“We despised them,” Zvi Zamir once said. He was head of Israel’s foreign intelligence service Mossad from 1968 to 1974 and explained the thinking that contributed to the major intelligence failure that enabled the surprise attack that triggered the war between Arab states and Israel in October 1973.
At that time, Zamir was not the only one who “despised” Arabs. Major General Eli Zeira, head of Israel’s Military Intelligence (AMAN) during the 1973 war, also reportedly had “complete contempt for the fighting qualities of the Arab armies.”
This “contempt” and “contempt” and the resulting intelligence failures cost Israel 2,656 dead, more than 7,250 wounded, and ultimately the Sinai Peninsula. They also cost Zeira his job.
History doesn’t always repeat itself. But in this case it was – both the tragedy and the farce that led to it.
“We have failed in our most important mission, and as head of military intelligence, I bear full responsibility for the failure,” Zeira’s successor, Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva, said on April 22, some 50 years after the October War, as he announced his resignation.
AMAN’s spy chief – who has previously advocated for stabilizing the Palestinian authorities, improving Gaza’s economic prospects and intensifying surgical strikes against Palestinian resistance – admitted he was undermining the capabilities of the Qassam Brigades (QB), the armed wing of the Gaza Strip Hamas, had underestimated.
Although Haliva had detailed information about the QB’s battle plans, operational preparations, and early warning signals, on the night of October 6, he ordered his subordinates to “wait for morning.”
What was missed?
On October 7, Hamas’s armed wing conducted an unprecedented combined-arms offensive maneuver in multiple areas, followed by a series of atrocities in the “Gaza Envelope,” the Israeli areas near the Gaza border.
QB and his allies conducted an exemplary breach operation and stormed Israel’s Iron Wall. The organization managed to suppress and overwhelm Israeli air defenses with unguided rocket artillery. At the same time, using a combination of armed commercial drones and sniper fire, QB has blinded Israeli surveillance and reconnaissance assets and obscured its fighters’ breakthrough points and advance routes. The QB was unable to secure his breakthrough points in the Israeli barrier. Therefore, other organizations and armed civilians followed the QB units into Israel, multiplying the size of the attacking force.
AMAN under Haliva had missed the early warning signs of this simultaneous, brigade-sized, five-domain attack conducted from land by a QB regimental-sized light and motorized infantry formation; from the sea by two platoon-sized Marine infantry forces; and from the air by a company-sized unit of paragliders. The attacks also included electromagnetic and intelligence/information operations. The scope of coordination, which spanned multiple platoon- and company-sized units, demonstrated a sophisticated level of operational capability in various areas of warfare. Such complexity of synchronization is laborious and requires extensive training in command, control, and communication within and between units. These preparations probably took more than two years.
Why was it missed?
To be fair, broken intelligence cycles—that is, the cycle of direction, collection, processing, analysis, dissemination, feedback, and decision—are more common than laypeople would believe.
Intelligence failures are rarely due to a lack of information. They don’t happen often in the collection and processing part of the cycle. For example, United States naval and air forces discovered, hit, and sank a Japanese submarine on the morning of December 7, 1941, 90 minutes before the Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii was bombed from the air.
Likewise, in October 1973, days before the surprise attack, Israeli intelligence received precise details of an impending Egyptian offensive from a high-ranking source. However, on October 6, Israel was still caught off guard.
This pattern of intelligence cycle breakdown was also evident during the September 11 attacks, when US security institutions failed to effectively disseminate and make decisions in the cycle despite detailed information about al-Qaeda’s intentions.
Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, US and UK intelligence agencies not only shared information with governments about impending Russian movement and mobilization in Belarus, but also publicly released it. Nevertheless, Ukrainian analysts and policymakers remained convinced that the Russian military buildup on the Belarusian border was merely a feint aimed at entrenching and pinning down Ukrainian forces in the north and center while assuming the main attack from there would go east and south. This miscalculation left Kyiv dangerously unprepared.
In Israel, the failures in the intelligence cycle have been clearly visible since the summer last year. In July, analysts from Unit 8200, Israel’s elite signals intelligence unit, identified and reported clear signs of an impending large-scale QB operation. The analysis found that QB had conducted extensive training exercises that matched exactly the tactics outlined in a 40-page battle plan that AMAN intercepted more than a year before the October attacks. Despite the clarity of these findings, the analysis and subsequent recommendations were dismissed as “imaginative” by senior officials within the military intelligence hierarchy.
Military and political implications
Intelligence failures often have serious consequences and require rigorous scrutiny of accountability measures. Politically, the Israeli Prime Minister holds supreme executive power and is responsible for all national security policy. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is frequently briefed by Haliva along with Yoav Gallant, the defense minister, and Herzi Halevi, the chief of the general staff. Haliva’s resignation serves as a stark reminder and suggests that Netanyahu should also assume responsibility for oversight and consider stepping down. However, such a prospect remains doubtful.
Israel’s political dynamics increasingly mirror those of Arab regimes, where authoritarian rulers rarely step down after catastrophic failures and instead cling tighter to power. In such contexts, impeachment, revolution, or “suicide” are far more common departures than resignations.
Militarily, Haliva’s resignation, as some have suggested, is unlikely to have any impact on the seemingly impending ground offensive on Rafah. Both the deployment of troops and the military’s statements signal that the start of this offensive is a matter of time. Apparently preparations for an offensive are underway. At least six mechanized infantry and regular armored brigades are operational in Rafah, supported by air, naval and artillery units.
AMAN has stated that QB has at least four battalion-sized formations in Rafah. This is said to be in addition to the remaining prisoners and Hamas leadership held in Gaza, as well as extensive tunnel networks near and under the Philadelphi Corridor, the border area between Gaza and Egypt.
If AMAN’s assessments prove inaccurate again, the consequences could be catastrophic for more than a million internally displaced Palestinians seeking refuge in Rafah, as well as for Israel and its leaders.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.