An army spokesman said there would be discussions on the intelligence preparation “down the road” but for the moment the focus was on fighting. “We’ll talk about that when we need to talk about it,” he said.
For the past 18 months as violence has raged across the West Bank, Gaza had been relatively quiet, apart from sporadic cross border clashes mainly involving the smaller Islamic Jihad movement, with Hamas remaining largely on the sidelines.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government has always made great play of its security credentials and taken an uncompromising stance towards the Palestinian militant factions including Hamas, which has controlled Gaza since 2007.
However when the time came, Israel’s security apparatus appeared to break down as a force of Hamas gunmen estimated in the hundreds by the military broke through security fences and scattered into towns.
“This was an intelligence failure; it could not be otherwise,” former US intelligence officer on the Middle East Jonathan Panikoff said.
“It was a security failure, undermining what was thought to be an aggressive and successful layered approach toward Gaza by Israel.”
For Israelis, images of dead bodies lying in the streets or groups of civilians being driven or marched into captivity in Gaza came as a profound shock.
More than 300 Israelis were killed and almost 2000 wounded, an unprecedented number of Israeli victims in a single day. The military suffered significant losses and Palestinian militant groups said they had captured dozens of soldiers.
The gunmen also seized security posts including a police station in the southern town of Sderot and overran the Erez crossing, a high security facility that channels people entering and leaving Gaza through a tight series of controls.
On Saturday, Hamas media circulated footage showing fighters ranging through abandoned offices and running past the high concrete walls of the site.
“They’ve been planning this for a long time,” former Israeli national security adviser Eyal Hulata said.
“Obviously this is a very co-ordinated attack and unfortunately they were able to surprise us tactically and cause devastating damage.”
Reuters