As the first anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel that shook Israel and the world approaches, the United States has reportedly increased its intelligence gathering in the Gaza Strip since it was caught off guard by the October 7 attack on Israel, “but gaps remain in the very kind of intelligence that may be needed to find a path to ending the conflict,” according to Politico.

A year after the attack, U.S. intelligence agencies are still struggling to understand Hamas’s internal political dynamics, whether it is ready for a cease-fire and its longer-term aspirations in Gaza — all questions that policymakers need to answer as they struggle to avoid a full-scale regional war.

According to direct statements, successive US administrations have chosen not to prioritize intelligence gathering and analysis on Gaza and Hamas. “Despite the improvements, one year is not enough to make up for that, according to current and former intelligence officials.”

Since the Oct. 7, 2023, attack, the Biden administration has continued to prioritize intelligence gathering on other foreign crises, including the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, the war in Ukraine and threats from China, according to officials and lawmakers familiar with the matter.

“The intelligence community is large, but so are the priorities assigned to its personnel,” Politico quotes Norman Roule, the former director of national intelligence who specializes in Iran and is a senior adviser to the Counter Extremism Project, as saying. “In the absence of consistent demand from policymakers, resources are allocated to targets that are perceived to be of greater interest to policymakers.”

POLITICO spoke to four current and former senior U.S. officials and three lawmakers and congressional staffers for this story. Most were granted anonymity to speak freely about sensitive intelligence matters.

The large American “blind corner” in Gaza attracted immediate scrutiny in the days following Hamas’s attack on Israel.

In briefings on Capitol Hill, intelligence officials told lawmakers (according to Politico) that they were stunned by what Hamas was able to accomplish. The attack had been months, if not years, in the planning, they said. The attack killed 30 Americans, “making it the deadliest terrorist attack on American citizens since 9/11,” they said.

Senior members of Congress demanded answers to: Was the United States warned? And how was Israel unable to detect the attack?

Intelligence officials had no comforting answers for lawmakers: The United States had relied heavily on Israel for inside information about Gaza—and the Israelis failed to take some of their own internal warnings seriously. The attack exposed a major gap in Washington’s intelligence on Gaza and its broader understanding of Hamas, sparking a push to ramp up intelligence gathering and analysis of what was happening in the territory.

Over the past year, the CIA has done just that, deploying drones, satellites, and other surveillance tools—such as certain radars—over Gaza around the clock to better understand Hamas’s military tactics. All of this has helped Israel identify and target Hamas positions in Gaza.

But those efforts have only partially filled an information vacuum in the region. Officials and lawmakers say that decision-makers in Washington, including those at the National Security Council, have considered other conflicts to be higher priorities in the months since the attack.

The fighting between Israel and Hezbollah has been treated as particularly urgent because it could ignite a regional war that would draw in American forces. The administration has also focused on doing everything it can to help Ukraine advance in its war against Russia, including sending advanced weapons to repel cross-border attacks. The White House sees China as an existential threat that cannot be dismissed, even through a war that has killed tens of thousands of people.

But intelligence gaps in Gaza could make it difficult for the White House to find the right formula for a ceasefire. It’s unclear exactly where the U.S. “blind spots” lie, but the public debate over the U.S.-proposed hostage release and ceasefire has exposed the lack of clarity. On several occasions, the Biden administration has claimed that Hamas and Israel have accepted some proposal, only to be met with rejection from one side or the other.

“When it comes to Hamas — if we misjudge how they negotiate (which we do), we end up with mismatched formulas,” Mickey Bergman, an expert on international hostage negotiations and CEO of Global Reach, a nonprofit that works to free Americans held abroad, told Politico.

If a ceasefire is not reached anytime soon, intelligence on Hamas's inner workings will also be essential to knowing when Hamas is weakened enough for the United States—and hopefully Israel—to declare victory in the war.

“The growing conflict between Israel and Hezbollah — the Lebanon-based militant group that is also backed by Iran — only complicates the situation,” Politico says. “Hezbollah has long said it will not stop its fight against Israel unless a ceasefire is reached in Gaza. It is unclear whether the group’s thinking has changed in the wake of Israel’s recent campaign against its positions in Lebanon.”

The United States began relying heavily on the Israelis for intelligence on Gaza and Hamas in the late 1990s, when Washington began engaging the Palestinians more directly on the political front, former senior U.S. officials and intelligence officers said. Since then, the United States has assigned specific units to track Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, but those units are often small compared with those covering other countries and issues in the region, the officials said.

The United States has long helped fill the gaps with intelligence shared by the Israelis. But the shortcomings of that were laid bare on October 7, 2023.

“We called this an Israeli intelligence failure only,” Roll told Politico. “We should be clear. This was also an American intelligence failure.”