The Israel Defense Forces believed, prior to the October 7 onslaught, that the Hamas terror group in Gaza did not pose a significant threat to Israel, that the group was uninterested in a large-scale war, that its tunnel networks had been significantly degraded, and that any cross-border threat would be thwarted by Israel’s high-tech border fence.

The IDF, as part of its investigations into its failures during the lead-up to October 7, looked into its perceptions of the threat from the Gaza Strip.

The investigations, which went as far back as the 2014 Gaza War, found that the perceptions of the IDF and the State of Israel with regard to Gaza dictated and shaped their policies toward the Strip and Hamas over the years.

The investigations highlighted a growing gap between the IDF’s perceptions of Hamas, and what the terror group was doing in reality.

The perceptions almost entirely fell apart with the October 7 attack, which claimed the lives of more than 1,200 people in Israel, with another 251 people kidnapped, and much of the area devastated. Most victims were civilians.

Multiple units at the General Staff level, the top command of the military, investigated the IDF’s perceptions, and they were presented to The Times of Israel and other reporters packaged together.

The investigations found that the State of Israel, including both political and defense echelons, believed or carried out the following, due to their perception of Gaza:

1. Over the past decades, Israel considered the threats from Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon to be the priority, while the Gaza Strip was secondary. The policy vis-à-vis Gaza was paradoxical, as Israel declared Hamas to not be a legitimate partner for a peace agreement, while also not working to create an alternative to its rule in the Strip.
2. Israel chose to “manage the conflict” with Hamas, to create long periods of quiet, under the false presumption that the terror group was uninterested in a large-scale war. There were no plans to conquer the Gaza Strip in a war, and there were no plans to reach a full diplomatic agreement with the terror group either, but rather return to normalcy after periodic escalation. Israel believed that leveraging improved civil conditions in Gaza would make Hamas less likely to launch a war. Israel worked to have defenses ready for rounds of conflicts lasting several days and the possibility of it deteriorating into a war, during which the IDF could attack and degrade Hamas’s force build-up. At the same time, Israel worked to reach some level of agreements with Hamas to improve the civil conditions in the Strip. In hindsight, Hamas’s efforts to reach understandings with Israel were part of a deception campaign to trick Israel into thinking it was uninterested in war.
3. The threat of a surprise and wide-scale attack from Gaza was not perceived as realistic by the IDF, due to a major gap in Israel’s understanding of Hamas. The IDF believed Hamas to be a limited threat, in the event of it responding to incidents, rather than taking initiative. The IDF believed that, if Hamas were going to have initiated an attack, there would have been an early warning. The 2021 Gaza War marked a time when Israel’s gaps in understanding Hamas widened further, and it held a false belief that the IDF’s action was successful deterrence against the terror group taking action. Meanwhile, Hamas gained confidence, a sense of ability, and an opportunity to initiate a multi-front war against Israel. The IDF failed to understand that Hamas was serious about destroying Israel, as it openly stated.
4. The most significant threat from the Gaza Strip, as seen by the IDF at the time, was rocket fire. At the same time, Hamas’s invasion capability was seen by the military as very limited, due to Israel’s advanced border fence and the false belief that the IDF had successfully destroyed significant elements of the terror group’s tunnel networks in the 2021 Gaza War. The IDF focused on the rocket threat, under the assumption that the military’s intelligence capabilities, along with the border fence, heavily limited Hamas from carrying out a large-scale invasion.
5. The IDF believed that it could either restrain Hamas or degrade its capabilities, even without a major war. This perception developed due to Israel’s largely successful efforts against Iran’s presence in Syria, known as the “campaign between campaigns,” or Mabam, where the military was carrying out near-daily successful operations below the threshold of war.
6. The IDF believed it could provide defenses against Hamas based on intelligence, the high-tech border fence, and troop deployment.
7. Israel’s fence on the border with the Gaza Strip was not intended to prevent a large-scale invasion, but to handle rioting on the border, and delay or disrupt limited infiltration attacks. The IDF had excessive confidence in the border fence, which also led to reducing the troop deployment on the border.
8. The IDF believed that Israel’s next war would be a multi-front one, and in recent years made efforts to prepare for such a scenario. In hindsight, Israel’s enemies were far more prepared for a multi-front war than the IDF had assessed, to the point where the Iran-led axis had formulated plans to destroy Israel.

The investigations drew the following conclusions:

1. The State of Israel and the Israeli defense establishment arrived at the October 7 attack with a set of beliefs that dictated their strategy vis-à-vis the Gaza Strip.
2. On October 7, major parts of Israel’s perception of Gaza fell apart, including the belief that the conflict with Hamas could be “managed”; that Hamas would not initiate a large-scale and surprise ground invasion; that the intelligence would provide an early warning; and that the border fence and troops could defend against an attack.
3. Israel’s perceptions of Gaza were “rooted and deep.” Over the years there were no meaningful attempts to question the perceptions, and no proper investigation was held to think “Where are we wrong?”

The investigations stated the following lessons to be learned:

1. It is incorrect for the IDF to “manage the conflict” with an enemy that has declared its intent to destroy Israel. Hamas took advantage of Israel’s conflict management to advance its surprise attack.
2. The IDF should work to prevent any imminent or significant threat, especially one developing on a border, and priority should be given to removing the threat, rather than achieving a limited period of quiet.
3. The IDF should prevent the next threat by identifying developing threats, as seen in Hamas changing its infiltration attacks using tunnels to an above-ground invasion.
4. The IDF should correctly use the border fence with Gaza combined with the relevant amount of surveillance capabilities, firepower, and personnel. A lack of any of these three components leads to the border fence being significantly unbeneficial.
5. Given the growing number of threats to Israel, the IDF must increase its resources and capabilities.
6. The IDF requires a mechanism that examines and questions the strategic, intelligence and operational perceptions.
7. The IDF should increase and expedite its force build-up for a large-scale multi-front war.