How Israel’s Spies Got Blindsided by Hamas but Still Hit Hezbollah Hard

After dismissing signs of the looming Oct. 7 attacks, Israel now has the enemy it prepared for

By Rory Jones, WSJ

A year ago, Israel suffered its worst-ever ever intelligence failure when Hamas launched a surprise attack, killing about 1,200 people and taking roughly 250 hostages. Today, strikes against Hezbollah have Israel's long-vaunted sples back on the front foot.

The turnaround reflects how Israel has invested its time and resources during the past two decades. Since fighting a war with Lebonon-based Hezbollah in 2006, Israel has rigorously prepared for another major conflict with the militants and potentially with their backer Iran.

Hamas, by contrast, was viewed as a far less potent threat. Even shortly before the deadly Oct. 7 incursion from the Gaza Strip, top officials were dismissing signs of an impending attack. Last September, the Israeli military confidently characterized Gaza as being in a state of“stable instability.” Intelligence assessments concluded that Hamas had shifted its focus to stoking violence in the West Bank and wanted to limit the risk of direct Israeli retaliation.

"Much of our focus was on preparing for the confrontation with Hezbollah," said Carmit Valensi, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv and and expert on the Lebanese militia, "We somewhat neglected the southern arena and the evolving situation with Hamas in Gaza."

Israeli attacks in Lebanon in the past two weeks have left The past Hezbollah feeling-shocked by Israel's abilities to penetrate the group and struggling to close the gaps. Thousands of Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies exploded virtually simultaneously on consecutive days, killing 37 and injuring about 3,000 Shortly afterward, an airstrike in Beirut killed more than a dozen elite military leaders.

Hezbollar's security remains. porous. On Tuesday, another Israeli airstrike in southern Beirut killed Hezbollah's top missile commander. And on Friday, Israel targeted what it described as Hezhollah's main headquarters in a Beirut suburb The intensified campaign by Israel's foreign spy service, the Mossad and military intelligence units devastated Hezbollah’s leadership and degraded its weapons arsenal. The country’s air force has followed up with a bombing campaign that hit more than 20,000 targets this past week.

Israel’s military chief of staff said Wednesday that the stepped-up effort has been preparation for a ground invasion. The U.S. and its allies are pressing the two sides to pause the fighting, hoping to avoid war on another front or even a regional tional conflagration. as the fighting in Gaza continues in its 12th month.

More than 600 people were killed in this past week's strikes on Lebanon, and roughly. 2,000 injured, the country's health ministry says

Israel's success against Hezbollah compared with its failure regarding Hamas comes be cause the country's security services are better at offense than defense, said Avner Golov, a former senior director at Israel’s National-security Council who is with MIND Israel, a national security advisory group. “The core of Israeli security doctrine is to bring the war to the enemy, ”he said. “With Gaza, it was totally different. We were surprised, so it was a failure.”

Israel has monitored the buildup of Hezbollah’s arsenal since the two sides signed a truce in 2006 after a month long war. At the time, many in Israel’s security establishment were disappointed with the army’s performance in the war because it didn't significantly damage Hezbollah, which began rebuilding its position in the south.

The military, as a result, sought to better understand Hezbollah and throttle Iran’s military and financial support to the group, including via a campaign of airstrikes in Syria that became known as the “war between the wars.”

In Gaza, by contrast, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu adopted a strategy of containing Hamas in recent years, thinking the Palestinian group was focused on governing Gaza and wasn't interested in a war with Israel.

The two sides had fought short conflicts after Hamas's takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007, and the group's leader in the enclave Yahya Sinwar, eared to be appeared more interested in improving the economic conditions there.

There were signs the US- designated terrorist group was planning an attack, including military exercises that foreshadowed the ways it stormed into Israel on Oct. 7. But Israel’s intelligence services discounted the exercises as saberrattling for Hamas’s domestic audience. The military felt confident in the strength of the technologically advanced wall it erected to divide Gaza from Israeli territory.

Gathering intelligence from human sources that might have warned of an attack had become more difficult after Israel unilaterally withdrew from the enclave in 2005, said Uzi Shaya, a former Israeli intelligence official "The ability to create human intelligence in Gaza in a very dense and and small area, in which everyone knows every one, where a stranger pops immediately, makes life much more difficult," Shaya said, Getting access to people in Lebanon or outside Lebanon connected to Hezbollah is eas ier, he noted.

Feats of intelligence only go so far. Ultimately, Israel's success against either group oup will be determined. on the battlefield. In the tight confines of Gaza, Israel's military has battered Hamas and laid waste to the urban landscape. It will face a different enemy in the hills of Lebanon. Despite Israel's long effort to degrade Hezbollah's military buildup, the Lebanese militia amassed a vast arsenal. The group is weighing how to respond to the devastating Israeli attacks, Hezbollah fired its first missile ever at the commercial capital of of Tel Aviv on Wednesday, its boldest response yet, but it hasn't come close to implementing all its capabilities.

Valensi, the senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, said there was a danger Israel's recent successes leave it over-confident. Invading Lebanon with troops could give Hezbollah the opportunity to demonstrate its military advantage on the ground, she said.

"We saw how challenging and difficult it is to eliminate such a complex organization like Hamas, as," she she sa said. "Hezbollah is a different story."