How Hamas deceived Israel with its attack plans

2023-10-10 08:06:00

It was a careful deception with which the radical Palestinian organization Hamas planned its major attack on Israel at the weekend. This was the only way Hamas fighters with bulldozers, motorcycles and even hang gliders could cross the Gaza Strip’s border with Israel and challenge the strongest army in the Middle East – with devastating consequences for both sides. For two years, Hamas worked out its plans in secret, while giving Israel the impression that it was not seeking a fight. While Israel was led to believe that Hamas was tired of fighting and could lose further importance through economic incentives for workers from the Gaza Strip, fighters were trained and trained, says an insider close to Hamas. This often happened in full view of everyone.

This insider gave Archyde.com numerous details about Hamas’ major attack. Three other insiders from the Israeli security apparatus, who also did not want to be named, provided Archyde.com with further information about the worst attack on Israel in 50 years – since the beginning of the Yom Kippur War, in which Egypt and Syria unexpectedly attacked Israel in 1973.

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“Hamas gave Israel the impression that it was not ready to fight,” says the insider, who is close to the Palestinian organization. “Hamas has used unprecedented intelligence tactics to mislead Israel in recent months.”

Israel admits it was surprised by the Hamas attack, which coincided with a Jewish holiday. Hamas fighters stormed into Israeli towns, killing around 700 people and kidnapping dozens of Israelis and foreigners. Since then, the Israeli military has killed around 500 people in the Gaza Strip in reprisal attacks. “This is our September 11th,” says Nir Dinar, spokesman for the Israeli Defense Forces, referring to the attacks in the USA in 2001. “They caught us. They surprised us and came quickly from many places – from the air , on the ground and from the sea.”

The most striking part of the preparations was the reconstruction of an Israeli settlement in the Gaza Strip, where Hamas had practiced a military landing and storming a settlement, says the insider with contacts to Hamas. “The Israelis certainly saw them, but they were convinced that Hamas did not want to get into a confrontation.” At the same time, Hamas tried to convince Israel that it was more important to it that Palestinians had work and access to jobs across the border.

Since the 2021 war with Hamas, Israel has tried to create some economic stability in the Gaza Strip, a narrow strip of land on the Mediterranean where two million people live. Israel issued thousands of permits to allow its residents to work in Israel or the West Bank. Salaries there in construction, agriculture or the service sector are often ten times higher than in the Gaza Strip. “We believed that the fact that they came to work and brought money to Gaza would create a certain level of calm,” said an Israeli army official. “We were wrong.” An insider from the Israeli security apparatus admits that Hamas was successful in deception: “They made us believe that they wanted money,” he says. “And the whole time they were engaged in drills until it got out of control.”

In the past two years, Hamas has refrained from attacking Israel. Even when Islamic Jihad attacked Israeli targets with rockets in the Gaza Strip, Hamas held back. Now it looks like that was also part of the deception. At the time, Hamas’ reluctance sparked public criticism from some supporters, says an insider. In the West Bank, which is controlled by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah, there were some who mocked the silence of Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip. In June 2022, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s moderate Fatah accused Hamas leaders of fleeing to Arab capitals to live in “luxurious hotels and villas” and abandoning their people to poverty.

An Israeli insider says there was a time when Israel believed the movement’s leader, Jahja Al-Sinwar, was busy administering the Gaza Strip “and not killing Jews.” At the same time, Israel shifted its focus away from Hamas and toward an agreement with Saudi Arabia that would normalize relations.

Israel has long boasted of its ability to infiltrate Islamist groups. Therefore, avoiding leaks was a crucial part of the plan, says the insider close to Hamas. Many Hamas leaders were not aware of the exact plans. And the 1,000 fighters deployed in the attack had no idea of its specific purpose during training. When the day of the attack came, it was divided into four parts.

The first step was to fire 3,000 rockets from Gaza. This coincided with crossing the border with the help of hang gliders and motorized paragliders. Once the Hamas fighters landed, they secured the area. Now an elite unit could storm the wall that Israel had built to prevent infiltration. The militants broke through the barriers using explosives and then raced across on motorcycles. Bulldozers widened the gaps and more fighters advanced. Eyewitnesses have described such scenes. A commando unit attacked the Israeli army headquarters in the southern Gaza Strip and disrupted its communications. This prevented the soldiers from calling their commanders or each other. The insider describes the last part as the taking of hostages and the deportation of people to the Gaza Strip. This mostly happened at the beginning of the attack.

An Israeli security force insider says its own troops in the south were not at full strength. Some soldiers were deployed to protect settlers in the West Bank. Hamas took advantage of that. Yaakov Amidror, a former general in the Israeli military and former national security adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaks of a “major failure of the intelligence service and the military in the south.” Some of Israel’s allies have said that Hamas has taken more responsibility. “We stupidly started to believe it was true,” says Amidror. “So we made a mistake. We will not make that mistake again, and we will slowly but surely destroy Hamas.”