Hamas attack: This was a terrible intelligence failure by Israel

Palestinian militants move towards the border fence with Israel from Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip.

The Hamas attack is an Israeli nightmare. Not so much the perhaps 5000 rockets – though the numbers are disputed - the terrorist group launched against Israel, but the terrorists roaming through southern Israeli towns, where women and children take shelter in “safe rooms” while the towns’ men try to fight the terrorists off. And civilians are gunned down.

The implications of this will reverberate for years, decades, in the Middle East, as did the Yom Kippur war on this date 50 years ago when Syria and Egypt launched a surprise attack on Israel.

“Citizens of Israel,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “we are at war, and we will win.”

The Israeli response will be fearsome. But the immediate course of this conflict is deeply unclear.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:
"Citizens of Israel,
We are at war, not in an operation or in rounds, but at war. This morning, Hamas launched a murderous surprise attack against the State of Israel and its citizens. We have been in this since the early morning hours. pic.twitter.com/C7YQUviItR

— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) October 7, 2023

This was a terrible intelligence failure by Israel. That Hamas could coordinate such a big operation, with not only huge numbers of rockets but also countless Hamas terrorists flooding in to southern Israel, without Israeli intelligence hearing a whisper of it in advance, is shocking.

Israel withdrew from all of Gaza in 2005. The hope was that it could withdraw from most of the West Bank and a Palestinian state at peace with Israel follow.

This has insistently refused to happen. Israel’s response to the Hamas attacks will almost certainly involve a ground offensive. It will be costly and bloody. Hamas appears to have taken living Israelis as hostages. This will complicate Israel’s response.

Almost certainly, Israel will conclude that it needs a greater presence in Gaza so that it is never caught by surprise like this again.

There has been 12 months of background escalating violence in the West Bank and Jerusalem. Islamic Jihad says it will join the Hamas campaign. Hezbollah leaders in the north, in Lebanon, have praised the attack, though not said they will join it. The fear of Hezbollah terrorists flooding across Israel’s northern border into its many northern towns is another of Israel’s recurring nightmares.

One of Israel’s deepest recent concerns has been that its greatest, most lethally armed, non-state adversaries, namely Hezbollah and Hamas, could coordinate a massive attack on Israel. Hezbollah is known to possess 150,000 rockets, more and more of them sophisticated in targeting and with deadly payloads. Hezbollah receives arms, money and other support from Iran.

Smoke billows over the Israeli side of the border with Gaza as seen from Gaza City on October 7 following a series of early morning rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip into Israel.

Hezbollah’s 150,000 rockets, by the way, underline the pathetic quality of Australia’s rocket and missile arsenal. We have a Government program to produce missiles which has been running nearly four years and has produced no missiles or rockets. Hezbollah is a terrorist organisation and has 150,000 rockets and is an existential threat to Israel.

In order to deter attacks like that which it is now enduring, Israel will need to impose a huge cost. This has happened before in Gaza. Hamas attacks and Israel retaliates, wiping out all the reconstruction which has taken place since the previous war.

When the dust eventually settles on this conflict, the international community will contribute large quantities of aid to rebuild Gaza. At some point Hamas will once more decide that the symbolism of striking at Israel is more important than the lives of its own citizens.

For Israeli civilians will die in this conflict, but so will Gaza civilians.

There’s no doubt too that the extraordinary divisions which have opened up in Israeli society and politics over the last 12 months have factored into this. Israel’s enemies may well have sensed weakness, a rending of the social solidarity within Israel which is so important to its endurance and astonishing success up to now.

But there will be intensely ugly weeks ahead, with suffering and danger enough for everyone.