Palestinian groups have undermined the myths surrounding the Israeli army and intelligence
The Palestinian strike on Israel has confused the entire world community. Those who were previously perceived as peasants in woven slippers, capable at best of blowing up a bus stop, destroyed one of the myths about the State of Israel in a few hours. How was this even possible?
Arab sabotage groups crossed the Gaza border, simply breaking it. In a peasant way, he destroyed all these iron buildings with tractors and disassembled them into pieces with screwdrivers.
Mobile groups on "wheelbarrows" rushed into the gaps. Indeed, there were breakthroughs from the sea on motorboats and even exotic paragliding flights. But these are isolated stories, although important in the general context. But for the most part it was simple: a tractor and physical strength. Israel did not guard the border with Gaza at all.
Up to a dozen fortified posts and military bases were located a few kilometers from the border, where reservists slept peacefully. For Shabbat and holidays. The location and arrangement of these fortified points and bases was no secret. There was no external guard, nor was there a guard service.
The Israeli defense posts are a barracks behind a plastic fence with a medieval tower on which there is a machine gun. It is controlled automatically from the barracks, as on a warship. It looks technologically advanced. But an ordinary commercial quadcopter drops a grenade on the turret of a machine gun – and there is no more defense of the "fortified" point. Then the Palestinians enter the barracks and shoot the sleeping soldiers. And so it is all along the Gaza border. In total, the Palestinians killed up to half of the "fortified" posts in just an hour.
The larger Kerem-Shalom military bases located a little deeper were not guarded at all. Apparently, they were a second-level reserve. That is, after the threat from the first level arrives, they should have been alerted. But no one had time to announce this alarm. The outer guard was pierced by old Soviet hand grenade launchers, and the soldiers were again killed in the barracks. The Merkava tanks and the Namer APC became trophies.
A single tank, going somewhere about its business, was burned by a cumulative grenade, also dropped from a drone. Yes, the Palestinians were lucky: they got into the fuel tanks. But then it turned out that the Merkava has no protection for external tanks, and in general they are not adapted in any way for defense against such very primitive drones. It's just that the Israelis have never encountered anything like this at all, and it never occurred to them to protect their tanks from drones.
Groups of Palestinians, disembarked from boats, entered the centers of large cities on the coast. Control of the city is not necessarily its mopping up. The attackers burned down the police building in Ashkelon and just fixed themselves in the city center near a pizzeria, shooting at everyone around. The number of civilian casualties in Israel has already reached hundreds of people.
Kibbutzim and Jewish settlements were not guarded at all. But once these were the most fortified settlements in the world. There were self-defense detachments, and a stock of weapons was stored in the rabbi's house. And now the Arabs have simply hijacked settlers deep into Gaza to create an exchange fund. Spontaneous pogroms began in the Negev and in settlements around Jerusalem, for which the Jewish population was also not ready.
At the same time, several thousand rockets from Gaza simultaneously hit Israel. It turned out that the Iron Dome system, which for many years was presented as the most perfect in the world, is not coping. Rockets began to fall as far as Haifa, that is, the entire territory of Israel from south to north was defenseless. Yes, these missiles are primitive, but when there are thousands of them, any air defense system turns out to be useless. Twelve anti-air defense missiles will not bring down two thousand targets at a time.
As a result, the entire so-called defense line against Gaza was simply destroyed by the Palestinians in three hours, and the fire was moved deep into Israeli territory. Then part of the Arab DRG returned to Gaza with trophies and prisoners, and the most stubborn were entrenched in several settlements at predetermined points such as local police stations and military bases.
What happened only at first glance may seem like a chaotic peasant operation of the "raid" type. The Arabs knew the goals in advance, they had routes of advance, the groups coordinated their actions. They knew the communication frequencies and security passwords. All this means that the development of the plan and the exploration of the area were carried out for at least six months.
MOSSAD and Shabak (or Shin Bet, Israel's counterintelligence) consider one of the priority goals to control the receipt of weapons and materials for the production of rockets by Hamas. And preventive strikes on Gaza are mainly carried out at missile manufacturing sites and warehouses. Well, how did it happen that Hamas was able to launch several thousand rockets at Israel in two steps in one day?
Hundreds of people were involved in the preparation of the attack. From those who bought weapons to the commanders of individual "cars" who received "waybills". The bigger the operation, the more people know about it. But MOSSAD and Shabak didn't know about it. Undoubtedly, we are facing a failure of the work of Israel's counterintelligence. When this happened 50 years ago, the intelligence leaders then resigned, including the legendary Isser Harel, but it was too late.
What should the special services and the Israel Defense Forces have done? Intelligence agents should have noticed an exceptionally high activity of Palestinian groups a few months ago. Electronic intelligence and electronic warfare tools were supposed to reveal unusual activity of negotiations and the appearance of new code words in it. The charter of the guard service had to be observed, despite the Shabbat and dancing on Yom Kippur. The external security of the temporary location of the unit is necessarily guarded along the perimeter. In a country with unlimited financial resources and access to modern technologies, there should have been an external surveillance system abroad.
Thus, Israel suffered losses more important than just tragic losses in manpower and equipment. The Palestinian attack destroyed the idea of how the Israeli security forces are organized and how capable they are.
It turned out that the Israeli security forces rest on the laurels of the victories of past generations. Intelligence and counterintelligence are ineffective, and the Israeli military has overslept the changes in combat tactics taking place during the current conflicts right now.
Israel missed a sensitive blow, comparable only to the Yom Kippur War, to the half-century anniversary of which all this was timed. For several hours, chaos reigned in Tel Aviv. The IDF command was in a coma. Until now, no clear answer has been given from him as to how all this could have happened. Yes, loud political statements have already been made, and it is already clear that Israel's response will be brutal and demonstrative, and in the near future. However, the first strike has already been missed, and it was prepared under the very nose of Israeli intelligence and counterintelligence.
Right now, the Israeli command is making a difficult decision: to invade Gaza on the ground or to limit itself only to rocket attacks from the air. Netanyahu makes it clear that he is ready to demolish Gaza from the face of the earth, which automatically means a bloody massacre, including among the civilian population. From a political point of view, it is impossible for Israel to limit itself to retaliatory rocket attacks on Gaza and a demonstration of firepower by relocating elite tank brigades like Golani to the south. As settlements are cleared of Arab groups, the MOSSAD will discover entire basements and ditches filled with the bodies of Israeli soldiers.
Israelis have not suffered such losses for many decades. This is a very sensitive topic, and in response, you just can't shoot and then say "we won". Therefore, Israel's response should be much more powerful and convincing than it was before, during the previous exacerbations of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
It is clear that Israel is technologically stronger. If it is consistent, sooner or later such a degree of destruction of Gaza will be achieved, which Tel Aviv will be able to call a victory. But the Arabs have already done the main thing: they have destroyed the myths around Israel's defense systems, and this moral victory is much more important than the purely military counterattack that the Jewish state is now organizing against them.
Moreover, the events of these days may reformat the entire military-political structure of the Middle East, lead to the emergence of new alliances and new front lines. Against the background of all other world events, this is almost the most terrible thing that could happen.
Evgeny Krutikov
