A CAREFUL campaign of deception ensured Israel was caught off guard when Hamas launched its devastating attack, enabling a force using bulldozers, hang gliders and motorcycles to take on the Middle East's most powerful army.
Saturday's assault, the worst breach in Israel's defences since Arab armies waged war in 1973, followed two years of subterfuge by Hamas that involved keeping its military plans under wraps and convincing Israel it did not want a fight.
While Israel was led to believe it was containing a war-weary Hamas by providing economic incentives to Gazan workers, the group's fighters were being trained and drilled, often in plain sight, a source close to Hamas said.
Three sources within Israel's security establishment also contributed to this account.
"Hamas gave Israel the impression that it was not ready for a fight," said the source close to Hamas, describing plans for the most startling assault since the Yom Kippur War 50 years ago when Egypt and Syria surprised Israel and made it fight for its survival.
"Hamas used an unprecedented intelligence tactic to mislead Israel over the last months, by giving a public impression that it was not willing to go into a fight or confrontation with Israel while preparing for this massive operation," the source said.
Israel concedes it was caught off guard by an attack timed to coincide with the Jewish Sabbath and a religious holiday.
Hamas fighters stormed into Israeli towns, killing 700 Israelis and abducting dozens. Israel has killed more than 400 Palestinians in its retaliation on Gaza since then.
Osama Hamdan, the Hamas representative in Lebanon, told Reuters the attack showed Palestinians had the will to achieve their goals "regardless of Israel's military power and capabilities".
In one of the most striking elements of their preparations, Hamas constructed a mock Israeli settlement in Gaza where they practiced a military landing and trained to storm it. They even made videos of the manoeuvres.
"Israel surely saw them but they were convinced that Hamas wasn't keen on getting into a confrontation," the source said.
Meanwhile, Hamas sought to convince Israel it cared more about ensuring that workers in Gaza, a narrow strip of land with more than two million residents, had access to jobs across the border and had no interest in starting a new war.
An Israeli security source said: "They caused us to think they wanted money," the source said. "And all the time they were involved in exercises/drills until they ran riot."
As part of its subterfuge in the past two years, Hamas refrained from military operations against Israel, even as another Gaza-based Islamist armed group, Islamic Jihad, launched a series of assaults or rocket attacks.
The restraint shown by Hamas drew criticism from some supporters, again aimed at building an impression that Hamas had economic concerns not a new war on its mind, the source said.
A second Israeli security source said, there was a period when Israel believed the movement's leader in Gaza, Yahya Al-Sinwar, was preoccupied with managing Gaza "rather than killing Jews".
When the day came, the operation was divided into four parts, the Hamas source said.
First was a barrage of 3,000 rockets fired from Gaza that coincided with incursions by fighters who flew hang gliders, or motorised paragliders, over the border, the source said.
Once the fighters on hang gliders were on the ground, they secured the terrain so an elite commando unit could storm the fortified electronic and cement wall built by Israel to prevent infiltration.
The fighters used explosives to breach the barriers and then sped across on motorbikes. Bulldozers widened the gaps and more fighters entered in four-wheel-drives, scenes that witnesses described.
A commando unit attacked the Israeli army's southern Gaza headquarters and jammed its communications, preventing personnel from calling commanders or each other, the source said.
The final part involved moving hostages to Gaza, mostly achieved early in the attack, the source close to Hamas said.
In one well-publicised hostage taking, fighters abducted party-goers fleeing a rave near the kibbutz of Re'im near Gaza.
The Israeli security source said Israeli troops were below full strength near Gaza because some had been redeployed to the West Bank to protect Jewish settlers following a surge of violence between them and Palestinians.
"They (Hamas) exploited that," the source said.
The writers are from Reuters news agency
