An investigation by the newspaper "Haaretz" confirmed that the major failure in confronting the Al-Aqsa flood operation on October 7th was due to the policy of underestimating the military capabilities of the Hamas movement, which prevailed in the Israeli army, the Shin Bet, and the intelligence services, and was accompanied by the suppression of all voices warning of the Hamas movement's intention to storm... Settlements.

The Haaretz investigation reviewed part of the investigation conducted internally by the Israeli army into the failures that led to the Al-Aqsa flood, indicating that the entire security sector was dealing with the Hamas movement on the basis that it was unable to “invade Israel by land,” and that the most it could do was It is launching long-range missiles.

The Haaretz investigation explained that, after the May 2021 confrontation (Jerusalem Shield - Guardian of the Walls), the Israeli security services stopped collecting intelligence information about the lower executive formations in Hamas and the cadres of the Al-Qassam Brigades, and were content to focus on a small number of people who occupy senior leadership positions. As a result, intelligence collection resources were diverted to dealing with missiles, and intelligence effort in the field of tracking and monitoring was devoted away from Hamas field men.

The newspaper quoted one of its sources as saying: “We had no fears about the possibility of infiltrating or occupying the settlements. This hypothesis was part of scenarios that no one believed in and no one dealt with seriously.”

Haaretz sources confirm that all the voices that spoke about the scenario of storming the settlements were silenced and were not given any platform to speak, starting with the intelligence service of the army’s Southern Command, the Gaza Division, and even the General Staff. The army also reduced the number of formations of divisions and units, and in In the end, only one unit remained, including three officers, and its mission was to track down some senior Hamas leaders and nothing more.

The investigation revealed that all attempts to include specific persons from the cadres of the Hamas movement in the scope of the names to be tracked did not find anyone listening to them, and one of these persons is Ali Qadi, a battalion commander in Jabalia, who turned out to be the leaders of dozens of fighters in storming the headquarters of the Gaza Division on the 7th of October.

According to the Haaretz investigation, the intelligence failure in Operation Al-Aqsa Flood began on May 21, 2021, when the (Al-Aqsa Shield/Guardian of the Walls) confrontation ended, and a new policy entered into force, based on the fact that the wall that the army had built underground between the Gaza Strip and The cover settlements prevent any attempt by Hamas to storm the settlements, and all that remains for the army to do is confront the missiles.

The investigation added that Operation Al-Aqsa Flood showed that the fence separating the Gaza Strip and the cover settlements is “almost imaginary,” as Hamas fighters were able to penetrate it at 44 points, while Army Minister Benny Gantz, who is currently a member of the War Council, had announced two years ago. “The Gaza envelope area is a technological and creative project that is the first of its kind,” he said in his comment on the construction of the separation fence.

He continued: “It seems that the Israeli army did not take into account at all the possibility that the new fence would be less tight than expected, that is, what will we do if Hamas succeeds in breaching it?”

Although Israeli intelligence, before the Al-Aqsa flood, focused on tracking leaders of a certain level in Hamas, some of these leaders are still alive after more than 6 months of war, according to what an intelligence officer told the Haaretz newspaper, adding that The army “is doing now what it did not do then: it is searching for every scrap of information about the leader of a Hamas battalion or faction.”

The intelligence officer confirmed that when the army reaches - during the Al-Aqsa Flood Battle - the leader of a battalion or faction in Hamas and succeeds in assassinating him, it celebrates that, and then makes this person a senior leader, and responsible for the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation, even though before October 7 there was no One of the intelligence leaders wants to hear any information about them.