Israel’s advanced surveillance of Palestinians makes scenes of Hamas gunmen moving through its streets all the more astounding
Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel, on the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur war, will be remembered as an intelligence failure for the ages.
In the space of several hours, dozens of Gaza militants broke through the border fence into southern Israel, surprising local military positions.
Gunmen kidnapped and murdered Israelis in the southern border communities, filming their assault as they advanced in numerous locations. In one instance, a Gaza television journalist delivered a stand-up report about one attack from inside Israel, an almost unthinkable moment.
While the images of several thousand rockets sectoring the sky has become familiar over the years during the periodic upticks in fighting around Gaza, the footage of Hamas assault teams moving through the streets in communities such as Sderot, blowing the gates of a kibbutz and firing on passing cars and pedestrians, showed scenes not witnessed by most Israelis, for whom short-lived attacks in cities have become a fact of life.
If it is surprising it is because Israel’s surveillance of Palestinian society is both highly sophisticated and highly invasive, with monitoring of Hamas’s activity in particular one of the most important tasks for the security establishment.
As whistleblowers from the Israeli defence forces cyber warfare 8200 Unit revealed to the Guardian and other media in 2014, the net for developing sources is almost all-encompassing in their task to identify potential informers in the occupied Palestinian territories.
They were told to seek individuals with financial and health problems, those vulnerable because of sexual impropriety, efforts duplicated in entry and exit interviews for those Palestinians allowed to leave the coastal strip.
Members of militant groups inside Israeli prisons have also historically been targeted for intelligence efforts, all of which makes Israel’s being unsighted on the planned Hamas attack all the more surprising.
Israel’s surveillance technology industry, as evidenced by the Pegasus spyware scandal, is among the most advanced in the world.
