Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of October 7, suffered from his own intelligence failure: he didn’t realize that Israel's unity and solidarity are no more than a facade
For nearly ten months, Israel has been living under a heavy shadow of deep anxiety: How, we, the Israelis, ask ourselves, did the worst intelligence failure in Israel's history occur? How, despite the bitter lesson we learned in 1973, did it happen to us again?
Faced with this burning failure, the Israelis must admit with great sorrow: We were up against a sophisticated leader who planned his murderous attack on us with meticulous attention to the smallest details. Yahya Sinwar knew us intimately. He understood us.
He was only 20 when he was first placed in an Israeli prison for a short period, and he was almost 50 when he was released for the final time. These years shaped him into a ruthless and cruel leader. He learned Hebrew fluently and read all the newspapers daily. He gave interviews in Hebrew. Israel saved his life from a cancerous growth in his brain and treated his teeth – a twisted blood pact between enemies.
Most Israelis don't speak Arabic. They know nothing about Palestinian society, or have any idea of its mood. Unlike the Israelis, who roll the dice in backgammon, Sinwar is a cold-blooded and calculated chess player who knows all the openings and gambits thoroughly on the way to the terrorists' checkmate.
Except, all this is not accurate. Sinwar, almost like us, his close enemies, experienced a colossal intelligence failure. He, too, was captive within a misconception. He, too, fell because of it.
In a profile article published in the “Wall Street Journal” after the war began, Dr. Yuval Bitton – former head of intelligence at the Israel Prison Service who has hundreds of hours with Sinwar – explained that the Hamas leader believes that mandatory service and reserve duty in Israel is actually a weakness that he could exploit. According to Sinwar, the special place the military holds in Israelis hearts turns every capture of a soldier into a strategic asset. Israel, according to that perception, will do everything and pay everything for its prisoners. This realization was proven correct for Sinwar in the most personal way: He was released as part of the Shalit deal.
But Sinwar, perhaps because of the long stay in the tunnels, did not update his intelligence. His assumptions about Israel, which may have been correct for 2011 when the Shalit deal was signed, were no longer relevant in and after October 2023. This was his strategic mistake:
The Israeli cohesion, which impressed the Hamas people, did not exist. “One people?” “We're all brothers?” “United We’ll Win?” You were naive, Sinwar: Today, there are several nations here. There are people who demonstrate for the hostages and prisoners and week after week suffer severe violence from the police and from passersby, and there are people who curse the families of the hostages and are sure that the events since October 7 were an open miracle, the first steps of the Messiah. There are people whose lives stopped on October 7: reservists in endless service, families who were uprooted – homeless, without a past and without a present and future, small business owners on the verge of collapse; and there are people convinced that the attack was an inside job, and mocks the military that is stretched thin for its failures.
Now, as Netanyahu continues to delay the hostage deal endlessly. Even torture videos of the hostages do not soften his or his supporters’ hearts. After Gaza has suffered tens of thousands of casualties and is immersed in ruins, it's worth returning to the interview given by Saleh al-Arouri after the Shalit deal. In it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPYlnXmoFA0), al-Arouri (the head of Hamas' military wing, who was eliminated in Beirut in January this year) explained in Hebrew why Israeli sensitivity to the lives of soldiers and civilians, that famous cohesion, is "a point of strength for Israeli society. I wish you didn't have it. For me, as your enemy, it's better, and I would be happy if Israelis reach a state where they don't care about the soldier or the citizen. This will harm the military and the entire Israeli society."
Sinwar didn't understand that the scenario al-Arouri talked about had arrived, perhaps faster than expected. He hoped to strike Israel hard and strike a quick deal that would release all prisoners and present him as the victor and the great liberator—but he was mistaken.
Sinwar didn't understand that "United We'll Win" is nothing but an empty slogan, a deception of solidarity, intended to blind the public, and normalize the immeasurable abandonment. The desertion of the hostages, the tearing of the most basic value that brought together the people who built their home in Zion. The indication that we have become a diaspora in our land: From a people without a land, to a land without a people.