The WSJ report “After Attack, Israel Wrestles With Question: How Could This Happen?” says the regime’s failure to anticipate the attack “punctured a sense of invincibility built on its vaunted military and intelligence apparatus.”
The report cites an Israeli man as saying that he kept asking himself “Where is the Israeli military?” when “explosions rang out and bullets flew over his home” in an area near the Gaza Strip.
The New York-based international newspaper also quotes a number of analysts who believe that Israeli authorities had downplayed the power of Hamas in recent months, with the regime’s intelligence assessment describing Hamas as shifting towards “stoking violence” in the occupied West Bank. The analysts also believe that the Saturday attack from Gaza was a “well-planned” operation.
“Clearly this was a well-planned operation that didn’t just emerge overnight and it’s surprising it was not detected by Israel or any of its security partners,” the WSJ quoted Brian Katulis, vice president of policy at the Middle East Institute think tank in Washington. “It’s hard to think of a security failure of this magnitude in Israel’s recent history.”
According to the report, a researcher in Tel Aviv described the Saturday developments as “unbelievable”, adding, “Everybody was talking about Hamas being quiet and being stable. This whole structural concept is shattered just in front of our eyes…”
The newspaper labels the attack “a low-tech assault that relied more on the element of surprise than advanced weaponry”, claiming that it was carried out through coordination provided by Iran among forces of Hamas in Gaza and the Hezbollah resistance movement in Lebanon.
The attack put many Israelis in shock, the WSJ said, and raised the question of how the Israeli military, whose leaders say is one of the best in the world, could be so unprepared for it.
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