Hamas conducted a years-long campaign to fool Israel into thinking the group did not desire armed conflict and could be placated with economic incentives to maintain relative calm, a source close to the terror organization told the Reuters news agency Monday.
“Hamas gave Israel the impression that it was not ready for a fight,” the source told the agency.
“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.
The border with Gaza had been relatively quiet in recent months. Hamas sat out a deadly round of fighting between Israel and the smaller Palestinian Islamic Jihad earlier this year. ...
The source said that as part of its preparations, the terror organization built a mock Israeli community to train for the assault in which gunmen went house-to-house in border towns Saturday, killing residents.
“Israel surely saw them but they were convinced that Hamas wasn’t keen on getting into a confrontation,” the source said.
“Hamas was able to build a whole image that it was not ready for a military adventure against Israel,” the source said.
The source said that many leaders of the terror group were not told of the planned attack in order to prevent it leaking to Israel. In addition, the approximately 1,000 terrorists involved in the devastating assault were not told exactly what they were training for.
An unnamed Israeli security source told the news outlet that the security services had fallen for the ruse.
“They caused us to think they wanted money,” the Israeli source said. “And all the time they were involved in exercises or drills until they ran riot.”
The report said that Hamas’s apparent refusal to become involved in recent rounds of fighting, even as Palestinian Islamic Jihad fired rockets at Israel, was part of the subterfuge.
Former national security adviser Yaakov Amidror told Reuters that some countries allied with the Jewish state had bought into the lie, telling Jerusalem that Hamas was showing “more responsibility.”
“We stupidly began to believe that it was true,” he said. “So, we made a mistake...”