to cheat Israel And by making him believe that it wanted to avoid war, the Islamist group Hamas bypassed the intelligence apparatus and thoroughly prepared a sophisticated operation that led to them launching land, sea and air strikes on Saturday, delivering a blow that represented history’s greatest military failure. the history of the Jewish state.

In a state with the strongest military in the Middle East and the most advanced surveillance technologies in the world, seeing Palestinian militiamen kill and capture soldiers, tear down the separation barrier or bypass security sensors without resistance was a nightmare come true. to serious mistakes by the intelligence apparatus or a lack of military personnel.

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Added to this was the rapid takeover by about a thousand militiamen, who even sneaked into Israel by paraglider and managed to pass through some 22 gaps in the separation fence where they also entered by trucks, “something beyond what was conceivable, not even in the film,” Mukhaimar Abu Saada, analyst and professor of political science at Al Azhar University in Gaza, told EFE.

The Islamic group prepared “in complete secrecy” for this operation “for more than a year,” created “a post that reconstructed an Israeli settlement where they could train” and above all “managed to deceive the Israelis by passing on the message that he was not interested in a conflict” and that he wanted peace, said Mukhaimar Abu Saada.

Hamas distanced itself from the fighting as Islamic Jihad fought alone during the last two escalations with Israel in August 2022 and May 2023, planning this unprecedented offensive in the bedroom, where part of the group’s leadership and many militia members did not knew about. This Saturday, while Israel was still sleeping in the middle of the Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest came early.

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In a short time, the militiamen attacked and captured key positions such as the Erez border crossing, which also houses a military base where they killed and captured soldiers and intelligence members. In turn, they broke into the main Israeli army base in the Gaza Strip, located on the Reim collective farm.

There was the camera and management center for the complex technological system of sensors and surveillance that surrounds Gaza. “They attacked him with drones and then went in and killed the soldiers under his charge,” meaning he was deactivated, Eran Lerman, a security analyst and former senior Israeli military intelligence official, told EFE.

After this, the invasion of Palestinian militiamen – accompanied by the firing of rockets from Gaza, even towards Jerusalem or Tel Aviv – proceeded very quickly. They advanced into nearby Israeli communities and quickly controlled about 600 square kilometers of Israeli territory, about 2% of the country’s area.

This in one of the most guarded areas in the world, where Israel has invested many resources since 2007, when Hamas took power, to apply a land, sea and air blockade structure on Gaza, and which, according to human rights organizations “an “open-air prison” in a measure of “collective punishment”.

Leaving aside the failures of the intelligence apparatus and the Israeli government, “where there was the false perception that Hamas was seeking coexistence to serve as a cover for the plan of its military wing,” Lerman emphasizes that “there were failures in the deployment” of the military armed forces, reduced and who did not know how to respond to the surprise offensive.

Harel Manshari, a former member of the Shin Bet internal intelligence service, assures that Israeli forces in the area were “minimally depleted” and that there were few soldiers after many battalions were transferred to the West Bank, another reason that weakened power . response by the army and left Israelis in the surrounding communities almost completely unprotected.

The result of this is that more than a hundred people have been kidnapped by the militias held captive in Gaza and a trail of at least 900 dead, the highest number of casualties for Israel in just over one day in its entire history, despite having seen many conflicts .

“Israel’s collapse, which will take a long time to restore its image as a military power, is a symbolic victory for Hamas,” which until now has been considered “a second-rate threat” to Israeli authorities, Abu Saada notes.

“Despite the fact that there is war and destruction” and that there are more than 600 deaths in Gaza as a result of Israeli bombings, this is “a clear triumph” for Hamas, which scores points on the Palestinian political stage and as a banner of resistance against Israel in the Arab world, Abu Saada said.