The American Wall Street Journal said, on Wednesday, that intelligence agencies in the United States stopped spying on Hamas and other Palestinian factions in the years following the September 11 attacks in 2001.
Instead, American intelligence focused its efforts on pursuing the leaders of Al-Qaeda and later ISIS, according to what the newspaper quoted American officials whose names were not revealed.
This matter, according to these unknown officials, was the result of American calculations that concluded that Hamas would not threaten the United States, in addition to the presence of other intelligence priorities.
American betting
Washington worked to transfer responsibility for tracking Hamas’ activities to Israel, due to its confidence that the Israeli intelligence services are strong and can detect any threat, according to American officials.
But on the morning of October 7, it became clear that this estimate was very wrong, as these Israeli security services did not have the slightest information that the movement was preparing to launch a war through a sudden and unprecedented attack, and they also did not notice the movement of thousands of fighters within meters of its borders.
One of the officials told the newspaper: “It should have been a wise bet,” referring to America’s dependence on Israel.
“Consequences of dependence on Israel”
American officials say that the United States miscalculated the threat facing American national security, especially since the Hamas attack resulted in the death and loss of dozens of Americans, in addition to forcing it to move war parts and equipment worth billions of dollars to the Middle East, in addition to the possibility of the outbreak of a regional war.
Mark Polymeropoulos, a former operations officer at the CIA, notes: “With regard to the intelligence failures, most of which fall on Israel, I think we have to acknowledge that we bear some responsibility for not knowing about this event (the massive Hamas attack).” .
He concluded that “giving up on this goal (spying on Hamas) in favor of Israel had consequences.”
According to current and former officials in intelligence agencies, especially the CIA, there were few analysts following events in the besieged and impoverished Gaza Strip, before the attack.
It relied on Israeli intelligence to infiltrate Hamas through human sources and electronic eavesdropping groups.
Israeli leaders admitted failure against Hamas
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2023-11-01 07:30:58
