Israel-Hamas: Intelligence failures before October 7 and the current risks of escalation
Katie Couric just did an interview with Richard Haass, longtime Chair of the stereotypically establishment Council on Foreign Relations, on the current Israel-Gaza crisis.1 The first 13 minutes, Haass mostly repeats boilerplate US diplomatic positions on Israel and Hamas. But then he gets into a more practical analysis of Israel’s situation and Biden’s response that is more informative. And he’s obviously very concerned about the risks of a wider war.
William Arkin writes about intelligence failures involved prior to the October 7 Hamas attack that Haass also discusses, calling it “a military and intelligence failure of the first order.” (Just after 16:20 in the video)
William Arkin has been one of the best national sevcurity reporters for a long time. In this new piece, he asks the very good question of why, with extensive US and Israeli military military and intelligence capabilities employed in Israel, if both countries used the information and resources they had to protect their own citizens in Israel. It's a good reminder that Americans maybe should not regard the Israeli intelligence service intelligence services as the super-duper operations that almost everyone takes them to be.
It's not as though American diplomats and intelligence have been ignoring things in that region entirely. It's worth remembering in this connection that the massive protests by Israeli citizens this year were not just about Natanyahu's attempt at what amounts to a political coup against the independence of the courts. They were also protesting some his senior appointments who appear to be bozos. I know some people always say that, but it appears to be true for some of them.
The reason, that official and others say, is that in the overall list of priorities, even in the Middle East, Israel ranks behind countries like Syria and Iraq where American troops are already engaged in combat. [Yes, the US still has active military engagements in Iraq and Syria.] Hamas in particular, officials say, is mostly the responsibility of Israeli intelligence, and the United States relies upon Israel for most of its inside information on the group. where the United States is dependent. Third, the U.S. collects far more than it is able to analyze about Israel and elsewhere, an endemic problem, and one that has dogged the system for decades and is only getting worse.
Obviously, Israel is not some obscure country to U.S. intelligence: The political situation in Israel itself is a high priority for the CIA and other agencies. The Iranian threat to Israel and the region has become one of four national intelligence priorities for the Pentagon, especially as the military alliance between the two countries transformed in the first two years of the Biden administration. The United States has hundreds of troops and contractors in the country and maintains a half dozen secret bases. And constant military deployments and high-level visits formalize the internal mission of 'force protection,' the Pentagon's term used to refer to the program to safeguard U.S. personnel worldwide against potential terrorist attack.2
Alan Pinkas views President Biden’s visit to Israel at the current moment as having very much to do with concerns about escalation and widening of the war into a regional one:
First, the United States seems to have concluded that it needs to closely supervise events. Ostensibly, the prime U.S. interest is to “prevent the spread of the conflict” and contain possible escalation. To that end, it feels that, simultaneous with an outpouring of support, it needs to check Israel. Biden has warned several times that a prolonged ground operation in Gaza, and an eventual reoccupation of the Gaza Strip, may have dire repercussions and would reverberate badly – and not just for Israel. …
Second, this a show of no-confidence in the quality of Israel’s decision-making and anxiety over the absence of a clear strategy or exit strategy. The Americans support, fully understand and justify a fierce Israeli retaliation. This is about restoring a diminished deterrence as much as it is about getting justice.
Biden spoke of Israel’s response in terms of it being almost a moral imperative. But the Americans have little trust in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. His egregious bravado, arrogance, manipulations and dismissive attitude toward the United States are a matter of record. His credibility has been particularly tarnished after a year in which he instigated a constitutional coup in Israel – the reason Biden has not yet invited him to the White House.
He points out that Secretary of State Anthony Blinken took the apparently unprecedented action of meeting with the Israeli War Cabinet. NBC News reports:
While Secretary of State Antony Blinken huddled with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday at the Kirya — Israel's version of the Pentagon — air raid sirens warned citizens in surrounding Tel Aviv neighborhoods to shelter in place.
Blinken, Netanyahu and the Israeli war Cabinet were forced to hide in a bunker for five minutes before moving their meeting to an underground military command center, an indelible reminder of the fragility of life near the front lines.
After nine hours of discussions, some with his Israeli counterparts and some with his U.S. team, Blinken emerged to say that President Joe Biden would visit Israel on Wednesday to demonstrate America's "ironclad commitment" to Israel's security and that Netanyahu had promised to work to secure humanitarian assistance for Palestinians.
Pinkas asks, “Since when does the secretary of state of the United States participate, for several hours, in an Israeli cabinet meeting? In 1973 [the Yom Kippur War], then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger briefed Golda Meir’s cabinet, but didn’t actually participate.”
He sees the guiding principles in Biden’s current policy this way:
There are three overriding strategic U.S. interests currently governing American foreign policy: assisting Ukraine and standing up to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion while strengthening NATO; building alliances in the Indo-Pacific to address what the United States defines as its greatest challenge and priority for the next few decades – China; and maintaining stability in the Middle East that deters Iran.
The Biden Administration has been too indulgent of the sadly common American foreign policy framing of Good vs. Evil, aka, Democracies vs. Autocracies. US interests are not identical with those of Israel or Ukraine. So even when the US is actively supporting them in some kind of war, it would be irresponsible to actually give them a whatever-it-takes blank check to do whatever they want in their war.
The downside risk of the Administration associating itself this closely with Israel’s military planning is that it can plausibly be accused of sanctioning and even planning any atrocities that occur in Israel’s military campaign against Gaza. Although at this point it’s more appropriate to say “the atrocities that are occurring.”
Israel Palestine and the implications for a wider war. Katie Couric YouTube channel 10/17/2023. (Accessed: 2023-18-10).
How the U.S. Secret Presence in Israel Missed the Hamas Attack. Newsweek 10/13/2023. <https://www.newsweek.com/how-us-secret-presence-israel-missed-hamas-attack-1834653> (Accessed: 2023-18-10).