian Authority, which is based in the West Bank. On Tuesday, Al-Hayat said that the man, a member of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing, had not been seen for several days.
Authorities in Israel said on Sunday that they foiled a plan to smuggle dozens of spy drones from Israel into the Gaza Strip. The Israeli Ministry of Defense said in a statement late on Sunday that the drones had been detected by members of the Shin Bet, Israel’s security police. The incident reportedly took place at Kerem Shalom, a major border crossing in to Gaza, a Palestinian enclave that is controlled by Hamas. The Defense Ministry statement also said that Sunday’s incident was only the latest in a string of recent attempts to smuggle spy drones into Gaza, all of which had been stopped by the Shin Bet since January.
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Opinion: Five months into the war, Israeli intelligence failure looks even worse
March 11, 2024 by intelNews 4 Comments
It has become clear that Israeli intelligence miscalculated Hamas’s intentions. The Israeli security concept, spearheaded by the Israel Military Intelligence (IMI) and the Israel Security Agency (ISA), was that: (a) Hamas had been deterred from launching large-scale attacks; and (b) Hamas was focused on carrying out terrorist attacks against Israelis in the West Bank and not on Israel proper. This flawed security concept, which had been fully adopted by the Israeli cabinet and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) was proven to be groundless. In fact, Hamas successfully exploited it in order to develop and accelerate its attack strategy.
One significant reason for the failure of the IDF, both in the area of intelligence collection and operationally, was its underestimation of the capabilities of Hamas and the intentions of its leader, Yahya Sinwar. There was also an overestimation by many in Israel, including the security establishment, of Israel’s own intelligence
capabilities. Another important insight is that the counterintelligence structures inside Hamas were successful in preventing Israeli intelligence from recruiting agents who were close enough to Sinwar to be able to alert Israel about the impending attack. Furthermore, Israel’s collection and analysis of signals intelligence was unproductive, possibly because Hamas was successful in countering Israel’s ability to produce effective intelligence from signals intercepts.
As the IDF moved deeper into Gaza, and as more information was collected from Hamas facilities, it became clear that there were significant gaps in information regarding the preparations for the attack by Hamas inside Gaza. These preparations lasted for a long time and involved numerous operatives who remained undetected by Israeli intelligence. It looks like the compartmentation system inside Hamas, based on a need-to-know only model, was highly effective.
The IDF attacked the Gaza Strip in 2014 in Operation Protective Edge. Its mission was to destroy Hamas’s ability to carry out assaults against Israel through tunnels dug deep inside Gaza and crossing the border into Israel. Indeed, about 20 such tunnels were destroyed during that operation. Later, Hamas built 250 miles of new tunnels in Gaza that were aimed at defense and to hide combatants when Israel attacked. It has been suggested that this construction project was funded by cash sent to Gaza by Qatar, with Israel’s approval —though Qatar denies this claim. Read more of this post
Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Avner Barnea, Gaza Strip, Hamas, Israel, Opinion