Israel’s intel failure is 'bad for business'

The sheer scale and intensity of the Palestinian resistance's Operation Al-Aqsa Flood took Israel and the world by surprise last week. Even seasoned western intelligence agency veterans, who possess intimate knowledge of Israel's surveillance capabilities, struggled to provide any plausible explanation for the glaring security gaps. Academics with decades of research on the conflict, also admitted they are none the wiser: “Honestly I have no f'ing clue what's going on. What this means. Or where this heads. Literally anything is possible,” tweeted an Associate Fellow at “the world's oldest and the UK's leading defense and security think tank,” the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).

US officials were notably evasive when asked if this amounted to an epic "intelligence failure." Mainstream news outlets openly pondered how Tel Aviv could have missed the Palestinians' elaborate plans while conspiracy theories quickly spread online to suggest that Israel may have intentionally allowed the incursion to occur - as if the Occupation state ever required an excuse to pulverize Gaza.

A Financial Times report on the fiasco alleged that Israel “has built the most formidable intelligence service in the region and established a network of informants throughout the Palestinian territories, as well as in hostile neighbors” such as Iran, Lebanon, and Syria. Yet, despite this apparently formidable fifth column and Tel Aviv's construction of “a high-security barrier around Hamas’ stronghold in hemmed-in Gaza - buttressed by motion sensors and extending deep under the ground” - hundreds of Palestinian fighters were able to breach those defenses without difficulty.

This they did from multiple fronts, using boats, tunnels, motorbikes, and paragliders, infiltrating ten occupation army bases, and killing hundreds of sleeping Israeli troops. Al-Aqsa Flood involved arranging multiple rocket launch systems, ground forces, vehicles, and other equipment in sensitive positions in advance of its execution, leaving resistance fighters and their equipment exposed to surveillance from assorted angles, yet they were neither detected nor intercepted.

Tel Aviv has invested billions of dollars in constructing its reputation, and has routinely boasted in the years prior that it was among the most heavily fortified and defended countries in the world. In the event, the technology was rendered totally useless, their extensive constituent cameras, sensors, and other systems not identifying the attack or perpetrators. Meanwhile, drones blitzed automatic machine guns and electronic guard towers, as the Palestinian resistance blew up fences and entered into Israel.

But beyond the military and settler losses endured by the Occupation state, the broader psychological impact of this Palestinian guerilla operation is profound. And it comes on the back of two years of relentless, and often successful, foreign hacking operations that have penetrated Israel's toughest firewalls across critical institutions - including the country's Ministry of Defense.

Last year, the Times of Israel reported that in 2021, the country’s overall cybersecurity exports were estimated at $11 billion. In addition, 33 percent of cyber unicorn companies operate from Israel, and a whopping 40 percent of global private cyber investments have been funneled into the country, according to the Israeli government. From Tel Aviv's perspective, the exposure of their electronic surveillance and warfare systems as ineffective and vulnerable to guerrilla attacks is a serious blow to Israel's "Startup Nation" brand, which relies heavily on its multi-billion-dollar tech sector - with cybersecurity at its core.

Mere days before Operation al-Aqsa Flood commenced, Israeli media reported on a “record-breaking spike” in countries buying Israeli cyber warfare and intelligence systems from 67 to 83 over 2022, and marketing licenses for these wares granted to 126 countries. This followed a “dramatic decline” in 2021, precipitated by the exposure of widespread use of Pegasus by repressive governments, and NSO and Candiru being blacklisted by Washington. It seems likely the events of recent days will also lead to a significant decline in the fortunes of Israel’s cybersecurity sector. Gaza is, by design, an open-air concentration camp, and in theory, nothing and no one gets in or out without Tel Aviv’s authorization and knowledge. However, this time, the supposed internal surveillance system failed catastrophically.