Israel’s spies relied too much on tech over human informants before Hamas attack, ex-intelligence officer says
Disastrous security failings that allowed Hamas to launch the biggest attack on Israel for decades may have been partly caused by old-fashioned spying skills being neglected in favour of online surveillance, a former senior Israeli intelligence officer has said.
Gonen Ben Itzhak, who spent more than a decade working for Shin Bet, Israel’s equivalent of MI5, said it was “obvious” that Israel had a problem with its informant networks inside Gaza after Hamas was able to kill at least 1,200 people.
“For many years, I have had the feeling that intelligence relies more and more on technology and cyber, and less about human intelligence,” Itzhak told i.
He explained that during his career managing “assets” among the Palestinian population in the West Bank, civilians were recruited and trained to pass on information about any unusual behaviour in their area, “to give us some clues when something wrong is going on”.
Given the scale of Hamas’s Al-Aqsa Flood assault, which has since led to another 1,000 deaths from retaliatory Israeli air strikes on Gaza, he said: “It’s very hard to understand how so many people were involved in this operation and Shin Bet had no clue about their preparation.
“The terrorists who entered the kibbutz were commandos… When Israel saw them training, they didn’t understand what they were doing or how.”
Itzhak, 52, first came to public attention as the intelligence handler for Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of a Hamas co-founder who served as an Israeli informant for a decade before seeking asylum in the US. In recent years he has helped lead mass protests against prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
He fears citizens kidnapped by Hamas during the attack will die if thousands of Israeli troops now massing on the border with the Gaza Strip are sent into the Palestinian territory.
He believes that Israel should instead prioritise diplomacy to secure the release of the hostages by asking other countries to negotiate with Hamas, despite comparing them with Isis.
“It seems like the Israeli government has decided to attack Gaza without taking into consideration the hostage situation,” he said. “I don’t see how they solve it in a military way. It could only be through negotiation.”
He urged his country’s leaders to “go to Egypt, and maybe other countries like Germany, to try and get an agreement with Hamas to release as many hostages as we can – even if the price is releasing terrorists who are in the Israeli jails.”
Itzhak worries that Israel may have damaged its relationship with Egypt at a vital time, however, with Cairo thought to be concerned about an exodus of Palestinians onto its territory in Sinai to escape Israeli bombardment.
Qatar is reportedly trying to mediate a prisoner swap between the two sides, but Israel has asserted that “there is no negotiation” with Hamas, whose own officials also say there is “no chance for negotiation” over hostages while air strikes on Gaza continue.
Itzhak once lived in the Kfar Aza kibbutz, where bodies of babies are said to have been found among the dead in destroyed buildings and burnt-out cars, after an alleged massacre by Hamas.
One of his friends from the village, whose family survived, told him of being stranded without military help for hours while residents tried to fight off the Hamas fighters themselves. Another of his friends was killed in nearby Kissufim.
Itzhak says although fighting Hamas will take “a long time,” he maintains that Israel must be “very strict” about keeping civilians safe during its fightback, avoiding a repeat of the 2014 ground invasion when 2,100 Palestinians died.
Now more than ever, Itzhak wants to see the resignation of “incapable” Netanyahu. But this appears unlikely after the controversial right-wing prime minister formed an emergency unity government with the centrist opposition leader Benny Gantz on Wednesday.
Itzhak recognises that now is “not the time” to be organising more demonstrations against his political foe, with protesters united in trying to support victims of the attacks.
“Everything has changed,” he said. “We are working to save people from the south, that’s what’s important right now. We will get back to Netanyahu when we’re ready.”
