The Netanyahu government blundered into the Gaza war as a result of a failure to grasp Hamas’s intentions and capabilities, an excessive reliance on technology over human sources, an extremist political agenda, a heavy dose of hubris, and some ugly sexism.
One result is that even the unprecedented support of the Biden administration at the outset of the war is showing cracks as the extremist government in Jerusalem shows no signs of a plan to end the conflict or prepare for what comes next in a devastated Gaza.
Two prominent former leaders of the nation’s security establishment, Ami Ayalon and Ephriam Halevy, offered a sharp critique of the government’s handling of the crisis in a conversation sponsored by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The consequences of the country's blunder
Hamas was more closely watching what was going on in Israel than the IDF was watching Gaza, they said. The terror group saw a deeply divided nation in the midst of a constitutional crisis, and a government focused on annexing the West Bank while thinking Hamas didn’t want war.
Israel “depended too much on technology at the expense of human intelligence and paid a very heavy price,” said Halevy, the former director of the Mossad intelligence agency and former director of Israel’s National Security Council.
“Hamas saw what was going on and saw that this was its opportunity, and decided to take action, almost to perfection,” he said. It watched as Israel moved most of its troops from the South to focus on the West Bank and the northern border with Lebanon.
The IDF and Israel’s political leadership “shrugged off” warnings coming from the Border Defense Corps watching the Gaza border, not just because the government was confident Hamas didn’t want war, but because the warnings were coming from women.
“We had all the facts,” but ignored them, said Ayalon, the former head of the Shin Bet, Israel’s FBI, and former commander in chief of the Israel Navy. “The women who were responsible for observing knew everything, saw everything, described exactly the whole scenario, but we didn’t understand it” because it was against the mindset of the leadership.
Not only was their information rejected but “they were threatened with court martial” for challenging the top brass’s judgment, Halevy said. “One unit was transferred from the South to the West Bank because the extreme right-wing parties in the government wanted to annex the West Bank” and wanted the army’s resources sent there. “So, when Hamas attacked almost no one was there to stop them,” he said.
Except the women. More than 20 spotters were killed, abused, or taken hostage on October 7.
Netanyahu was preoccupied with the West Bank and “put our assets” there and in the North to watch Hezbollah, and “our front with Gaza was empty” the former security chiefs said.
“All Shin Bet directors thought that was a wrong policy” and told the prime minister that personally, Ayalon said. They were convinced Hamas would never be a partner for peace because it is “an ideology and they cannot give up their ideology.”
Netanyahu rejected their advice, with horrific consequences. It was his policy to keep Hamas and the Palestinian Authority divided so he could tell the world there was no one to talk to, Ayalon said. Israel’s government “had to make sure Hamas would continue to control Gaza, and the Palestinian Authority control the West Bank,” and they would fight each other, he said.
Hamas “became the only group in the eyes of the Palestinians to work against the Israeli occupation and for Palestinian freedom,” he added. The Palestinian Authority was perceived on the Arab street as “collaborators because they refused to use violence and were weak,” corrupt, and cooperating with Israel against violence.
NOW, WELL into the third month of combat, it is too early to tell how or when it will end. Israel still lacks a realistic plan for the day after.
Israel thought it could make peace with the moderate Arabs like the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and others and bypass the Palestinians, since the leaders of those countries had largely grown weary of Palestinian unwillingness to make the necessary compromises for a peace deal.
Hamas blew that theory up on October 7.
“The prime minister and the government have not made clear what our aim is at the end of the war. He said our goal is to destroy Hamas and we will chase them all over the world to kill them,” Halevy said. “The Israeli people deserve to know what the end game of this operation is. I suspect the prime minister himself doesn’t know. We need to restore the confidence of the Israeli public. That is not happening.”
Ayalon added, “You cannot send youngsters to war without defining the end goal; victory is not measured in military terms.” What do you want after the shooting stops?
Both intelligence chiefs support the two-state solution, something Netanyahu and his government adamantly oppose. “It is realistic and the global players (America, Russia, China, Europe) all agree and understand this,” Ayalon said. It is the only way for Israel to be safer and a Jewish democratic state.”
President Joe Biden agrees. The Israeli government “does not want a two-state solution” and its “indiscriminate” bombing of Gaza and high civilian casualty toll are among the reasons Israel is “starting to lose” the support of international public opinion, he said at a White House Hanukkah celebration this week.
He called on the prime minister to “strengthen and change” his current governing coalition in the hope it would make Netanyahu more flexible. But that won’t make any difference. The problem starts at the top.
You don’t have to be the director of the Mossad, the head of the Shin Bet, or the president of the United States to know Bibi is the problem, not the solution.
The writer is a Washington-based journalist, consultant, lobbyist, and former American Israel Public Affairs Committee legislative director.