Hamas led Israel to believe it planned attacks in West Bank

Hamas drilled in plain sight, posted video of mock assault weeks before massacre

Israeli intel was caught off-guard by devastating assault; but terror group recently held live-fire exercise blasting through mock wall, raiding mock town

A live-fire exercise dubbed operation “Strong Pillar” outside Al-Mawasi, a town on the southern coast of the Gaza Strip, on September 12, 2023. (Hamas via AP)
A live-fire exercise dubbed operation “Strong Pillar” outside Al-Mawasi, a town on the southern coast of the Gaza Strip, on September 12, 2023. (Hamas via AP)

Less than a month before Hamas terrorists blew through Israel’s high-tech “Iron Wall” on the Gaza border and launched a bloody massacre in southern Israeli communities, killing at least 1,300 people and abducting some 200, they practiced in a very public dress rehearsal.

A slickly produced two-minute propaganda video posted to social media by Hamas on Sept. 12 shows the terrorists using explosives to blast through a replica of the border gate, sweep in on pickup trucks, and then move building by building through a full-scale reconstruction of an Israeli town, firing automatic weapons at human-silhouetted paper targets.

The Islamic terror group’s live-fire exercise, dubbed operation “Strong Pillar,” also had terrorists in body armor and combat fatigues carrying out operations that included the destruction of mock-ups of the wall’s concrete towers and a communications antenna, just as they would later do for real in the slaughter on October 7.

While Israel’s highly regarded security and intelligence services were clearly caught flatfooted by Hamas’s ability to breach its Gaza defenses, the group appears to have hidden its extensive preparations for the deadly assault in plain sight.

“There clearly were warnings and indications that should have been picked up,” said Bradley Bowman, a former US Army officer who is now senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington research institute. “Or maybe they were picked up, but they didn’t spark necessary preparations to prevent these horrific terrorist acts from happening.”

The Associated Press reviewed and verified key details from dozens of videos Hamas released over the last year, primarily through the social media app Telegram.

A live-fire exercise dubbed operation “Strong Pillar” outside Al-Mawasi, a town on the southern coast of the Gaza Strip, on September 12, 2023. (Hamas via AP)

Using satellite imagery, the AP matched the location of the mocked-up town to a patch of desert outside Al-Mawasi, a Palestinian town on the southern coast of the Gaza Strip. A large sign in Hebrew and Arabic at the gate says “Horesh Yaron,” the name of a controversial Israeli settlement in the West Bank.

Bowman said there are indications that Hamas intentionally led Israeli officials to believe it was preparing to carry out raids in the West Bank, rather than Gaza. It was also potentially significant that the exercise has been held annually since 2020 — usually in December, but it was moved up by nearly four months this year, ostensibly to coincide with the anniversary of Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza.

In a separate video posted to Telegram from last year’s Strong Pillar exercise on Dec. 28, Hamas gunmen are shown storming what appears to be a mockup Israeli military base, complete with a full-size model of a tank with an Israeli flag flying from its turret. The gunmen move through the cinderblock buildings, seizing other men playing the roles of Israeli soldiers as hostages.

Michael Milshtein, a retired Israeli colonel who previously led the military intelligence department overseeing the Palestinian territories, said he was aware of the Hamas videos, but he was still caught off guard by the ambition and scale of Saturday’s rampage.

“We knew about the drones, we knew about booby traps, we knew about cyberattacks and the marine forces … The surprise was the coordination between all those systems,” Milshtein said.

The Israel-Gaza border fence after the barrier was bombed and breached by Palestinian terrorists in the southern Gaza Strip, October 7, 2023. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

The seeds of Israel’s failure to anticipate and stop Saturday’s onslaught go back at least a decade. Faced with recurring attacks from Hamas terrorists tunneling under Israel’s border fence, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proposed a very concrete solution — build a bigger wall.

With financial help from US taxpayers, Israel completed the construction of a $1.1 billion project to fortify its existing defenses along its almost 65-kilometer (40-mile) land border with Gaza in 2021. The new, upgraded barrier includes a “smart fence” up to 6 meters (19.7 feet) high, festooned with cameras that can see in the dark, razor wire, and seismic sensors capable of detecting the digging of tunnels more than 200 feet below. Manned guard posts were replaced with concrete towers topped with remote-controlled machine guns. A massive underground barrier was constructed along the border to prevent tunneling.

“In our neighborhood, we need to protect ourselves from wild beasts,” Netanyahu said in 2016, referring to Palestinians and neighboring Arab states. “At the end of the day, as I see it, there will be a fence like this one surrounding Israel in its entirety.”

Shortly after dawn on Saturday, Hamas terrorists pushed through Netanyahu’s wall in a matter of minutes. And they did it on the relatively cheap, using explosive charges to blow holes in the fence and then sending in bulldozers to widen the breaches as terrorists streamed through on motorcycles and in pick-up trucks.

Cameras and communications gear were bombarded by off-the-shelf commercial drones adapted to drop hand grenades and mortar shells — a tactic borrowed directly from the battlefields of Ukraine.

Snipers took out Israel’s sophisticated roboguns by targeting their exposed ammunition boxes, causing them to explode. Terrorists armed with assault rifles sailed over the Israeli defenses slung under paragliders, providing Hamas airborne troops despite its lack of airplanes. Increasingly sophisticated homemade rockets, capable of striking Tel Aviv, substituted for a lack of heavy artillery.

Damage to the Erez border crossing, a way point between the Gaza Strip and southern Israel after Hamas’s onslaught, October 8, 2023. (Planet Labs PBC via AP)

Satellite images analyzed by the AP show the massive extent of the damage done at the heavily fortified Erez border crossing between Gaza and Israel. The images taken Sunday and analyzed Tuesday showed gaping holes in three sections of the border wall, the largest more than 70 meters (230 feet) wide.

Once the wall was breached, Hamas terrorists streamed through by the hundreds. A video showed a lone Israeli battle tank rushing to the site of the attack, only to be attacked and quickly destroyed in a ball of flames. Hamas then disabled radio towers and radar sites, likely impeding the ability of Israeli commanders to see and understand the extent of the attack.

Hamas attackers also struck a nearby army base near Zikim, engaging in an intense firefight with Israeli troops before overrunning the post. Videos posted by Hamas show graphic scenes with dozens of dead Israeli soldiers.

They then fanned out across the countryside of southern Israel, attacking peaceful kibbutz communities and a music festival, carrying out a slaughter, before the military was able to recover after long hours and stage a response.

On the bodies of some of the terrorists killed during the invasion were found detailed maps showing planned zones and routes of attack, according to images posted by Israeli first responders who recovered some of the corpses. Israeli authorities announced Wednesday they had recovered the bodies of about 1,500 terrorists.

Military experts told the AP the attack showed a level of sophistication not previously exhibited by Hamas, likely suggesting they had external help.

Screenshot of a Hamas video said to show an explosion blowing up part of the Israel-Gaza border fence on October 7, 2023 (via X)

“I just was impressed with Hamas’s ability to use basics and fundamentals to be able to penetrate the wall,” said retired US Army Lt. Col. Stephen Danner, a combat engineer trained to build and breach defenses. “They seemed to be able to find those weak spots and penetrate quickly and then exploit that breach.”

Ali Barakeh, a Beirut-based senior Hamas official, acknowledged that over the years the group had received supplies, financial support, military expertise, and training from its allies abroad, including Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon. But he insisted the recent operation to breach Israel’s border defenses was homegrown, with the exact date and time for the attack known only to a handful of commanders within Hamas.

Details of the operation were kept so tight that some Hamas terrorists who took part in the assault Saturday believed they were heading to just another drill, showing up in street clothes rather than their uniforms, Barakeh said.

In the days since Hamas struck, senior Israeli officials have largely deflected questions about the wall and the apparent intelligence failure. Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the chief spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces, acknowledged the military owes the public an explanation, but said now is not the time.

“First, we fight, then we investigate,” he said.

A live-fire exercise dubbed operation “Strong Pillar” outside Al-Mawasi, a town on the southern coast of the Gaza Strip, on September 12, 2023. (Hamas via AP)

In his push to build border walls, Netanyahu found an enthusiastic partner in then-US president Donald Trump, who praised Netanyahu’s defensive barrier as a potential model for the expanded barrier he had sought for the US southern border with Mexico.

Under Trump, the US expanded a joint initiative with Israel started under the Obama Administration to develop technologies for detecting underground tunnels along the Gaza border defenses. Since 2016, Congress has appropriated $320 million toward the project.

But even with all its high-tech gadgets, the wall was still largely just a physical barrier that could be breached, said Victor Tricaud, a senior analyst with the London-based consulting firm Control Risks.

“The fence, no matter how many sensors … no matter how deep the underground obstacles go, at the end of the day, it’s effectively a metal fence,” he said.

“Explosives, bulldozers can eventually get through it. What was remarkable was Hamas’s capability to keep all the preparations under wraps.”

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