Facing one of the most sophisticated surveillance states on the planet, Hamas simply went dark. The militant group’s attack that caught Israel’s national security apparatus completely off guard — a shocking fact given the scope of the incursion, which included attacks by sea, air and land, and pushed deep into Israeli territory.
Israel’s intelligence services have a reputation as some of the world’s most sophisticated. And the Gaza Strip, a slice of land next to Egypt, is one of the most surveilled places on the planet. Phone lines are tapped. Satellites watch overhead. Informants keep tabs on the 2 million residents of an area just over twice the size of Washington, DC.
Israel and the US will need years to sift through all the failings that allowed Hamas to move with such surprise and to such deadly effect, killing hundreds of Israelis and capturing others. But already, a picture has begun to emerge of how the group’s fighters did it, according to current and former intelligence officials in the US, Israel and elsewhere.
While many questions remain unanswered, what’s clear is that Hamas went low-tech, avoiding Israel’s ability to tap its communications, and even, perhaps, exploiting the Israeli Defense Forces’ confidence that its missile attacks could be repelled or prevented.
“My suspicion is that Hamas was able to keep such a vast operation — which included many, many trainers, lots of operational training, and bringing in a vast amount of munitions — close-hold because they went very old school,” said Beth Sanner, former deputy director of national intelligence.
“I suspect they never talked about it electronically,” Sanner said. “They broke it up into cells and did individual meetings. And each group was assigned to do different things. Very few people understood how each of the components came together as the whole plan. ”If taking its communications dark helped Hamas circumvent eavesdropping, then going underground — literally — may have helped thwart Israel’s surveillance satellites.
