While taking plenty of responsibility for the October 7 disaster, in its report published suddenly and unexpectedly on Tuesday, the Shin Bet included accusations that policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regarding the Temple Mount, Palestinian prisoners’ treatment, and the judicial overhaul, were significant additional motivators for Hamas to finally actually initiate its long-planned invasion.
In fact, the Shin Bet never mentions Netanyahu by name, and technically, some of these policies were those of then national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, but Netanyahu, as prime minister, allowed many of the policies to continue, despite having the power to stop them.
More specifically, Ben-Gvir vastly expanded the volume of Jewish visitors to the Temple Mount compared to prior years, violated some of the rules of what activities could be done on the Mount, publicly called for completely changing the “status quo,” and enforced policies to worsen the treatment of Palestinian prisoners.
Ben-Gvir’s moves led to public condemnations by moderate Sunni Arab allies, the West, and Hamas and to private warnings by the Shin Bet.
Other government policies during Netanyahu’s reign that the Shin Bet flagged as problematic and helping contribute to Hamas’s decision to invade were his facilitation of Qatari funding to Hamas and his opposition to proposed assassination operations of top Hamas leaders.
The judicial overhaul was also a fully owned Netanyahu policy, though he can just as easily blame the impact it had on IDF readiness and Hamas’s perception of IDF readiness on his critics, just as they blame him for pushing the overhaul forward.
At another key point in the report, the Shin Bet wrote that even as it is making vast reforms to its own organization for its many massive failures on October 7, these will be insufficient to prevent future disasters without changes in the interface between the political and defense echelons.
But most of the report is about the Shin Bet’s own failures: not warning the country about an invasion, misunderstanding Hamas’s intentions both before October 7 and the eve of the invasion, failing to adjust to Hamas as a military entity as opposed to a terror group, allowing Hamas to massively army itself, and not seeing the depth of the harm to Israeli deterrence.
Another blind-spot for the Shin Bet was its belief on the eve of October 7 that Hamas might be focused on an attack in the West Bank, partially because Gaza’s rulers had carried out an unusual terror attack in the West Bank on October 5.
Conceptually, the Shin Bet said that it had far too much confidence in the IDF’s hi-tech Gaza border fence, was too invested in quiet and stability, and was too worried about miscalculations in pressuring Hamas leading to instability or an “unnecessary” war, as the 2014 Gaza conflict was viewed.
Some fascinating points revealed by the Shin bet report for the first time, which the IDF did not have, were the exact number of Israeli SIM cards which were activated in Gaza leading up to the invasion: 45.
The Shin Bet then noted that this was very similar to the 38 SIMs activated in Gaza in October 2022 and the 37 SIMs activated in Gaza in April 2023.
In both cases, Hamas did not invade, something which the Shin bet said led it to doubt that anything truly unique or unusually dangerous was about to happen.
Next, the agency said that at 3:03 a.m., it sent a warning regarding the SIMs to the IDF, the police, and the National Security Council, which represents the prime minister.
Further, the Shin Bet stated the balance of the circumstances was a departure from the routine with Hamas and that if there were other exacerbating factors, “could indicate attack activity from Hamas.”
Of course, the Shin Bet report admitted that the attack activity it was referring to was much smaller, such as the dozens envisioned by the IDF probe report, which was why the “Taquila” staff it sent to the Gaza border to increase security was relatively small.
Likewise, the Shin bet admitted that it failed to take either the 2018 or 2022 versions of the Walls of Jericho plans Hamas potential invasion seriously. Given that it did not view these plans as realistic, a broader Hamas invasion of southern Israel was essentially not part of any of the agency’s security analyses.
Unlike the IDF where non-commissioned officer “V” stood alone in an ocean of denial and warned that the Walls of Jericho plan could be real, it seems there was no such even minority voice within the Shin Bet.
The Shin Bet said its failure to take the invasion seriously did not just harm its capacity to warn about wars, but also led to a mismanagement of intelligence collection, which could have been directed more in the direction of following pre-Walls of Jericho developments.
Another major error was the Shin Bet and IDF together failing to adjust to Hamas as a full-fledged military entity which could manage a complex multifaceted invasion, as opposed to a terror group with limited capabilities and reach.
In fact, going forward the agency said that it must split up responsibility for warnings related to Gaza.
Its recommendation is that the Shin Bet, which is a much smaller boutique organization, remain responsible for warning of smaller terror plots, but that the IDF take over responsibility for warning of any kind of broader military invasion.
In fact, for much of Israeli history, the IDF had the primary role for warnings of a broad war from any border, but in 2012, the IDF withdrew its Unit 504 human spying unit from Gaza, and left the agency solely responsible for human spying.
Along with this change, the Shin Bet also took on more responsibility for warning of war with Gaza, though the IDF was still in the picture.
Despite the Shin bet being left with sole human spying responsibility in Gaza, the agency admitted that since 2018 it long a very large portion of its network.
It attributed these losses to a crackdown which Hamas undertook against its spy network following an operation in Khan Yunis in 2018 and another multi-region assassination operation that year.
According to the Shin Bet, these crackdowns greatly reduced the agency’s freedom of action and recruitment in Gaza, though it said that it has restored aspects of the network “in large volumes.”
After all of its pride at repairing its Gaza spy network, the fact is not a single human spy warned the agency of Hamas’s invasion on October 7. Rather, the Shin Bet, in an unusual move, revealed that its spies in Gaza viewed the atmosphere as routine and regular.
In one dig at IDF intelligence, the Shin Bet said that “two indications” the military had of “exceptional activities” were not passed on to it on the eve of the attack.
Ignoring warnings from sensors along Gaza border
Yet another error the Shin Bet acknowledged was that it did not fully consult all of its own “sensors” intelligence on the eve of the invasion, since some of those items had been deprioritized in favor of the Shin Bet’s cutting-edge “tool” relating to the SIMs.
In fact, the Shin Bet revealed that it has a large volume of sensors from “hundreds of operations in recent years” which would have given it a much clearer picture of the potential invasion.
Next, the agency stated that for years it had been making cuts to its “ipcha mistabra/Red Team” department which is supposed to push back against the rest of the agency’s conventional wisdom.
In the same vein, the Shin Bet acknowledged that it did not seriously consider that Hamas might be playing out an elaborate ruse about its desire for economic stability and more workers in Israel in order to fool Israel into complacency about its true invasion intentions.
Despite all of the above, the Shin Bet credited its analysis division with having issued multiple warnings in 2023 that Israeli deterrence versus Hamas and versus other adversaries was crashing.
More specifically, the Shin bet said that “it did not define Hamas as being in a state of being deterred.”
Also, it warned the political echelon, “there can be no acceptance of the existence of a Muslim Brotherhood entity [Hamas] with military capabilities and connection to the Shiite axis right next to the Gaza border.
Moreover, the Shin Bet said that since 2021, it invested significant new resources in preparing assassination operations against top Hamas leaders and warned the political echelon of Hamas’s increased strength that it derived from Qatari and Iranian funding.
Leading into the fall 2023 holidays, the Shin bet said it specifically warned that regarding threats from Gaza, Israel was entering “an unstable period” and once again recommended assassinating Hamas leaders and some beefing up of border security (though nowhere near the volume which would have been necessary to stop Hamas’s invasion.)
Once the war started, the Shin Bet said that it made powerful contributions to Israel’s war in Gaza, Lebanon, the West bank, and elsewhere, especially regarding Hamas’s Israeli hostages.
Also, the agency revealed that it has agents which were harmed while penetrating Hezbollah’s Radwan forces to advance broader Israeli goals.
The agency said it has undergone massive reforms, noting that it has split up its intelligence collection focus in Gaza into many sub-geographic units, as it operates in the West Bank.
Further, it said that it is altering its interactions with IDF Unit 8200 to increase information sharing – though all agencies have said many times in recent years that their information sharing is at all-time highs.
Shin Bet Director Ronen Bar has resisted pressure from Netanyahu to resign until now.
Some believe he will hold out in office until all of the hostages return, while others believe he will hold out for a state inquiry on Netanyahu, and yet others believe he will step down early, but that he has time, given his term runs until October 2026.
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