How did Israeli intelligence fail to stop major attack from Gaza?

By Frank Gardner
BBC security correspondent

"We have no idea how this could have happened."

That is the reaction Israeli officials have been giving today when I ask them how, with all its vast resources, Israeli intelligence did not see this attack coming.

Dozens of armed Palestinian gunmen were able to cross the heavily fortified border between Israel and the Gaza Strip, while thousands of rockets were fired from Gaza into Israel.

With the combined efforts of Shin Bet, Israeli domestic intelligence, Mossad, its external spy agency and all the assets of the Israel Defense Forces, it is frankly astounding that nobody saw this coming.

Or if they did, they failed to act on it.


Israel has arguably the most extensive and well-funded intelligence services in the Middle East.


It has informants and agents inside Palestinian militant groups, as well as in Lebanon, Syria and elsewhere.

It has, in the past, carried out precisely timed assassinations of militant leaders, knowing all their movements intimately.

Sometimes these have been done with drone strikes, after agents have placed a GPS tracker on an individual's car; sometimes in the past it has even used exploding mobile phones.

On the ground, along the tense border fence between Gaza and Israel there are cameras, ground-motion sensors and regular army patrols.

The barbed-wire topped fence is supposed to have been a "smart barrier" to prevent exactly the sort of infiltration that has taken place in this attack.

Yet the militants of Hamas simply bulldozed their way through it, cut holes in the wire or entered Israel from the sea and by paraglider.

To prepare for and carry out such a coordinated, complex attack involving the stockpiling and firing of thousands of rockets, right under the noses of the Israelis, must have taken extraordinary levels of operational security by Hamas.

Map showing Gaza and southern Israel
Not surprisingly the Israeli media has been asking urgent questions of their country's military and political leaders as to how all this could have occurred, on the 50th anniversary of another surprise attack by Israel's enemies at the time: the Yom Kippur war of October 1973.

Israeli officials tell me a major investigation has begun and questions, they say, "will go on for years".

But right now Israel has more pressing priorities. It needs to contain and suppress the infiltration of its southern borders, removing those Hamas militants who have taken control of several communities on the Israeli side of the border fence.

It will need to address the issue of its own citizens who have been taken captive, either through an armed rescue mission or by negotiation.

It will try to eliminate the launch sites for all those rockets being fired into Israel, an almost impossible task of whack-a-mole as they can be launched from almost anywhere with little notice.

And perhaps the biggest worry for Israel is this: how does it stop others responding to Hamas's call to arms and avoid this conflagration spreading into the West Bank and possibly even draw in the heavily-armed fighters of Hezbollah across its northern border with Lebanon?

OBTOREPA:
That's exactly how the rapture will take place,
For no one knows the time and hour when the son of man cometh.

Hedonisco:
With all the blitz of thousands of Hamas rockets fired and so-called infiltrations, Israeli death toll is less than 100. More people die in any random Fulani attack on Benue or Plateau communities.

That should draw commendation for Israel's super effective defence systems.

By the time Israel's righteous vengeance on these Islamic fuckers is over, even Palestinian lifestock would bemoan this wrath of God upon them. Their doubts would be totally cleared. No fucking doubt.

Irritants.

FreeStuffsNG:
except the Lord watches over the city....

About 2-3 months ago when I first watched this viral video of this elderly Palestinian woman, I knew this elderly woman was calling on same God that watches over the city.

For days, her deep agony in her cry unto her God and her deep faith that God was actually listening to her cry in this video kept troubling my heart


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyE_C5FbQcw
Fear women o! The deep cry unto God of a woman in deep agony is powerful.

I pray that both sides will stop the killings.

Hedonisco:
With all the blitz of thousands of Hamas rockets fired and so-called infiltrations, Israeli death toll is less than 100. More people die in any random Fulani attack on Benue or Plateau communities.

That should draw commendation for Israel's super effective defence systems.

By the time Israel's righteous vengeance on these Islamic fuckers is over, even Palestinian lifestock would bemoan this wrath of God upon them. Their doubts would be totally cleared. No fucking doubt.

Irritants.

Truthday:
I'm.tired if too much videos of captured cities, villages by Hamas. Let me see how much I can go in posting pictures

Pic1: areas occupied by Hamas

Corn247:


Make una dey deceive una selves, thousands of Israeli are with their makers right now with uncountable abducted. Even their general is not spared from abduction.

Hedonisco:


Assuming but not conceding that you are right it makes the case worse for Palestinians and associated Islamic sympathisers because it is only a pyrrhic 'victory'.

Hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of them would join Satan in hell in a matter of days. The entity known as Palestine would be obliterated.

The Gates of Hell are now wide open, longing to admit the lost souls of Islamic terrorist-leaning irritants from Palestine and beyond.

obiekunie01:
I HAVE BEEN THINKING ABOUT THAT SINCE THE REPORT OF THIS ATTACK.

Two things are involved.

Either it is a MOSAD operation to have reason to decimate Palestine - using the life of few citizens to sacrifice

or the iarealis don dey slack.

i don't see the possibility of the second - and am worried about the first cause it then means the stew they prepared for the palestine will a gorry bute.

BoldBrainz:


Lol.

Bros, we have gone past the days when Israel could massacre Palestinians and the rest of the world will just return to watching tv afterwards. Israel might have the capacity to wipe off Palestine as you've insinuated, but this particular battle get K-leg.

Muslims all over the world are not going to sit down and watch that drama repeat itself this time. That, I can assure you.

Hedonisco:


Lol. So what will they do? What did they do to ptrevent or even condemn Hamas from looking for trouble.

You don't know Israel. They can't be pacified. They can't be reasoned with. They can't be placated. They cannot be appealed to. They will. No. They SHALL exact a thousand-fold revenge. And I love them for that.

The anti-Israel Muslim world tends to be impetuously forgetful. They would get a brain reset this time. That I boldly assure you.

BoldBrainz:


All of what you have claimed about Israel is not in doubt. We all know that. But I'm trying to make you understand that, this is no longer that time when Israel exerts brutal reprisals and kilings on Palestinians and the rest of the muslim world only sits back to make threats and shout "Allahu Akhbar".

The moment Israel deploys ground troops into Gaza, this battle you're seeing is going to take a very different dimension. The politics at play here is now a tug of war between vicious world players, of which Muslims now fancy themselves as being in the mix.

E no go easy to massacre Palestinians like this for this very one.

Hedonisco:


My brother, thank God Israel doesn't like 'long thing'. We will be alive to see how things unfold in the coming days and weeks at best. This is not the mumu Russia - Ukraine 'indefinitum' fiasco.

Make we dey look.

obiekunie01:
I HAVE BEEN THINKING ABOUT THAT SINCE THE REPORT OF THIS ATTACK.

Two things are involved.

Either it is a MOSAD operation to have reason to decimate Palestine - using the life of few citizens to sacrifice

or the iarealis don dey slack.

i don't see the possibility of the second - and am worried about the first cause it then means the stew they prepared for the palestine will a gorry bute.