Shin Bet report shows the pitfalls of divide and rule in Gaza
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The Israel Security Agency, Shin Bet, issued a report on Wednesday on its performance in the run-up to the Hamas attack on Israel of 7 October 2023.
A short summary has been published in Hebrew. I put this through an online translator and the result is here. It is obviously flawed but provides the gist.
As was to be expected, the report is frank in identifying a number of failings that prevented Shin Bet from providing adequate warning.
1. Inadequate handling of intelligence information about the broad raid plan known as the "Jericho Wall", over the years in a way that did not turn the threat of the raid into a threat of attribution.
2. The lack of a clear division of responsibility with the IDF regarding warning of war, given the changing threat from a terrorist organization to a military organization.
3. Failure to adapt the concept of integrated counterterrorism to deal with terrorist threats to military threats and giving excessive weight to responses from the field of counterterrorism, responses that are not adapted to an enemy that behaves like an army.
4. During the night of October 6-7 - gaps in information handling and intelligence integration, work not according to the counter-terrorism doctrine (TOL), insufficient fusion with information from the IDF, lack of use of the warning model.
5. Gaps in the control mechanisms over intelligence work.
6. The assessment that Hamas is working to burn Judea and Samaria and has not moved to the stage of breaking out of the Gaza Strip.
Media attention on the report has focused less on such operational findings, than on implicit criticisms of Israeli government policy.
The main reasons for Hamas's power building that allowed it to launch an offensive:
A policy of silence [probably better translated as ‘policy of quiet’] that allowed Hamas to gain massive strength.
Injecting Qatari funds and transferring them to the military wing for reinforcement.
Continuous erosion of the deterrence of the State of Israel.
An attempt to deal with a terrorist organization based on intelligence and defense while avoiding offensive initiatives.
The cumulative weight of the violations on the Temple Mount, the treatment of prisoners, and the perception that Israeli society has been weakened due to the damage to social cohesion, all of these served as catalysts for the decision to launch the campaign.
The implication that Qatari funds had aided in the Hamas military buildup drew a swift response from the government in Doha, which stated:
all aid sent from Qatar to Gaza was transferred with the full knowledge, support, and supervision of the current and previous Israeli administrations and their security agencies – including the Shin Bet.
No aid has ever been delivered to Hamas’s political or military wing.
The report also drew a less open but equally scathing rebuke from the Israeli political leadership. According to the Times of Israel, a statement attributed to ‘circles’ close to Prime Minister Netanyahu charged that ‘The conclusions of the Shin Bet probe don’t match the gravity of the immense failure of the agency and its head.’
Netanyahu is reportedly looking for ways of removing Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar, who has told subordinates that he would step down once all hostages are returned and a state commission of inquiry has been established into October 7.
That would involve looking at potential failures by the government as well as Shin Bet and the IDF, which issued findings on its own performance last week.
As a foreign intelligence agency, Mossad is less directly implicated in the blame game than other agencies. So its worth noting that former Mossad officers have their own complaints about the Netanyahu government. The former head of the team tracking Hamas finances, Udi Levy, told the New York Times in December 2023 that Netanyahu was disinterested in the work of his unit which was shut down in 2018.
Israel’s former deputy national security adviser, Shlomo Brom, told the same paper that an empowered Hamas helped Mr. Netanyahu avoid negotiating over a Palestinian state. In other words, Netanyahu chose the zero-sum option, preferring the existential risk represented by Hamas to the pressure for a two-state settlement represented by the Palestinian Authority.
October 7 surely demonstrated the dangers of that gamble, yet it does not seems to have changed the policy. Indeed the Trump administration’s rejection of an Arab plan to return the Palestinian Authority to Gaza suggests that the US is more aligned than ever with Netanyahu’s approach.
Trump’s willingness to talk directly to Hamas in Doha is not necessarily in contradiction with this, if it is yet another short-term move in the same zero-sum game.