Expert comment: Failure of intelligence

Dr Dina Rezk, historian of contemporary Middle Eastern politics, has researched the strategic impact of intelligence failures in the Middle East. She said: 

“As many have said in the Israeli government and defence forces, the shocking attack by Hamas on Israeli civilians was ‘Israel’s 9/11’. It is a powerful analogy that conveys the sense of trauma that many Israelis are experiencing.

“The similarities do not only exist as rhetoric. Like the attack on the World Trade Centre in New York, civilians were deliberately targeted and murdered, and the strategic plans and tactical action itself seemed to take security forces by surprise. 

“In 2001, Americans had not seen an attack on their own soil since Pearl Harbour in 1941, which heralded the US entry into the Second World War. Closer to home, in Israel’s own recent history it was 50 years ago, almost to the day, that their security services were surprised with an unprecedented invasion and numerous casualties when Egypt and Syria initiated the Yom Kippur War in October 1973. 

“The Israeli intelligence service, Mossad, is renown as one of the region’s most capable and ruthless of its kind. Yet on both occasions it appears to have failed to predict and deter an operation of this nature. What went wrong?

“Like the US intelligence agencies ahead of 9/11, the Mossad no doubt had an excellent sense of the intentions of their adversaries to cause them harm and retaliate with force against the longstanding political stalemate of a besieged, landlocked Gaza. However, analysts clearly underestimated the capacity of their enemy to carry out a multi-pronged and effective offensive.

“Part of the problem may be compounded by a lack of understanding, as much as the lack of intelligence. There seems to be an underlying perception of Hamas within the Israeli establishment as a disorganized group of regressive and irrational terrorists. This is a common view of many Islamist groups. But this misconception fundamentally misjudges the group’s capability to be impactful actors – as horrendous as their activity has been. Israel’s vastly superior military might has clearly not been able to protect her from the consequences of an unsustainable political posture towards Gaza. 

“Israel has found that it is not enough to define the groups who oppose her as terrorists and treat them as such. With a full-scale Israeli assault against Hamas in Gaza expected any moment, Israel’s security services may be asking themselves whether they can regain not only useful intelligence, but perhaps more importantly, a greater understanding of their enemies. What are the underlying conditions that allowed Hamas to thrive in Gaza and will a ground invasion address these fundamental problems? These will be key considerations if the steep material, political and human costs of further military action can be justified for long-term strategic gain.”