In the early morning of October 7, 2023, the Al-Qassam Brigades, a member of the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas, took advantage of the Jewish Sabbath to launch Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, the largest attack on Israeli territory in recent years, which resulted in the deaths of 250 Israeli residents, 1,590 injuries, and the hostage-taking of about 150 Israeli women and children. As of October 21, the conflict had resulted in approximately 5,900 deaths (Palestinians: 4,385 in the Gaza Strip, 84 in the West Bank; Israelis: 1,400) and over 20,000 injuries (Palestinians: 14,000 in the Gaza Strip, 1,400 in the West Bank; Israelis: 4,834) on both sides.
In face of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the major countries’ different positions are summarized as follows: 1. The conflicting parties: 1.1 Israel: has no intention of occupying Gaza, but will destroy Hamas. 1.2 Hamas: condemns Israel’s barbaric blockade of Gaza and its prevention of humanitarian aid from reaching the Gaza Strip. 2. Middle East countries: 2.1 Saudi Arabia: full support for Palestine and halts negotiations on normalizing relations with Israel. 2.2 Egypt: all parties should do their utmost to push forward the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and come up with a “viable” solution. 2.3 Iraq: the conflict must be contained and every effort should be made to prevent further expansion of the scope of the conflict targeting civilians, which would threaten regional and international peace and stability. 2.4 Syria: supports the Palestinian people and the forces “fighting against Zionist terrorism.” 2.5 Iran: does not support the expansion of the conflict, but if Israel “continues to commit war crimes”, “other fronts will emerge” in the conflict zone. 2.6 Lebanon: is constantly concerned about the situation in Palestine and Israel, and is ready to take action against Israel when the time is right. 2.7 United Arab Emirates: calls for an “immediate ceasefire” and maximum restraint. 3. Others: 3.1 US: There is no need for the US military to intervene in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and Hamas must be completely destroyed. 3.2 China: Israel and Palestine are mutual friends, calls for an immediate ceasefire to stop the war, and do their best to protect civilians to avoid a humanitarian disaster. 3.3 Russia: is in contact with Israel, Palestine and Arab countries, and calls on all parties to exercise restraint. 3.4 Britain: strongly condemns the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians. 3.5 France: strongly condemns the terrorist attacks on Israel. 3.6 United Nations: strongly condemns the attack on the Gaza regional hospitals and calls for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in the region. 3.7 European Union: the “total blockade” of the Gaza Strip is a violation of international law and calls on all parties to the conflict to ensure that all civilians are protected at all times.
A review of media reports shows that over the past two years, Hamas has engaged in a systematic campaign of strategic deception against Israel, deliberately portraying the organization as being willing to accept Israel’s kid-glove economic policy, avoiding armed conflict, and hoisting the banner of peaceful coexistence and maintaining the status quo. Hamas also used the media to publicize its top leaders staying at five-star hotels in Qatar and were unwilling to return to Gaza, giving Israel the wrong impression that Hamas executives were pursuing materialistic pleasures. During this period, the Israeli army carried out a number of large-scale operations against Gaza, but Hamas deliberately avoided engaging in combat or direct confrontation with Israel, and the Gaza border thus remained relatively peaceful. Moreover, the Hamas leadership has shown itself to be concerned only with obtaining working permits for residents of the Gaza Strip to enter Israel, receive good wages, and improve their lives. In reality, Hamas has spies among the workers to Israel, who conducts long-term reconnaissance of barracks, police stations, surveillance facilities, etc., in order to obtain intelligence on the targets.
In order to prevent the details of the operation from being detected by Israel, except for a small number of people in the Hamas senior management, most of them did not know about the operation and the targets of the attack (the 1,500 people who took part in the operation were not informed of the reason and the targets of the planned attack during training). At the same time, Hamas is actively catching and killing those who may have been acting as Israeli informants. To avoid security breaches by viruses or backdoor programs being implanted in technological products, Hamas has completely abandoned Western-made communication products, computers, and network systems, and has instead adopted the traditional “messenger” to transmit information. On the other hand, Hamas built a mock Israeli settlement in Gaza, where commandos are trained for landings and raids, and successfully misled the Israeli army into believing attacks from the sea by the Hamas.
Hamas successfully bypassed the Israeli surveillance by using digital currency to receive financial contributions from donors and underground smuggling to import the necessary military materials. In two years’ time, Hamas constructed 10 launching pads of 10, 45, 80, 160 and 250 km of 5-tier tactical missiles and long-range multiple rocket launchers, and manufactured tens of thousands of long-range multiple rockets and short-range missiles.
Israel’s missile defense system consists of the Iron Dome for short-range and low-altitude defense, the Magic Wand or Davis’s Sling for mid-altitude defense, and the Arrow 3 missile system for high-altitude defense. Since its deployment in March 2011, the Iron Dome has gone through a number of battlefield tests, and the interception rate of missiles has increased from 85% to 90%. The Iron Dome consists of reconnaissance equipment, multi-functional radar, control system, launchers and transportation vehicles. One Iron Dome consists of 4 to 5 launchers, with each launcher containing 20 Tammer interceptor missiles. A single launcher can protect an area of strategic facilities in a medium-sized city, while a single Iron Dome can defend an area of 150 square kilometers. The cost of an Iron Dome is 50 million USD, and the cost of a missile is 50,000 USD, while the cost of a Hamas rocket is only about 300 to 800 USD. Hamas has identified “saturation attack” as the fatal weakness of the Iron Dome through actual combat experience.
Israel has spent huge sums of money on the construction of isolation walls in Gaza, which is covered with all kinds of sensors, monitors and towers of unmanned intelligent machine guns. Israeli authorities use satellite surveillance and electronic signals (including communications, cell phones, and networks) to monitor activities outside the wall and in the Gaza area 24 hours a day. After long-term observation and study of Israel’s surveillance behavior, Hamas has identified the weakness of Israel’s intelligence gathering, which is its over-reliance on and trust in technological means of detection (Israeli soldiers once warned their superiors about abnormal Hamas activities around the Wall, but were ignored.) Technological detection does what it is told to do, but they need to be interpreted to determine whether they are real or just deceiving tactics. In fact, Hamas succeeded in deceiving Israeli authorities by continuously removing Israeli informants internally. As a result, there is no Israel informants in the top level of Hamas. In other words, “human intelligence” is still the key factor in winning both intelligence wars and wars, and the value of “human intelligence” can never be replaced by “technological intelligence.”
In short, Hamas’ strategy and deception had successfully misled the Israeli army and intelligence agency. At the same time, the Israeli intelligence agency overly relied on various technological detection systems and believed in the intelligence they received, and the Israeli army overlooked all the signs revealed before Hamas’s surprise attack. In other words, the many mistakes and coincidences created an opportunity for Hamas to succeed in its raid on Israel.
From Hamas’ “strategy and deception”, we can reflect on the fact that, in the face of the China’s various forms of threat, in addition to the “joint intelligence surveillance and detection”, we should continue to strengthen various kinds of intelligence gathering, especially the deployment and counter-insurgency of the “human intelligence” insiders, through which we can grasp the internal activities and the real-time information, as well as to verify the authenticity, accuracy, and reliability of various kinds of scientific and technological intelligence. In addition, in recent years, Chinese warships and aircrafts have been training in the southwestern airspace of our Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ), constantly crossing the “Taiwan Strait Centerline,” or conducting joint military exercises around Taiwan. In addition to being a military threat to us, they are very likely to take the opportunity to collect information on the characteristics and weaknesses of our “Joint Intelligence Surveillance and Detection” (JISD) system, the response time of our navy and air force, and our countermeasure tactics and maneuvers. It is worthwhile for us to raise our alert and strengthen our intelligence gathering of the Chinese army.
（Yang Tai-yuan, Contract Research Fellow, Institute of Chinese Communist Studies)
(Translated to English by Chen Cheng-Yi)
