Unusual aspects stand out in attack
Sandeep Dikshit
New Delhi, October 9
Strategic experts have drawn attention to at least half a dozen unexplained occurrences that have accompanied the stunning Hamas invasion of Israel. The biggest of those is also the most obvious -– Israel’s inability to prevent the attack that led to scores of IDF soldiers being gunned down while sleeping. It now emerges that Hamas made extensive preparations such as deploying multiple launched rocket systems, attackers on motorcycles, paragliders and drones fitted with bombs that all went unnoticed.
The second was the failure of the sophisticated alarm system on the border whose claimed success enabled Israel to peddle it to foreign governments, including India. The multi-billion dollar supposedly failsafe electronic systems networked to cameras and sensors provided no inkling of the influx of Hamas fighters. The militants blew up the fence and then demolished it with a bulldozer while unhurriedly filming the act with no apparent retaliation.
The third was the spectacular failure of its intelligence gathering systems including geospatial intelligence which Israel claims has been developed to such an extent that its satellites send aerial photographs and terrain data of even one square metre resolution. Tel Aviv’s information gathering through tapped communications and cyber network intelligence, which has enabled it sell snooping software such as Pegasus to other countries, seems to have also failed to pick up Hamas’ months-long planning.
The fourth was the messy response in the initial hours. Israeli tanks and remote controlled watch towers on the fence were destroyed by the simple strategy of a drone dropping bombs even as the “trophy active protection complex” too did not work. The fifth unusual aspect was that panic prevailed in the “settlements” that had been marked for retribution and the local police were too few in number. The sixth factor that stood out was the high number of Israeli military casualties.
Several oddities
- Failure of sophisticated alarm system on border
- Israel’s intelligence gathering system fails
- Uncoordinated response in initial hours of assault
- Thin deployment of police in the “settlements”
