How Hamas managed to launch a brutal terrorist offensive without any foreknowledge inside Israel’s formidable intelligence services will be the subject of inquiries and soul-searching for years to come. To pull off such a feat will have required absolute secrecy among a tiny leadership group, giving last-minute orders to their followers and working only by word of mouth. But it also needed complacency and distraction in Israel’s leadership.
The intense political divisions in Israel made these attacks opportune, and the approach of a deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia made them urgent. Mossad officers might be blamed for missing the signs but Prime Minister Netanyahu and his cabinet should have been on alert for something like this.
While the question of how this happened will
