How Hamas managed to plan devastating attack while keeping Israel’s spy agencies in the dark

Several dozen Hamas fighters also used hang gliders and mechanised parachute gliders to get deep into Israeli territory before beginning their rampage.

Experts believe that Hamas also decided to use some of its ‘air-borne’ fighters to attack the musical festival near the Gaza Strip to maximise casualties and hostages. Several videos on the Internet show the paragliders flying over the festival as party-goers look on without realising what was happening.
There are also reports that some Hamas fighters tried to reach Israel via the open ocean in motorised dinghies but were quickly neutralised by the Israeli navy.
‘They got us’
Israel concedes it was caught off guard by an attack timed to coincide with the Jewish Sabbath and a religious holiday.
“This is our 9/11,” said Major Nir Dinar, spokesperson for the Israeli Defence Forces. “They got us … They surprised us and they came fast from many spots – both from the air and the ground and the sea.”
No leaks, even fighters kept in the dark
Israel has long prided itself on its ability to infiltrate and monitor Islamist groups.
As a consequence, a crucial part of the terrorist organisation’s plan was to avoid leaks, said a report by Reuters citing a source close to Hamas.
Many Hamas leaders were unaware of the plans and, while training, the 1,000 fighters deployed in the assault had no inkling of the exact purpose of the exercises.

Operation divided into four parts
When the day came, the operation was divided into four parts, the Hamas source said.
The first move was a barrage of 3,000 rockets fired from Gaza that coincided with incursions by fighters who flew hang gliders, or motorised paragliders, over the border, the source said.
Once the fighters on hang-gliders were on the ground, they secured the terrain so an elite commando unit could storm the fortified electronic and cement wall built by Israel to prevent infiltration.
The fighters used explosives to breach the barriers and then sped across on motorbikes. Bulldozers widened the gaps and more fighters entered in four-wheel drives.
Hamas misled Israel
Several experts say Saturday’s assault, the worst breach in Israel’s defences since Arab armies waged war in 1973, followed two years of subterfuge by Hamas that involved keeping its military plans under wraps and convincing Israel it did not want a fight.
While Israel was led to believe it was containing a war-weary Hamas by providing economic incentives to Gazan workers, the group’s fighters were being trained and drilled, often in plain sight, said a Reuters report citing a source close to Hamas.
“Hamas gave Israel the impression that it was not ready for a fight,” the source said, adding: “Hamas used an unprecedented intelligence tactic to mislead Israel over the last months, by giving a public impression that it was not willing to get into a fight with Israel while preparing for this massive operation.”
Hamas built mock Israeli settlement for training fighters
In one of the most striking elements of their preparations, Hamas constructed a mock Israeli settlement in Gaza where they practiced a military landing and trained to storm it, the source close to Hamas said, adding they even made videos of the manoeuvres.
“Israel surely saw them but they were convinced that Hamas wasn’t keen on getting into a confrontation,” the source said.
Meanwhile, Hamas sought to convince Israel it cared more about ensuring that workers in Gaza, a narrow strip of land with more than two million residents, had access to jobs across the border and had no interest in starting a new war.
“Hamas was able to build a whole image that it was not ready for a military adventure against Israel,” the source said.
Israel turned a blind eye
Many experts also believe that the Benjamin Netanyahu government purposefully ignored incidents of Hamas fighters training and doing drills in order to maintain its fragile ceasefire with the organisation.
In the past, Netanyahu has reportedly said that those who oppose a Palestinian state should support the transfer of funds to Gaza, as maintaining separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Turning a blind eye to what Israel might have considered minor terror incidents was part of the policy to keep pumping funds into the Gaza Strip by issuing work permits, all in order to maintain a fragile peace while undermining any efforts by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas to establish a proper state.
Work permits
Since a 2021 war with Hamas, Israel has sought to provide a basic level of economic stability in Gaza by offering incentives including thousands of permits so Gazans can work in Israel or the West Bank, where salaries in construction, agriculture or service jobs can be 10 times the level of pay in Gaza.

“We believed that the fact that they were coming in to work and bringing money into Gaza would create a certain level of calm. We were wrong,” another Israeli army spokesperson said.
An Israeli security source acknowledged Israel’s security services were duped by Hamas. “They caused us to think they wanted money,” the source said. “And all the time they were involved in exercises/drills until they ran riot.”
Hamas practiced restraint
As part of its subterfuge in the past two years, Hamas refrained from military operations against Israel, even as another Gaza-based Islamist armed group known as Islamic Jihad launched a series of its own assaults or rocket attacks.
So convincing was Hamas’ image of not wanting to fight Israel that many of its own supporters started to question the group’s abilities.
Abbas and his Fatah group even mocked Hamas for going quiet. In one Fatah statement in June 2022, the group accused Hamas leaders of fleeing to Arab capitals to live in “luxurious hotels and villas” leaving their people to poverty in Gaza.
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