No reports of suspicious movements were received before the October 7 attack from Israeli agents in the Gaza Strip, according to intelligence sources.
In 2018, Hamas discovered a unit of the Israeli Special Operations Force (“Sayeret Matkal”) in Gaza, through which it managed to understand many of the intelligence working methods of the Israeli side.
Over the past years, Hamas has succeeded in thwarting Israel’s attempts to infiltrate agents into the Strip via land and sea borders.
Intelligence reports confirm that the Israeli military establishment denies the existence of prominent agents within the General Security Service (Shin Bet), Unit 504, and the Mossad inside the Hamas leadership, whether at the military or political level, for nearly twenty years.
New details reveal the intelligence failure witnessed this year and prior to the July 10 attacks, as well as the corrective efforts that were attempted.
Intelligence reports raise questions about how there was no Israeli awareness of events in Gaza despite Israel’s capabilities in managing intelligence operations in Iran and at further distances. How could Israel be unaware of what is happening 100 kilometers from the Gush Dan area, particularly in the Gaza Strip, which Israel controlled for many years?
Yedioth Ahronoth asks: “How does the Israeli side not have hundreds of agents to send a simple message or warning?”
Reports mention that one explanation is the presence of a large number of low-level agents in the Gaza Strip who provided almost no valuable information before October 7, which is considered a poor outcome.
The report published by Yedioth Ahronoth revealed: Since the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005, the General Security Service (Shin Bet) has not had any influential element capable of operating within the Hamas leadership, either militarily or politically.
The reports confirm in their analysis of events and operations: “This is a bitter truth that explains a large part of this failure. After Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, relations gradually disintegrated. The friction that allowed the flow of workers and facilitated the recruitment of agents also diminished. Without friction, recruiting agents becomes difficult. Gaza has no real economy, no tourism, and no diplomatic relations, which are the channels used by intelligence agencies to enter any country.”
Agents and personnel are usually met in a third country, but this is impossible due to the blockade stifling Gaza.
As a result of the disclosure of a failed operation carried out by the Special Operations Unit in Khan Yunis in 2018, Hamas understood a great deal about Israeli working methods, but the Israeli side was unaware of the extent of Hamas’s understanding of these methods.
Over the past years, Hamas has obstructed the Israeli side’s efforts to penetrate secrets via fences, the sea, or border crossings, and in some cases, carried out public executions.
However, the isolation of Hamas in Gaza led the Israeli side to ignore it, driven by a political direction and security recommendations. Consequently, the focus was largely on strikes, assassinations, and deterrence through threats, at the expense of intelligence language and influence.
Some observers accuse former heads of the General Security Service (Shin Bet), Ronen Bar and Nadav Argaman, of focusing on special operations (“chaos units”) at the expense of human assets.
Although the Shin Bet used its language to carry out assassinations on a large scale in the past decade, the volume of clandestine intelligence operations in Gaza did not decrease during the presidencies of Argaman and Bar.
Despite Ronen Bar prioritizing the renewal of human agent operations in Gaza, the problem is deeper than that, as none of the attempted trials succeeded.
Source: “Yedioth Ahronoth”
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