Israel’s border security management has taken a hit

Vappala Balachandran

Former Special Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat

A1936 novel by Aldous Huxley, Eyeless in Gaza, described the dearth of spiritual values in society. Are the developments after the October 7 Hamas attack an indication of such a future? One thing is certain: Israel’s reputation as a role model of perfect security management has taken a beating.

On October 23, Lt Col (reservist) Peter Lerner, international spokesperson for Israel Defence Forces (IDF), admitted that the Hamas attack was due to ‘three circles of failure’. This was followed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s jab at his intelligence chiefs on X (formerly Twitter) on October 29, complaining that they never warned him about the possibility of a Hamas invasion. Ten hours later, Netanyahu apologised and admitted that he was ‘wrong’ and ‘should not have made’ that comment.

This indicates the extent of confusion in that country, which had witnessed civil unrest and polarisation for several months consequent to the introduction of ‘reforms’ to weaken the judiciary. Netanyahu’s remarks on X were criticised by his current and past allies, especially by former defence minister Benny Gantz, who is now in the ‘war cabinet’, and former Prime Minister Yair Lapid, now the opposition leader.

Lerner had said the ‘forewarning of the intelligence’ did not identify “the principal act or intentions of Hamas to attack Israel”. The second failure was the “actual line of defence, the physical barrier that was supposed to prevent infiltration”. It either collapsed or was destroyed in “at least 20 different locations”. The third failure was that the ground forces, meant to prevent ‘mass infiltration’, were not adequate.

This is bound to cause consternation among Israel’s admirers, including India, which had sought assistance from Tel Aviv after the 2016 cross-border terrorist attack at the Uri military base, resulting in the loss of 19 soldiers. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh had then visited Israel, where “he was shown different kinds of borders with their own uniqueness”, according to David Carmon, then Israeli Ambassador to India. Carmon added that India, which had 14 kinds of borders, could learn from Israel how to keep illicit crossings in check using ‘electro-optical sensors’ to collect intelligence via unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The entire border control, including towers, would be integrated with a field command and control room.

However, on October 11, it was reported that ‘over-reliance’ on the remote-controlled sophisticated border fencing had injected a sort of inertia into the human element, which was responsible for the disaster: “Israel long thought the high-tech security barrier dividing it from the Gaza Strip — bristling with razor wire, cameras and sensors, and fortified with a concrete base against tunnels and remote-controlled machine guns — was impenetrable.” As a result, guards felt that they could watch the border even remotely when they were not physically present. Another contributing factor was the diversion of forces to the West Bank.

It was also reported that many commanders were clustered in a single army base near the border, which prevented a coordinated response and passing of information to the rest of the personnel when the base was overrun by terrorists and the commanders were killed, some of whom were targeted while sleeping in their barracks.

As a result, the human element in the border system was not prepared to counter the attackers when a surge in Hamas activity was noticed by intelligence agencies on the morning of October 7. After launching thousands of rockets, Hamas launched a ‘blitzkrieg’ with sniper fire, used drones laden with explosives to destroy watchtowers and created openings at 30 places using bulldozers in the 20-ft double-fence barrier. Subsequently, “more than 1,500 terrorists quickly swarmed in through pickup trucks and on motorcycles, joined by others using gliders and speedboats at sea, to unleash gun attacks on nearby communities”.

Earlier, Hamas also practised deception to convey a message that they were not prepared to fight and were more interested in economic development of the region. This, in turn, resulted in a brazen overconfidence among IDF commanders which, as pointed out by me in Intelligence Over Centuries, had led to a disaster on October 6, 1973, when they were surprised by a sudden attack on Yom Kippur, the ‘Sabbath of Sabbaths’. According to American analyst Bruce Riedel: “Israeli intelligence failed to see war coming in 1973 because it was wedded to a concept (kontzeptziya in Hebrew) that the Arabs would not go to war because they would lose.”

Netanyahu wants to avoid a situation like the one in 2011, when he was compelled to release 1,027 Palestinian prisoners to get a lone Israeli soldier freed from Hamas custody. This was the ‘Gilad Shalit’ exchange. Shalit was captured on June 25, 2006, during a Hamas raid. Israeli forces undertook a massive military operation to locate Shalit on June 28, but failed. On November 26, a ceasefire was announced, ending five months of Israeli air raids on Gaza. From December 28, 2008, Israel undertook a 22-day military offensive in the Gaza Strip, killing at least 1,400 Palestinians. From June 27, 2010, nearly 20,000 Israeli citizens undertook a 12-day march across the country to PM Netanyahu’s house to get Shalit released; it happened only on October 11, 2011, when the PM agreed to release 1,027 Palestinian prisoners.

So far, the Gaza Health Ministry has reported more than 8,000 Palestinian deaths in Israeli bombing, with children accounting for around 40 per cent of these casualties. The UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, has warned of a great humanitarian crisis in Gaza. On October 28, relatives of Israeli hostages met Netanyahu to present an ‘everyone for everyone’ deal, which would involve the release of over 200 Israeli hostages in Gaza in exchange for Palestinians now held in Israeli prisons, estimated to be 6,630.

Sadly, their press conference on October 28 in Tel Aviv was soon followed by PM Netanyahu’s announcement of the commencement of the second stage of the war in Gaza. The developments are confusing. The key question is: how many more deaths will occur before a ceasefire is announced?

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