Israel Endures Greatest Security Failure In A Generation

The surprise Hamas-led attack and extensive infiltration of Israel from the Gaza Strip today has already marked the single greatest failure of Israeli intelligence, military, and security in a generation.

A mere one day after the fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War (known in Israel as the Yom Kippur War and among the Arabs as the Ramadan War), a surprise assault saw over 5,000 rockets fired at targets across Israel and an extensive ground infiltration launched from Gaza. Portions of the fence separating the narrow strip and Israel were smashed, militants seized the Erez crossing and swiftly infiltrated several Israeli communities and neighborhoods, seemingly with ease.

As of writing, at least 100 Israelis have been killed and 800 injured, per the country’s Channel 12 news. Health officials in Gaza, cited by Reuters, reported at least 198 Palestinian deaths due to Israeli airstrikes. Both figures will undoubtedly rise in the coming hours and possibly days.

None of the previous recurring wars between Israel and Gaza since 2008 included such a large-scale infiltration of Israel or the capture of significant numbers of Israeli soldiers and civilians.

Today’s images are reminiscent of Israeli soldiers in Arab captivity 50 years ago, which demoralized the Israeli public and shattered the feeling of near invincibility prevalent in the country following its lightning victory in the June 1967 Six Day War.

While the combined strength of Hamas and Islamic Jihad is hardly as significant as those Arab armies half a century ago, today’s infiltration is unprecedented in many other ways. Unlike the 1973 war, enemy forces are fighting Israel inside its 1948 borders and have kidnapped Israeli citizens from within the country.

Preliminary reports indicate that the Palestinian infiltrators are even holding Israelis hostage inside their communities of Be’eri and Ofakim. Hamas’ deputy chief, Saleh al-Arouri, claimed Hamas has already taken “a big number” of Israelis as prisoners, including “senior officers” from the military.

The scale and speed of this coordinated infiltration is unprecedented.

Of course, there have been devastating suicide bombings deep inside Israel’s pre-1967 borders since the 1990s, including the infamous Passover massacre in Netanya on the Israeli coast in 2002. In 1977, Palestinian militants infiltrated Israel from Lebanon, hijacked a bus, and killed several civilians and police in a shootout near Tel Aviv in the Coastal Road massacre, the casus belli for Israel’s short-lived Litani operation into South Lebanon. (The latter incident was an attempt by Palestinian militants to foil the Israel-Egypt peace deal, today’s attack may similarly aim to derail ongoing U.S.-supported efforts to establish full-fledged diplomatic relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia.)

Notably, more Israelis have already been killed today than in either of those devastating attacks.

Israel was caught off guard in October 1973, largely due to the hubris of the military leading up to the war. For example, the army chief of staff, in the run-up to the Oct. 6 surprise attack, expressed his contentment with Israel having 100 tanks on the Golan Heights facing 800 Syrian ones. Israel’s present intelligence and security failure, at least partially, stems from Benjamin Netanyahu’s incumbent right-wing government undermining the vital social contract underpinning the commitment of Israeli reservists to serve voluntarily.

Domestic disagreements will undoubtedly be put aside for now as Israelis unify around the shared objective of expelling the infiltrators and freeing the hostages they have reportedly taken to Gaza. A major ground incursion into the narrow strip, possibly the largest since 2014, is likely in the cards. An air campaign will not likely prove all that decisive if Hamas and the other groups place Israeli hostages as human shields in at strategic sites, which is not unlikely.

In 1980, President Jimmy Carter’s failed attempt to rescue American hostages held by Islamist militants in the U.S. embassy in Tehran in Operation Eagle Claw stood in stark contrast to Israel’s decisive rescue of its citizens held hostage in Entebbe Airport, Uganda, four years earlier. Given the different nature of the present hostage-taking, it seems more likely an Israeli rescue attempt would go more the way of another Eagle Claw than Entebbe.

While Netanyahu previously released 1,027 prisoners in return for the lone captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2011, that was under strikingly different circumstances. His current government would hardly countenance such a trade anytime soon, especially given the greater number involved and the untenable prospect for any Israeli government of negotiating with Hamas after today’s assault.

While the powerful Hezbollah militia in Lebanon has not joined the assault by attacking Northern Israel and opening up another front, it will feel even more emboldened to attempt a ground incursion into Israel’s Galilee region, as it has threatened to do for years, in the event of another war.

Just as Oct. 6, 1973, set in motion a cascade of events that profoundly impacted the wider region, so too will the still unfolding events of Oct. 7, 2023.