What October 7th Reveals About Israeli Intelligence

Rimal neighborhood in Gaza City after an Israeli airstrike on October 9, 2023. Photo by Wafa.

On October 7, 2023 at 6:30 A.M. local time, Hamas militants fired 2,200 rockets toward southern and central Israel. Subsequently, the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) launched retaliatory strikes in Gaza, prompting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netenyahu to declare Israel at war. The attack came as a surprise to Israel and the international community at large. Many Western allies were perplexed as to how Hamas was able to pull off such a large-scale, multi-front, “surprise” attack given Israel’s robust military and intelligence capabilities.

How did intelligence fail? One word: asymmetry. For decades, Israel has invested billions in establishing itself as the most technologically advanced military force in the Middle East. Yet despite these investments in high-tech military and intelligence capabilities, Hamas circumvented Israeli surveillance and defenses by employing asymmetric military and intelligence tactics. Leading up to the October 7th attack, Hamas used cheap surveillance drones to map out Israeli military installations, consulted Gazan day laborers to elicit additional information, and monitored Israeli real estate websites to gain information about the layout of houses. Therefore, the Israeli-Hamas War emphasizes a strategic lesson from October 7th: high-tech defenses do not make a state more secure if it faces an enemy deploying asymmetric capabilities. 

Both Israel’s overconfidence in its intelligence capabilities and a concomitant underestimation of Hamas’ intelligence and military operational capabilities contributed to the failure to anticipate the October 7th attack. Israel relied on its superior military capabilities to serve as a blanket of security for their citizens in Gaza. All the while, Hamas was able to employ a panoply of asymmetric capabilities, such as guerilla-warfare tactics, that negated Israeli defenses, despite their superiority across all domains of warfighting. 

In 2011, Israel developed the Iron Dome missile defense system, a multi-layer rocket defense system that uses batteries to detect and intercept rockets. The IDF has been relying on the Iron Dome to defend themselves against Hamas attacks, claiming that it successfully intercepted 97% of all Hamas rockets during a weekend surge of fighting in Gaza in 2022. However, Hamas employed drones to destroy Israel’s surveillance and communication towers alongside Gaza’s borders and remote-controlled machine guns on border fortifications, in order to overcome the complex defense infrastructure.

Israel’s faith in their advanced technologies, such as the Iron Dome System, engendered a naïve optimism that this blanket of security was sustainable. The Israeli government and Western politicians alike have applauded the success of the Iron Dome since its inception. According to Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, an Israeli defense firm that helped create the defense system, the Iron Dome has achieved an overall success rate of around 90%. Israel also relies heavily on their signal intelligence  (SIGINT) collections from their cell towers. The morning of October 7th, Hamas launched coordinated attacks on at least four of these communication towers, capitalizing upon Israeli reliance on SIGINT, easily identifying what cell towers to attack. Hamas fired approximately 3,000 rockets into Israel within 30 minutes, overwhelming the Iron Dome System. Because Hamas had already intercepted communication towers, Israeli intelligence was not able to detect threats of an attack prior. In fact, Israeli intelligence hadn’t noticed or acknowledged that there were disruptions to their communications, suggesting a tendency to surrender to high-tech capabilities. Israel failed to employ effective human intelligence to consistently monitor their advanced border surveillance operations.

Hamas deployed other asymmetric capabilities that were both misunderstood and miscalculated by Israel. In contrast to Israel, Hamas employed basic technological means of communication and organization. They use mostly guerilla-warfare tactics, including rockets, snipers, improvised explosive devices, and, most importantly, underground tunnels. These tunnels are a 300-mile-long network controlled by Hamas not just for carrying out attacks, but also for the transportation of goods and people through Gaza. In addition to the Iron Dome, Israel has put billions of shekels preventing tracks and breaches from both below and aboveground by  constructing technologically-advanced (“smart”) barriers that employ a three layer defense: one below sea level, one constructed of armored stone, and to top it off, a layer of barbed wire. Each of these three layers are supported by visual, electronic, and intelligence equipment, and they employ artificial intelligence through upscaling their facial recognition technology. Despite these defenses, the tunnels remain Israel’s greatest security challenge, and a space of effective resistance for Hamas and Palestinians in Gaza as a whole.

The IDF has been trying to detect Hamas’ presence underground by employing their most advanced technology, including the use of artificial intelligence. Exodigo, an Israeli start-up, attempts to use advanced empowered sensory technology to create a 3D map of the underground to improve overall situational awareness when operating in a subterranean domain. Military geologists in Israel have attempted, and succeeded in a few instances, to map the whereabouts of these tunnels, but they still largely remain a mystery. Because these underground tunnels are notoriously difficult to detect, they constitute an invisible and silent threat, and they were instrumental in carrying out the October 7th attacks. Despite the advantage of having a high-tech underground barrier empowered by artificial intelligence, Israeli counter tunnelers have had to rely on “luck, instinct, and human intelligence” to detect their whereabouts. This defect in intelligence capabilities, despite being powered by high-technology, ultimately proved fatal.

Failure of the IDF to adequately collect information about the tunnels, or even detect their presence, reveals a critical asymmetric capability possessed by Hamas. Hamas and Gazans’ critical understanding of the underground stem in part from a place of necessity and survival in the face of strict checkpoints imposed by Israel. The vast underground network is a special type of intelligence about the land derived from Palestinians’ indigeneity, something the Israeli military and its geologists lack. The underground tunnel network controlled by Hamas and subsequently frequented by Gazans for travel and importation of goods are partly a reaction to Israel’s land, air, and sea blockade on Gaza since 2007. Despite this blockade giving Israel conventional superiority across all warfighting domains, Hamas was still able to launch multi-domain assaults.

The stark contrast between Hamas and the IDF’s military and intelligence capabilities challenges assumptions about security, while illustrating the pitfalls of over-dependence on technology. Despite Israel having superior military and intelligence technology deployed across all domains of warfighting, Hamas was able to employ asymmetric military capabilities that negated Israeli defenses. The October 7th attack demonstrates the shortcoming of advanced technologies without humans constantly monitoring them. This also reveals the type of intelligence that comes from resistance: decades of oppression in the forms of checkpoints, blockades, and occupation have allowed Hamas to gain a critical understanding of the land underground and the pitfalls of their oppressor.

Julianna Lozada is a staff writer at CPR and a senior at Columbia in the dual degree with Sciences Po. She is studying Human Rights with a specialization in Middle Eastern Studies and a special concentration in Sustainable Development. You can probably find her creating WBAR playlists in Milstein or taking power naps on Butler lawn.