'This was an intelligence failure': Reaction to attack that stunned Israel

As Israel has reeled from a deadly attack by Palestinian resistance groups who broke through barriers around besieged Gaza and roamed at will, defence chiefs faced growing questions over how the disaster could have happened.

A day after the 50th anniversary of the start of the 1973 the October War also known as the Arab-Israeli War Yom Kippur war, when Israeli forces were caught off guard by Syrian and Egyptian tank columns, the military appeared once again to have been surprised by a sudden attack.

"It looks quite similar to what happened at that time," said retired General Giora Eiland, a former head of Israel's National Security Council.

"As we can see it, Israel was completely surprised, by a very well-coordinated attack," he told a briefing with reporters.

An army spokesperson said there would be discussions on the intelligence preparation "down the road", but for the moment, the focus was on fighting.

Carrot and stick mix to maintain stability

"We'll talk about that when we need to talk about it," he told a briefing with reporters. Israel has always regarded Hamas as its sworn enemy, but since inflicting heavy damage on Gaza in a 10-day offensive in 2021, Israel has adopted a mix of carrot and stick to maintain stability in the besieged enclave.

It offered economic incentives, including thousands of work permits allowing Gazans to work in Israel or the occupied West Bank, while maintaining a tight blockade and the constant threat of airstrikes.

For the past 18 months, as Israeli violence has raged across the West Bank, Gaza has been relatively quiet, apart from sporadic cross-border clashes mainly involving the smaller Islamic Jihad movement, with Hamas remaining largely on the sidelines.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing government has always made great play of its security credentials and taken an uncompromising stance towards the Palestinian resistance groups, including Hamas, which has controlled Gaza since 2007.

'Intelligence failure'

However, when the time came, Israel's security apparatus appeared to break down as a force of Hamas fighters estimated in the hundreds by the military broke through security fences and scattered into towns.

"This was an intelligence failure; it could not be otherwise," said Jonathan Panikoff, the US government's former deputy national intelligence officer on the Middle East, who is now at the Atlantic Council think tank.

"It was a security failure, undermining what was thought to be an aggressive and successful layered approach toward Gaza by Israel," he said.

Around 300 Israelis were killed and over 1,500 wounded, an unprecedented number of Israeli victims in a single day.

'Very coordinated attack'

The military suffered significant losses, and Palestinian resistance groups said they had captured several times more than dozens of soldiers.

Palestinian resistance groups also seized security posts, including a police station in the southern town of Sderot and overran the Erez crossing, a high-security facility that channels people entering and leaving besieged Gaza through a tight series of controls.

On Saturday, Hamas media circulated footage showing fighters ranging through abandoned offices and running past the high concrete walls of the site.

"They've been planning this for a long time," said former Israeli National Security Advisor Eyal Hulata.

"Obviously, this is a very coordinated attack, and unfortunately, they were able to surprise us tactically and cause devastating damage."