Hamas avoided detection by 'going back to the Stone Age'

Hamas fooled Israel over two years into believing it was too war weary to fight, going “stone age” to escape high-tech surveillance and training on a mock Israeli settlement as it plotted Saturday’s devastating attack.

In a major intelligence failure, Israel believed it was containing Hamas by giving economic incentives to workers in Gaza, despite fighters often conducting exercises in plain sight and reported warnings from other intelligence agencies.

Far from being contained, Hamas was planning a surprise attack that marked the biggest breach in Israel’s defences since the Yom Kippur war 50 years ago.

The massive blunder has heaped pressure on Ronen Bar, the head of the Shin Bet intelligence agency, while others have said that ultimate responsibility will eventually have to be taken by Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, who has warned Israel is now at war.

“Hamas used an unprecedented intelligence tactic to mislead Israel over the last months, by giving a public impression that it was not willing to go into a fight or confrontation with Israel while preparing for this massive operation,” a source close to the group told Reuters.

Israeli surveillance drones routinely buzz over the blockaded Gaza Strip, and the highly secure border separating it from Israel is guarded with soldiers and cameras. Intelligence agencies are ceaselessly at work within the enclave.

But Hamas was able to storm Israeli towns in an attack that involved bulldozers, hang gliders and motorbikes, killing more than 800 Israelis and kidnapping dozens more.

An Egyptian security official said Egypt, often a mediator between Israel and Hamas, had repeatedly warned Jerusalem “something big” was coming.

“We have warned them an explosion of the situation is coming, and very soon, and it would be big. But they underestimated such warnings,” he said.

Israeli officials were instead focused on the West Bank rather than Gaza, the security official added.

Mr Netanyahu’s government is made up of supporters of Jewish West Bank settlers, who have demanded a security crackdown in the area over the last 18 months amid a rising tide of violence there.

Haaretz, the leading newspaper in polarised Israel, put the blame squarely on Mr Netanyahu in a comment piece that accused him of having “completely failed to identify the dangers” of setting up “a government of annexation and dispossession” by forming a coalition with the far-Right and pursuing a policy that “openly ignored the existence and rights of Palestinians”.

Security officials have admitted Israel was taken by surprise in an attack timed to coincide with the Jewish Sabbath and a religious holiday.

“This is our 9/11,” said Major Nir Dinar, spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces. “They got us. They surprised us and they came fast from many spots – both from the air and the ground and the sea.”

Amir Avivi, a retired Israeli general, said Hamas had “gone back to the Stone Age” to avoid their plans being detected.

He explained that militants had avoided using phones and computers, and conducted their business in rooms specially guarded from technological espionage, or gone underground altogether.

Mock Israeli settlement

But other apparent facets of Hamas’ preparation appeared more brazen, including the construction of a mock Israeli settlement in Gaza, which fighters practised storming.

A source close to Hamas said the terrorists had made videos of the manoeuvres, which may have been misinterpreted as posturing by Israeli intelligence.

“Israel surely saw them but they were convinced that Hamas wasn’t keen on getting into a confrontation,” the source said.

Other videos released by Hamas appeared to show the hang glider unit involved in Saturday’s attack, with badges carrying the name Air Force Falcon Squadron, training for the assault.

Some militants used one-person paragliders and others used paragliders for two people. It showed them training to land at a target with weapons ready.

Israel withdrew troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005 but it was able to keep eyes on the territory by using human and technological intelligence.

That intelligence gained an aura of invincibility through assassinations of Hamas leaders, sometimes while they slept in their bedrooms, and strikes on secret underground tunnels.

But Saturday’s atrocities flew under the radar, even though it took months of planning, training and coordination. As part of its subterfuge in the past two years, Hamas refrained from military operations against Israel, even as another Gaza-based armed group known as Islamic Jihad launched its own attacks.

The restraint drew public criticism from some supporters, again aimed at building an impression that Hamas had economic concerns not a new war on its mind, the source said. Israel has long prided itself on its ability to infiltrate Islamist groups but Hamas took precautions to ensure the plan did not leak.

Hamas leaders in dark

Many Hamas leaders were unaware of the plans and, while training, the 1,000 fighters deployed in Saturday’s assault had no inkling of the exact purpose of the exercises, the source added.

Meanwhile, the group sought to convince Israel it was more interested in ensuring workers in Gaza, a narrow strip of land with more than two million residents, had access to jobs across the border than it was in war.

Since a 2021 war with Hamas, Israel has sought to provide a basic level of economic stability in Gaza.

It has offered incentives, including thousands of permits, so Gazans can work in Israel or the West Bank, where salaries in construction, agriculture or service jobs can be 10 times the level of pay in Gaza.

“They caused us to think they wanted money,” an Israeli security source said. “And all the time they were involved in drills until they ran riot.”

A second Israeli security source said Israel believed the movement’s leader in Gaza, Yahya Al-Sinwar, was preoccupied with managing Gaza “rather than killing Jews”.

At the same time, Israel turned its focus away from Hamas as it pushed for a deal to normalise relations with Saudi Arabia, he added.

Retired General Yaakov Amidror, a former national security adviser to Mr Netanyahu, told reporters on Sunday the assault represented “a huge failure of the intelligence system and the military apparatus in the south”.

He said some of Israel’s allies had been saying that Hamas had acquired “more responsibility”.

“We stupidly began to believe that it was true,” he said. “So, we made a mistake. We are not going to make this mistake again and we will destroy Hamas, slowly but surely.”

Israel’s failure to prepare for Hamas’s attack was a “colossal collapse” of information gathering and its intelligence “definitely wasn’t good enough”, an associate fellow at Chatham House has said.

Speaking to the PA news agency, Prof Yossi Mekelberg said: “How were they able to train despite the blockade, how did they train paragliders?”

“Despite [Israel] investing billions and billions of dollars on blocking tunnels and building a sophisticated fence, [Hamas] still managed in a matter of hours to enter into Israel.”

Elite force

On the day of the attack itself, a 400-strong elite force broke through the fortified Gaza fence using explosives to open up gaps so they could infiltrate to the Israeli side.

After some crossed on motorcycles, bulldozers were used to widen the holes so teams could enter Israeli territory in four-wheel drive vehicles, a source close to the group told Reuters.

The commandos attacked the first Israeli defence lines, raided sleeping quarters of soldiers and seized bases and the headquarters of Israel’s military operation for southern Gaza, the source said.

Videos issued by Hamas showed the fighters breaching the security fences, with the dim light and low sun suggesting it was at around the same time as the rocket barrage.

Another unit was used to identify the positions and movements of Israeli soldiers and to monitor their headquarters, while drones were deployed to attack observation towers and to survey the border area.

Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, the chief military spokesman, acknowledged the army owes the public an explanation over the security failures.

But he said now is not the time. “First, we fight, then we investigate,” he said.