By Sasha Vakulina -EuroNews.com
Israeli officials have already acknowledged their oversights in preventing Hamas’ attack on 7 October 2023. Why did Israel not expect such a significant threat from militants? And why will the security concerns always be there from now on?
Two years since the deadly Hamas-led 7 October attack, security experts in Israel and worldwide are still analysing what the key oversights were and whether Israel could have pre-empted the incursion, which took 1,200 lives and saw 250 people taken hostage by Hamas.
Earlier this year the Israeli military published its first official account of the mistakes that led to its failures during the 7 October 2023 attack, which triggered the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
The report concluded that the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) “failed in its mission to protect Israeli civilians”.
The 19-page report concludes that Israel’s military misjudged Hamas’ intentions and underestimated its capabilities.
Will Todman, Senior Fellow at the Middle East Program of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, told Euronews that it is essential to understand the context and the broader picture of the time when the attack occurred.
“If we go back, this was a time when Israel was talking about expanding the Abraham Accords, normalising with Saudi Arabia”, Todman said, adding that it had previously normalised with other key regional actors like the UAE and Bahrain.
“I think there was a real sense of confidence in the Israeli government and they did not realise that Hamas would be able to pose such a dire threat to their security.”
The official military report states that in the months leading up to the attack, the Israeli Military Intelligence Directorate, Aman, began to develop a new assessment, suggesting that Hamas’ plan was not merely a vision but “a concrete framework for operational planning”. But this assessment was largely dismissed and even received with some complacency.
“It was probably a sense of hubris from the Israeli military and political elite”, Todman said, adding that Israeli authorities “hadn’t faced a serious threat from Hamas in Gaza or from Palestinian groups in the West Bank for years”.
Hamas, on the other hand, also tried to keep their preparations as much as possible under Israeli radars to make sure the October 7 attack was not easily detected.
“They have periodically done sort of training exercises and whatnot, they know full well that Israel would be monitoring those”, Todman says.
“Critically, even the Hamas delegation outside of the Gaza Strip in Doha does not seem to have been aware of this in advance. And so I think they kept these plans to a very small circle.”
But Todman insists that “the failures of 7 October have to be seen as the failures of the leadership and not the failures of Israel’s capabilities.”
“We have seen in the years since, Israel has a remarkable military strength is rapidly proving itself to be the region’s military hegemon,” he said.