Jerusalem:

As Israel reeled from a lethal assault by Hamas terrorists, who broke by way of boundaries round Gaza and roamed at will, killing scores of civilians in Israeli cities, defence chiefs confronted rising questions over how the catastrophe may have occurred.

A day after the fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of the 1973 Yom Kippur conflict, when Israeli forces had been caught off guard by Syrian and Egyptian tank columns, the army appeared as soon as once more to have been stunned by a sudden assault.

“It seems fairly just like what occurred at the moment,” mentioned retired Basic Giora Eiland, a former head of Israel’s Nationwide Safety Council. “As we will see it, Israel was fully stunned, by a really effectively coordinated assault,” he instructed a briefing with reporters.

A military spokesman mentioned there could be discussions on the intelligence preparation “down the street” however for the second the main focus was on combating. “We’ll discuss that when we have to discuss it,” he instructed a briefing with reporters.

Israel has at all Times Regarded Hamas as its sworn enemy, however since inflicting heavy injury on Gaza in a 10-day conflict in 2021, Israel had adopted a mixture of carrot and stick to keep up stability within the blockaded enclave.

It provided financial incentives together with hundreds of labor permits permitting Gazans to work in Israel or the occupied West Financial Institution, whereas sustaining a good blockade and the fixed risk of air strikes.

For the previous 18 months as violence has raged throughout the West Financial institution, Gaza had been comparatively quiet, aside from sporadic cross border clashes primarily involving the smaller Islamic Jihad motion with Hamas remaining largely on the sidelines.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing authorities has at all times made nice play of its safety credentials and brought an uncompromising stance in the direction of the Palestinian teams together with Hamas, which has managed Gaza since 2007.

“Intelligence Failure”

Nonetheless when the time got here, Israel’s safety equipment appeared to interrupt down as a power of Hamas gunmen estimated within the lots of by the army broke by way of safety fences and scattered into cities.

“This was an intelligence failure; it couldn’t be in any other case,” mentioned Jonathan Panikoff, US authorities’s former deputy nationwide intelligence officer on the Center East, who’s now on the Atlantic Council assume tank.

“It was a safety failure, undermining what was regarded as an aggressive and profitable layered strategy towards Gaza by Israel,” he mentioned.

For Israelis, photographs of useless our bodies mendacity within the streets or teams of civilians being pushed or marched into captivity in Gaza got here as a profound shock.

Greater than 250 Israelis had been killed and over 1,500 wounded, an unprecedented variety of Israeli victims in a single day. The army suffered vital losses and Palestinian teams mentioned that they had captured dozens of troopers.

The gunmen additionally seized safety posts together with a police station within the southern city of Sderot and overran the Erez crossing, a excessive safety facility that channels individuals coming into and leaving Gaza by way of a good sequence of controls.

On Saturday, Hamas media circulated footage exhibiting fighters ranging by way of deserted workplaces and operating previous the excessive concrete partitions of the location.

“They have been planning this for a very long time,” mentioned former Israeli Nationwide Safety Advisor Eyal Hulata. “Clearly it is a very coordinated assault, and sadly they had been in a position to shock us tactically and trigger devastating injury.”

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