
A special conference will be held tomorrow (Thursday) in which former intelligence officials will take part and will deal with the challenge of gathering human intelligence for the purposes of counter-terrorism. Among the speakers will also be Arik Barbing, the former head of the Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria sector at the Shin Bet security agency. We talked to him about the intelligence blindness that preceded the morning of the massacre.
Barbing stated that he does not understand the intelligence blindness that gripped the officials entrusted with the intelligence before the morning of October 7. "I don't understand this blindness. To understand it in depth, you need to carry out investigations of all the areas that make up the intelligence picture, it's the human element, the technology, the cameras, the investigations, and especially how all these details are connected in one place to get a broad intelligence picture."
"One has to ask what happened when blindness was created for years regarding the situation and preparations for war by Hamas," he said, noting that he personally "has known the operational plan of Hamas for years. Without going into detail, the plan was known and they understood the idea of Hamas' plans. Of course, they didn't know the timing, but there was a plan. In the end, Hamas is the most significant adversary in the Gaza Strip. It is both an enemy and an intelligence adversary because it makes efforts to prevent the infiltration of agents into its ranks and also to prevent technological infiltration. At the same time, the broad picture and the level of threat on the eve of October 7th were not sharp and clear enough, and this should be investigated in depth."
"There are two layers," Barbing said of how a plan involving thousands of attackers that required months of training and planning could be so completely missed. "One layer is the professional layer of the sources of information. When most of your information comes from a certain source, a human source or technology or cameras, etc., when you rely on sources of a certain type and find it difficult to make cross-references and strengthen or distort information through other sources, you may get a distorted picture of the opponent's situation."
"But wherever there are technological capabilities, there must also be human sources because people have a sense of smell, hearing, and sight and they also speak. Connections of this type are critical to obtaining a broad intelligence picture and may bring telltale signs that are much stronger than the telltale signs that were in the hands of the security establishment that evening And in the hands of the security service," he said.
When asked if the security establishment has these sources in the Gaza Strip after it left the Strip and if the situation that currently exists in Judea and Samaria be recreated in the Gaza Strip where the IDF was not present before October 7, he replied, "There was an Operation Protective Shield in Judea and Samaria, and since then Israel has had full intelligence and operational control in Judea and Samaria. In addition, there are Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria and traffic on the roads, which requires complete hermeticity in terms of the ability to bring security. Therefore, the operation of intelligence is simpler. There is a wider range of information because the area is under our military and security control."
However, Barbing emphasized that he opposes the reestablishment of settlements in the Gaza Strip, but nevertheless it is clear to him that without real intelligence and operational superiority there would be no point in returning the residents of the Gaza periphery to their homes. Without such control, necessary operations will not be able to be carried out. "When intelligence comes in like the intelligence on Shifa hospital that exists now, which leads to targeted operations and the killing of hundreds of Hamas members, arresting suspects, finding intelligence disks, it is a long war and we must have a strong grip on the ground. You cannot operate only with planes and drones. You have to put your feet in the mud."
"One of the significant takeaways is that if you have an armed and brutal militia, you have no alternative to staying in the area for many years to remove the threat, and when you remove the threat, you have to hand over the area to another party to administer it civilly", he said, pointing out that in his view it would be wrong for Israel to re-establish the Civil Administration in the Strip.
Barbing added that action is required to carve up the Strip between north and south and create a security space there under Israeli control. As for the borders, he mentioned Israel's control of the sea and at the same time the need to reach arrangements with the Egyptians regarding the border between the Strip and Egypt in order to prevent smuggling of weapons. "Hamas will return very quickly because it is an organization that knows how to rehabilitate itself and carry out operations quickly, and this will happen if we are outside the territory. That is why in the next decade we need to be in the Strip in one way or another, to ensure that intelligence received in the morning is translated in the evening into a thwarting and prevention operation. Otherwise, we will return to what was before us in recent years."