WSJ | As explosions rang out and bullets flew over Tamir Erez’s home in Mefalsim near the Gaza Strip border, he said he kept asking himself, “Where is the Israeli military?” He fled town with his children holding their heads down so they couldn’t see the bodies of dead Israelis killed by Palestinian militants.
“It will take a long time for us to recover from this day,” Erez said.
Israel’s failure to anticipate an attack Saturday
that left hundreds of soldiers and civilians dead and militants
rampaging through villages punctured a sense of invincibility built on
its vaunted military and intelligence apparatus. It left the world
questioning what went wrong and Israel’s leaders facing pressure to
retaliate with overwhelming force.
The assault came as Israel faces its most difficult series of threats
in the decades since what remains the country’s greatest security
failure, the Yom Kippur War, the surprise attack launched 50 years ago
this week by Egyptian and Syrian forces.
Iran has provided unprecedented coordination
among the forces of several militant groups, including Hamas in Gaza
and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and stoked deadly conflict in the West Bank,
putting Israel at risk on three fronts.
Using
rockets, paragliders, motorcycles, pickup trucks, and boats, Hamas
militants from the Gaza Strip launched a coordinated attack that showed
an unexpected level of sophistication.
Israeli
forces appeared to be caught completely by surprise as Hamas militants
in Gaza used bulldozers to tear down the security fence with Israel and
streamed into the country.
How Israel’s Iron Dome works
Interception
The missile destroys the incoming rocket by exploding near it.
Launcher
Each has 20 interceptor missiles
with an in-built radar seeker
Mobile control Unit
Analyses trajectory, estimates impact point and commands launch of interceptor missile
Radar
Identifies rocket shell
Source: Rafael Advanced Defense Systems
“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,” said 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.”
Israeli security leaders had played down the threat from Hamas
in recent months, as the group abstained from conflicts started by its
smaller ally in Gaza, Palestinian Islamic Jihad. There was a sense that
Israel, with its Iron Dome air defense systems, had rendered ineffective
Gaza’s main threat of short-range rockets.
Last
month, the Israeli military confidently characterized Gaza as being in a
state of “stable instability,” suggesting that the dangers posed by
Hamas militants were largely contained.
Recent
Israeli intelligence assessments of Hamas were that the militant group
had shifted its focus to trying to stoke violence in the West Bank and
that it was looking to avoid launching major attacks from Gaza in an
effort to avoid the kinds of punishing Israeli military responses that
have devastated the isolated area in the past.
