Haaretz: Intelligence, military, and political failures paved the way for the October 7 attack

Tel Aviv - Ofoq News - Amos Harel, a military analyst in the Israeli newspaper "Haaretz", said that Israel's failure to prevent the attack of October 7, 2023 was not the result of a lack of intelligence information, as much as it was the result of misinterpreting the available indicators, underestimating the capabilities and intentions of the Hamas movement, and the belief that Israeli technological and intelligence superiority makes it possible to anticipate and thwart the movements of opponents in advance.

Harel explained, during an interview on the Haaretz newspaper podcast conducted by Alison Kaplan Sommer, coinciding with the third anniversary of the attack, that the military intelligence services and the Israeli General Security Service (Shin Bet) monitored a series of warning indicators before the attack, but failed to gather them into an integrated intelligence picture that reveals the nature of the ongoing preparations and the extent of the danger they represent.

Harel described the decision not to put the Israeli army on high alert before the attack as "the worst gamble in Israeli military history," noting that the military and security leadership were not necessarily indifferent to the risks, but they made a mistake in estimating their size, and did not expect Hamas to undertake a large-scale operation of this size.

Warning signs that were not read correctly

According to Harel, the Israeli services monitored at least 13 indicators before the attack, the most prominent of which was the appearance of 45 Israeli SIM cards on phones belonging to Hamas, in addition to indications of the readiness of units specialized in missiles, armor, and air defense, and the activation of their systems by four of the movement’s five regional battalions.

He pointed out that the problem was not the complete absence of information, but rather in the way it was interpreted, as the various indicators were not combined into a single operational estimate linking the various preparations and deducing from them the possibility of a large-scale attack.

He pointed out that the Israeli security services possessed important information, but they dealt with it through prior assumptions that reduced the possibility that Hamas would carry out an operation of this size, which prevented it from realizing the true significance of the movements it was monitoring.

Harel refused to reduce the failure to a single intelligence error, considering it the result of a series of accumulated failures in collecting information, analyzing it, and assessing the situation, in addition to a deficiency in military preparedness and response during the first hours of the attack.

Hamas's plans were known to Israel

In the context of his explanation of the failure, Harel indicated that Israel possessed several copies of Hamas’ operational plans related to the invasion of the areas surrounding the Gaza Strip, and that it obtained six copies of these plans during the period between 2018 and 2022.

But the Israeli agencies, according to his account, made a mistake in evaluating these plans, and treated them as impracticable perceptions, instead of viewing them as an operational possibility that required preparation to confront them.

According to Harel, this reflects a gap between possessing information and the ability to draw correct conclusions from it. The presence of detailed plans by the opponent does not alone guarantee readiness to confront him, if the security institution is based on a firm belief that the opponent will not implement them.

"Conceptia" and the wrong estimate of Hamas' capabilities

Harel placed what he described as “conceptia,” that is, the system of assumptions that governed the Israeli assessment of the Gaza Strip and Hamas, at the center of his explanation of the reasons for the failure.

This system, according to his analysis, is based on the belief that Hamas is deterred, that it prefers to manage the conflict within borders that Israel can control, and that it will not risk losing the existing arrangements and the resources it obtains by continuing the situation as it is.

He added that this perception was reinforced by a sense of technological and intelligence superiority, and by the belief that Israel has the ability to discover any broad offensive preparation before implementing it, which made some of the plans that reached the security services seem unrealistic in the eyes of those responsible for them.

According to Harel, the problem was not merely an incorrect assessment of Hamas’ intentions at a certain moment, but rather it was represented by an integrated intellectual and security system that made Israeli institutions interpret new information in accordance with their previous convictions, instead of reconsidering those convictions when indicators that contradicted them appeared.

An organizational culture that fostered failure

Harel touched on the role of organizational culture within the Israeli intelligence services and army, pointing out that the tendency to confirm prevailing estimates, and to give greater weight to the opinions of those in higher ranks, contributed to weakening the ability to review existing hypotheses.

He explained that such an organizational environment makes it difficult for lower-ranking officers to object to commanders' estimates or propose different readings of information, even when they have indicators that require re-evaluation of the situation.

Harel believes that confirmation bias, that is, the tendency to search for information that supports an existing belief and interpret it in a way that is consistent with it, was one of the factors that prevented us from realizing the magnitude of the threat that Hamas’ preparations represented.

Thus, the failure was not related to the capabilities of collecting information alone, but also to the mechanisms of analyzing and circulating it within institutions, and to the extent of officials’ willingness to challenge the estimates that the leadership had settled on.

Iran and Gaza are outside the center of security priorities

Harel linked the previous failures of the attack to the nature of Israeli security priorities in the years preceding it, noting that the focus on Iran, the fear of military losses, and the desire to maintain calm in the Gaza Strip, contributed to reducing interest in the threat that Hamas was preparing to impose.

According to his analysis, treating Gaza as an arena in which risks can be contained and the situation can be kept calm has strengthened assumptions that reduced the possibility of a widespread confrontation.

The belief that Hamas does not want to risk existing arrangements helped establish the perception that the movement will continue to operate within limits that Israel can deter, despite indications of different preparations.

Harel believes that the interaction of these political, military, and intelligence factors contributed to the formation of an environment that allowed mistakes to accumulate, leading to insufficient preparation for the attack and response to it in its first hours.

Netanyahu's responsibility and the limits of his early warning narrative

The dialogue addressed the responsibility of the Israeli political level, focusing on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s account that if he had received an early enough warning, he would have led a different response.

Harel doubted that informing Netanyahu shortly before the start of the attack would necessarily be enough to change the outcome decisively, considering that reducing the failure to not waking the prime minister or not informing him in a timely manner ignores the broader context in which security assessments and policies related to the Gaza Strip were formed.

On the other hand, this interpretation does not absolve the political level of responsibility for the policies and assumptions that preceded the attack, and for the priorities that governed dealing with Hamas and the Gaza Strip.

Harel rejected accounts that explained what happened as the result of an internal conspiracy or deliberate betrayal, and focused instead on the accumulation of failures in judgement, decision-making and preparedness, and on the way institutions dealt with the information available to them.

The absence of an official investigation committee and the continued struggle over responsibility

Harel linked the failure to form an official, independent investigation committee to the continuation of the political battle inside Israel regarding responsibility for the failures of October 7th.

He argues that the absence of a comprehensive, independent investigation leaves the door open to competing accounts of what happened, the parties who bear responsibility, and the decisions that could have prevented the attack or limited its effects.

In light of this absence, journalists, researchers and historians play a temporary role in reconstructing the sequence of events and analyzing the decisions that preceded the attack. These tasks are also supposed to be undertaken by an independent official investigative institution with the necessary powers to examine the facts and determine aspects of responsibility.

Harel pointed out that Netanyahu was able to maintain some of his political maneuverability by reformulating the narrative regarding the failure, and holding other parties responsible for aspects of the failure, at a time when the issue of accountability is still a matter of political dispute within Israel.

October 7th changed Israeli society

The dialogue dealt with the profound political and social effects of the attack on Israeli society, as Harel believes that what happened was not limited to a security and military failure, but rather caused a shift in the feelings of Israelis and their view of state institutions and their ability to protect them.

According to his analysis, the attack strengthened feelings of fear, shock, remorse, guilt, and the desire for revenge, and weakened the confidence of sectors of Israeli society in the institutions that were supposed to prevent such an attack.

Security concerns and the possibility of repeating the attack have also become factors influencing the political debate and Israeli elections, in light of the continuing controversy over responsibility for the failure, and how to deal with security threats in the future.

Harel points out that the repercussions of October 7 did not end with the end of the day of the attack, but rather extended to Israeli policy and society’s relationship with its institutions, while questions related to the responsibility of the leaders and how the failure occurred remain without comprehensive official treatment.

Multilevel failure

Harel's analysis concluded that Israel's failure to prevent the October 7 attack cannot be explained by a single factor, whether it was a lack of information, an error in intelligence assessment, or a delay in informing the political leadership.

By his account, warning signs that were not read correctly, entrenched assumptions about Hamas' behavior, overconfidence in technological and intelligence superiority, and an organizational culture that made it difficult to challenge prevailing assessments, overlapped with political and security priorities that did not give the Gaza Strip enough attention.

The absence of an official, independent investigation, according to this proposal, remains a factor in continuing the dispute over responsibility for the failure, and in keeping questions related to the decisions prior to the attack and the response to it open to public debate.

The dialogue was based on Harel's book "6:29: Anatomy of a Failure," in which he presents his research on the series of intelligence, military and political errors that preceded the attack, in an attempt to explain how Israel had important warning indicators without being able to convert them into a correct assessment that would prevent surprise.