Analysis: What were Israeli oversights in Hamas-led 7 October attack?

Two years since the deadly Hamas-led 7 October attack, security experts in Israel and worldwide are still analysing what the key oversights were and whether Israel could have pre-empted the incursion, which took 1,200 lives and saw 250 people taken hostage by Hamas.

Earlier this year the Israeli military published its first official account of the mistakes that led to its failures during the 7 October 2023 attack, which triggered the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

The report concluded that the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) "failed in its mission to protect Israeli civilians".

The 19-page report concludes that Israel’s military misjudged Hamas' intentions and underestimated its capabilities.

Will Todman, Senior Fellow at the Middle East Program of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, told Euronews that it is essential to understand the context and the broader picture of the time when the attack occurred.

“If we go back, this was a time when Israel was talking about expanding the Abraham Accords, normalising with Saudi Arabia”, Todman said, adding that it had previously normalised with other key regional actors like the UAE and Bahrain.

“I think there was a real sense of confidence in the Israeli government and they did not realise that Hamas would be able to pose such a dire threat to their security.”

The official military report states that in the months leading up to the attack, the Israeli Military Intelligence Directorate, Aman, began to develop a new assessment, suggesting that Hamas' plan was not merely a vision but "a concrete framework for operational planning". But this assessment was largely dismissed and even received with some complacency.

“It was probably a sense of hubris from the Israeli military and political elite”, Todman said, adding that Israeli authorities “hadn't faced a serious threat from Hamas in Gaza or from Palestinian groups in the West Bank for years”.

Hamas, on the other hand, also tried to keep their preparations as much as possible under Israeli radars to make sure the October 7 attack was not easily detected.

“They have periodically done sort of training exercises and whatnot, they know full well that Israel would be monitoring those”, Todman says.

“Critically, even the Hamas delegation outside of the Gaza Strip in Doha does not seem to have been aware of this in advance. And so I think they kept these plans to a very small circle.”

But Todman insists that “the failures of 7 October have to be seen as the failures of the leadership and not the failures of Israel's capabilities.”

“We have seen in the years since, Israel has a remarkable military strength is rapidly proving itself to be the region's military hegemon,” he said.

“They have attacked with remarkable precision and intelligence penetration, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iran, key figures in Iran, in Syria, in Yemen, in Doha most recently."

"That shows that when Israeli military establishment does decide to pursue a military objective - they do so with remarkable effectiveness.”

Israel-Hamas war since 7 October

In response to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, the Israeli military launched a massive military campaign in Gaza on a previously unseen scale.

The Israeli offensive in the Strip has resulted in the deaths of over 67,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its death toll — a number Israel contests.

Israel has also taken its military offensive beyond Gaza, targeting Hamas’ allies in Iran and Syria and the Tehran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon and Yemen's Houthis, triggering seismic shifts in the region's geopolitical landscape.

“Prime Minister (Benjamin) Netanyahu has consistently taken bold risks in the aftermath of 7 October. And until the attacks on Doha, nearly all of those risks paid off," Todman said, adding that it was the first direct conflict between Israel and Iran “in terms of Israeli strikes on facilities, nuclear facilities, but also on scientists, on military officials.”

Israel then "successfully (brought) the United States into that conflict as well and then saw the bombing of the Fordow nuclear facilities. I think all of this added to a sense that being bolder paid off for the Israeli government," Todman explained.

But if all of these risks have "perhaps achieved military victories", they have come at a remarkable diplomatic cost, Todman admits, pointing out that even key Israeli allies, such as the UK, France, Canada and Australia, all now recognise Palestinian statehood.

“So there are real cracks showing in Israel's international support,” he said.

What is next for Israel and Gaza?

With the US-led peace plan for Gaza now being negotiated in Egypt, the question is how the sides will be able to coexist, even if the deal goes through.

“I think for Israel, there will continue to be real security concerns in Gaza,” Todman told Euronews.

“I don't think the Israeli government believes that Hamas will truly disarm completely and I also think that there are shades of different levels of membership of Hamas."

"The Hamas leaders and the Israeli government are likely to have very different interpretations of who is part of Hamas," he explained.

And even though the plan envisions there being international forces to slowly build up a Palestinian police force, Todman said, “there will be differences of interpretation between the Israeli government and Palestinians about whether or not these security forces could ever represent a threat to Israel again.”

Another enormous challenge for Palestinian leaders going forward, whether they are part of the interim technocratic government or leaders who take over in the future, will be “to try to depict a better future for their people, to try to say that the pathway towards reconciliation is going to be better than the pathway towards revenge”, Todman pointed out, explaining that “the trust is really not there between Israelis and Palestinians”.

The trust will have to be built first in the process itself and then in the outcome of this process, according to Todman.

“The process of disarmament, of de-radicalisation and of reconciliation between Palestinians and Israelis after two years of real remarkable levels of violence and killing - those are going to be extremely challenging processes.”

“We have 2 million Palestinians living in Gaza who have lived through famine, according to the IBC, and genocide, according to UN independent investigators. And certainly all of them will have known people who were killed, had family members, friends, colleagues. And so working past that trauma is going to be a Herculean task for future Palestinian leaders," he said.

But Todman says many of these questions will come further down the line and that “for the majority of Palestinians at the moment, that number one priority is to stop this conflict, to have a cessation of hostilities”.

Will Hamas accept all of the US-led plan?

Hamas has agreed to release all the remaining Israeli hostages but says it wants further talks on several key points outlined in the US peace plan.

The group has not agreed on other parts of the plan, specifically regarding the disarmament of Hamas and the future governance of Gaza as outlined in the US peace plan.

But at this stage “there's not much more they could lose” Will Todman told Euronews, explaining why the armed group agreed to the hostage release.

“They thought that having hostages would be a source of leverage, that it would deter certain Israeli military actions.”

But when even the threat of Israeli military operations accidentally killing hostages has not changed the calculation of the Israeli government and its strategy to go ahead with the offensive in Gaza, Hamas changed its calculations.

“They're not actually losing very much of their leverage because that didn't exist in the first place,” Todman said.

Instead, the armed group is going to gain some international goodwill, and they likely hope to put pressure back on Israel to then abide by the terms of the agreement, which are “more challenging for the Israelis to swallow,” he concluded.