Israel’s defense failures may change strategy toward Hamas and Gaza.

 The broad attack by Palestinian militants, which Hamas viewed as mostly successful, revealed some significant failures.

Hamas’s attack on Saturday took Israeli intelligence officials by surprise, particularly the methods the militants used to enter and leave Israel, according to a senior defense official familiar with the information collected about the group.

The broad attack, mostly successful from Hamas’s point of view, revealed some significant failures by the Israeli defense establishment. It also may change Israel’s overall strategic approach to Hamas and the Gaza Strip, said the official, who asked not to identified when discussing security matters.

And that could have a far-reaching effect on the entire Middle East.

Until now, Israel has contained Hamas and Gaza with a strategy that hinged on an intelligence network that would warn against Hamas’s moves, and on the power of the Israeli army to repel a ground invasion by Hamas. In the Hamas attack on Saturday, these two safeguards failed.

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Israel is traditionally perceived as the strongest intelligence power in the region, with extensive coverage of the Gaza Strip. And in recent months, Israeli intelligence did repeatedly warn that a military conflict could flare up because Iran and affiliated militias have perceived Israel as weakened by the nation’s profound divisions over the judicial overhaul being pursued by the ultra-right governing coalition of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to four senior defense officials.

Still, while Israeli intelligence collected some indications that Hamas was planning a major operation, they were far from forming a clear picture, one of the officials added.

Israel, the official said, did not pick up on the elaborate preparations that were likely needed for the 250 Hamas militants tasked to lead the assault, and target military bases, cities and kibbutzes.

American officials, too, said that both Israel and the United States had known a Hamas attack at some point was possible, or even likely. But they said there was no specific tactical warning of the strikes on Saturday, no sign that would have allowed Israel to take specific measures.

Many questioned why Israel and the United States were blindsided. Mick Mulroy, a former C.I.A. officer and senior Pentagon official, said the complexity of the attack by Hamas indicates it would have required much preparation.

“There were likely indications of the buildup of munitions and the preparation of the assault force, and there was cyber activity in Israel prior to the assault,” Mr. Mulroy said.

Since the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Hamas has transformed from a militant organization to the leader of a territory with many characteristics of a state. The group has started rounds of fighting with Israel every few years, which usually have not lasted more than a week. These attacks include firing rockets on Israeli cities and trying to kidnap or kill Israelis. But nothing has been as extensive as the Saturday attack.

For its part, Israel in past years has responded with its enormous firepower, usually from aircraft, against targets in Gaza and has tried to assassinate the organization’s senior officials. But it has launched very limited ground maneuvers.

The Israeli strategy has been to contain the fighting against militants in the Gaza Strip, as long as Israel’s fatalities were not too high, which might oblige it to engage in an all-out ground invasion.

Four successive Israeli prime ministers decided that the price of invading and occupying the Gaza Strip to crush Hamas rule would be too high, in the lives of Israeli soldiers and Palestinians, and that the toll of governing millions of residents there would be too costly.

Israel continued to act this way even though it knew that both Hamas and Palestinian Jihad have received funding, training, weapons and advanced combat and intelligence gear from Iran, three officials said, and that the militant groups were becoming stronger.

The surprise attack on Israel came almost 50 years to the day to the start of the Yom Kippur War, which began with a surprise attack by Syrian tank columns and Egyptian brigades. That made it even more surprising that Israel was not more on guard.

The defense official said this was likely not a coincidence but a careful choice by Hamas to pick a date perceived as a national trauma. The intelligence surprise, as well as Hamas’s ability to cross the border and cause heavy losses, is strikingly reminiscent of the 1973 war.

Israel has invested enormous resources in getting intelligence about Hamas, gathering significant information about most of its initiatives and targeting many of its leaders.

But Saturday was not the first time that Hamas has managed to surprise Israeli intelligence. In June 2006 when a Hamas squad entered Israel, attacked a group of soldiers, killed two and kidnapped the soldier Gilad Shalit, Israeli intelligence did not know about the attack, or where Shalit was being held for more than five years. Israel eventually paid the highest price it had ever paid to secure a POW.

That deal brought intense controversy within Israel, which could flare again with reports that dozens of Israeli soldiers and civilians had been captured.

The Israeli Defense Forces, even though they were aware of the possibility of a ground invasion by Hamas to seize military bases and civilians along the border, were slow to reach the scenes of violence. Many residents were forced to defend themselves.

The videos Hamas took during the operation and which were immediately distributed on social media presented the Israeli defense establishment as weak, surprised and humiliated.

Israel is now likely to respond with force, and possibly with a ground invasion of Gaza, in the belief that Hamas did not leave it any choice, a senior defense official said.

One key question, which will determine how the crisis unfolds, is whether Hezbollah, the Lebanese military group, stays on the sidelines or if it activates its fighters to attack Israel. If Hezbollah becomes directly involved the fighting it is likely to become some of the most intense in the region in years.

Hundreds Dead After Hamas Attack and Israel's Retaliation

‘We are at war,’ Netanyahu says after Hamas attacks Israel.

Israel battled on Saturday to repel one of the broadest invasions of its territory in 50 years after Palestinian militants from Gaza launched an early-morning assault on southern Israel, infiltrating 22 Israeli towns and army bases, kidnapping Israeli civilians and soldiers and firing thousands of rockets toward cities as far away as Jerusalem.

By early evening, the Israeli military said fighting continued in at least five places in southern Israel; multiple Israelis had been abducted and taken to Gaza, including an elderly grandmother; and at least 250 Israelis had been reported dead by officials and more than 1,400 wounded. Israel retaliated with huge strikes on Gazan cities, and the Gaza Health Ministry said at least 234 Palestinians had been killed in either gun battles or airstrikes.

In an assault without recent precedent in its complexity and scale, the militants crossed into Israel by land, sea and air, according to the Israeli military, leading to some of the first pitched battles between Israeli and Arab forces on Israeli soil in decades.

Unverified video footage, circulated by Hamas, the Iran-backed militant group that controls the Gaza Strip, appeared to show some Palestinian gunmen arriving in Israel in a sort of makeshift hang glider.

 

Residents of Israeli border towns told broadcasters that gunmen were moving door to door, looking for civilians. Unverified footage appeared to show Palestinian fighters transporting captured Israeli civilians and bodies through the strip — to be bargained, analysts said, for Palestinian prisoners.

In Sderot, a southern city, photographs showed dead bodies strewn on the streets. The militants also targeted an all-night dance festival in the desert, prompting hundreds of young Israelis to sprint for safety.

“We are at war and we will win it,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said in a televised statement, announcing a call-up of hundreds of thousands of Israeli military reservists.

Muhammad Deif, the leader of Hamas’s military wing, said in a recorded message that the group had decided to launch an “operation” so that “the enemy will understand that the time of their rampaging without accountability has ended.” He cited Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, which it captured during the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, recent Israeli police raids on the Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem and the detention of thousands of Palestinian militants in Israeli jails.

The potential role of Iran in the operation drew scrutiny in Israel as the violence spread to other parts of the region. In addition to Hamas, Tehran backs another Palestinian militant group, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, providing all of them with weaponry and intelligence.

Hamas leaders called for Arabs living in Israel and the West Bank to seize the momentum created by the assault and carry out their own attacks on Israelis. Three Palestinians died in clashes on Saturday with Israeli security forces in the West Bank, according to Palestinian officials.

 

United Nations peacekeepers said they were bolstering their activity on Israel’s border with southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah holds sway, particularly after a skirmish with Israeli troops along the border on Saturday.

The timing of the assault was striking, hitting Israel at one of the most difficult moments in its history. It followed months of profound anxiety about the cohesion of Israeli society and the readiness of its military, a crisis set off by the far-right government’s efforts to reduce the power of the judiciary.

And the violence came 50 years and a day after the Yom Kippur War of 1973, when Israel was also surprised by an Arab attack on multiple fronts, leading to huge Israeli losses and soul-searching about the state of the country.

 

The shock of the attack appeared to rekindle a sense of unity among Israelis, as government critics who had resigned from reserve duty in protest of the judicial plan announced they would return to service in Israel’s hour of need. Yair Lapid, the centrist leader of the opposition, announced he was prepared to join a government of national unity — a move that would potentially postpone any further judicial changes and allow Mr. Netanyahu to end his alliance with the far right.

The attack also coincided with Israel’s escalating efforts to seal a landmark peace deal with Saudi Arabia, which has never recognized the Jewish state out of solidarity with the Palestinians, but had seemed ready to change its policy. It was not immediately clear how the normalization effort would be affected. The Saudi government issued a statement of concern about the situation and called for a cessation of hostilities.

Mr. Netanyahu spoke with President Biden by phone on Saturday afternoon, his office said, telling Mr. Biden that “a forceful and continued battle will be required, in which Israel will triumph.” In his own statement, Mr. Biden said that “the United States unequivocally condemns this appalling assault against Israel” and that “Israel has a right to defend itself and its people.”

 

The ease with which Palestinian fighters entered Israel prompted recriminations and anger among Israelis. There were questions about the quality of Israeli intelligence gathering, normally a point of Israeli pride, and suggestions that the Israeli military — which has focused its recent activity on quelling an insurgency in the West Bank — had misdirected its energies.

Fighting often flares between Israel and Hamas, which refuses to recognize Israel’s existence and regularly organizes attacks on Israelis.

 

After Hamas — listed as a terrorist group by the United States — seized control of Gaza in 2007 from more moderate Palestinian factions, Israel and Egypt placed the enclave under a blockade, deepening the dire humanitarian situation there. Unemployment is close to 50 percent in the Gaza Strip, and only 10 percent of Gazans have direct access to clean water, according to UNICEF.

Hamas militants have occasionally broken out of Gaza, which is surrounded by both walls and fences, as well as subterranean fortifications to prevent tunneling into Israel. But they have never penetrated so deep into Israeli territory, for so long or in so many places. Militants are believed to have captured the remains of two Israeli soldiers during the 2014 war with Israel and held an Israeli soldier hostage for five years until 2011, when he was released in a prisoner swap.

 

The scale of the latest Palestinian attack shocked Israelis, many of whom were observing the Jewish Sabbath. Diplomats and analysts, too, were caught off guard. They had expected the Gaza front to remain quiet for the foreseeable future, after international mediators appeared to have persuaded Hamas to end a recent weekslong series of riots and protests on the border with Israel.

 

In recent months, Israel had been allowing up to 18,000 workers to cross daily from Gaza into Israel, helping Gaza’s economy and adding to a general sense that calm would prevail.

Hamas’s rocket arsenal was considered to be its primary weapon because the Israeli Army had secured the land border with walls and other fortifications, making a ground invasion difficult.

But early Saturday morning, Palestinian militants appeared to circumvent the border with relative ease, swiftly forcing their way through gaps in the fortifications and fanning out into several towns, army bases and the city of Sderot.

An Israeli soldier in Sderot standing by the bodies of people killed by Palestinian militants who entered from the Gaza Strip.Credit...Tsafrir Abayov/Associated Press

The head of a local council in southern Israel, Ofir Libstein, was killed in a subsequent gunfight with militants, the council announced.

In desperate interviews with Israeli broadcasters, residents of the Israeli border towns said the gunmen were walking through their houses, forcing them to barricade themselves in their bomb shelters — a common feature of Israeli homes.

 

The Israeli response came first by land, in the towns invaded by militants, and then by air, as its air force struck locations across the Gaza Strip.

Gazan civilians had first reacted with jubilation to the attacks on Israel, as crowds greeted returning militants like heroes, video showed.

The streets of Gaza City, the enclave’s largest urban area, emptied out as residents gathered at schools to take shelter. Lines also formed at supermarkets, as people stocked up on supplies. And Gazans living close to the Israeli border fled to areas further inside the enclave, fearing an Israeli ground invasion.

 

“We can’t take it anymore,” said Jamila Al-Zanin, 39, a mother of three, who was one of those who fled with their families away from the border. “The situation is really, really bad.”

The Israeli government said Saturday evening that it was cutting off its electricity supply for Gaza, which gets two-thirds of its power from Israel.

Analysts expected the Gaza war could set off a surge in violence in the West Bank, which has already experienced its bloodiest year since the second intifada, a Palestinian uprising that left 1,000 Israelis and around 3,000 Palestinians dead by the time it ended in 2005.

More than 200 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank so far this year, often during gun battles between militants and the Israeli Army — a two-decade high. At least 36 Israelis had been killed this year before Saturday’s attack — also a two-decade high.

The Hamas assault was condemned by most Western countries, but praised by Israel’s enemies — including Hezbollah and Iran, which saw it as a sign of Israeli weakness.

The spokesman for Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Nasser Kanani, said that “today’s operation opened a new chapter in the field of resistance and armed operations against the occupiers in the occupied territories.”.

Israel’s Military Says Hamas Has Taken Hostages

 The issue of Israelis in captivity is a deeply emotional and explosive one in Israel, with the government having paid a high price in the past for the return of its citizens.

Hamas militants have taken Israeli soldiers and civilians as hostages, the Israeli military said on Saturday.

The comments from Israel’s top military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, confirmed some of Israelis’ worst fears since the assault began. Residents of Israeli border towns had told broadcasters that gunmen were moving door to door, looking for civilians and both Hamas and Islamic Jihad, another small militant faction in Gaza, had issued statements claiming to have Israeli captives.

In addition to Admiral Hagari’s remarks, video verified by The Times appears to show several Israelis being taken hostage by Hamas militants in the Be’eri kibbutz, just under three miles southeast from the border with Gaza in southern Israel. In the footage, at least five people with their hands behind their backs are being led on a road by armed men on foot and on motorcycles.

Where the group ended up is unclear, but reports from Israeli news outlets suggested that up to 50 hostages were being held in a dining hall in Be’eri. Those details have not been confirmed by The Times, although Admiral Hagari did say Be’eri was one of two locations inside Israel with ongoing hostage situations.

Video posted to the messaging app Telegram earlier Saturday and verified by The Times showed armed militants crouching and taking up positions outside buildings in Be’eri. Some people have also posted appeals on social media asking for help locating friends and relatives from Be’eri and the surrounding areas who have not been heard from since Saturday morning local time.

Be'eri is one of several towns in the area in which gunfire has been reported since Saturday’s incursion began, and Admiral Hagari said fighting was still underway there as of early evening.

At the same time, a senior U.N. official and a diplomat familiar with the matter said the United Nations had confirmed the presence of Israeli civilian and military hostages inside the Gaza Strip. Abu Obeida, a spokesman for Hamas’s armed wing, claimed in a statement on the Telegram messaging app that the militant group had hidden “dozens of hostages” in “safe places and the tunnels of the resistance.”

The issue of Israelis in captivity is a deeply emotional and explosive one in Israel, with the government having paid a high price in the past for the return of its citizens or of the remains of soldiers in lopsided prisoner exchange deals.

In 2006, Gaza militants seized an Israeli hostage — the soldier Gilad Shalit — from the Israeli side of the border fence. Hamas, the Islamic militant group, held Mr. Shalit for five years until he was exchanged for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons, many of them convicted of deadly terrorist attacks against Israelis. The group has also been holding the remains of two Israeli soldiers killed in the 2014 war. Two Israeli citizens who had crossed by foot into Gaza are presumed to be alive.

Israel’s monthlong war against Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militant organization, in the summer of 2006 also began with a cross-border raid by Hezbollah and the abduction of two Israeli soldiers. The remains of the two soldiers were returned to Israel in 2008 as part of a prisoner exchange. Israel handed over five Lebanese prisoners, including Samir Kuntar, who had been held for nearly three decades after being convicted in connection with a deadly and notorious attack, in exchange for the soldiers’ bodies.

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