The Fatal Flaw: How Hamas Crippled Israel’s High-Tech Barrier

On October 7, Hamas blew a gaping hole not only in the high-tech barrier separating Gaza from Israel, but, more importantly, in the IDF’s defense posture. The IDF based its defense posture on the use of remote weapon stations called “Ro’ah-Yora (RY),” or “See-and-Shoot.” Each RY consists of a television camera and a remote controlled gun. Both the camera and the gun are controlled from a distant location in some air-conditioned room in some army base. The camera is high-definition. It can see in both day and night, and it can zoom in and out as required by the mission. The concept of operations (CONOPS) goes something like this: 

1. The RY cameras are manned by a team of operators highly trained in reconnaissance.

2. When the operator detects a potential “event,” such as terrorists approaching the barrier, the operator zooms in and detects the number of terrorists as well as their armament.

3. The RY camera automatically tracks the terrorists. 

4. The RY gun automatically slews to the location at the center of the video picture.

5. If required, the operator fires the gun with extremely high accuracy.

Hamas knew about RY, and they had developed a plan to negate the system. By October 7, Hamas had accumulated a large number of DJI Matrice 600 Pro drones. These drones have 6 rotors and can carry quite a large payload. They are available on the internet for only $11,999.00, a small price to pay for a massacre. The only problem with the drones is smuggling them into Gaza, a problem that Hamas found easily surmountable. Hamas armed the drones with grenades and other readily available explosive charges. On the morning of October 7, the drones were launched, and they flew methodically, one-by-one, over each RY station on the barrier, dropping their explosive payload and putting the RY camera out of action. Once RY was put out of action, the IDF was flying blind. You cannot hit what you cannot see. Hamas operatives took advantage of the “darkness” and quickly swarmed out of nearby tunnels, storming and breaching the barrier, and entering Israel. The IDF was completely unaware of Hamas capabilities. They had put all their eggs in one basket, so to say, and in ten minutes, all of their eggs had been smashed.

Counterintuitively, remote cameras could have been used to repulse the Hamas invasion and perhaps even to prevent it. Let me explain. Hamas breached the barrier in four separate locations: One breach in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, near the town of Sederot, another two breaches, immediately north and south of Kibbutz Beeri in the middle of the Strip, and another breach near Kibbutz Magen, in the south of the Strip. From the northern breach, terrorists split up and attacked nearby towns including Kfar Azza and Nahal Oz. From the middle breaches, they attacked Beeri and the Nova Festival near Re’im. From the southern breach, they attacked towns that included Kerem Shalom and Nir Yitzchak. After the barrier was breached, an emergency alarm went out to all towns in the Gaza Envelope that an attack was underway, that the residents should hide in bomb shelters, and that local emergency squads should arm themselves and go to their designated positions. From that moment on, each town was essentially on its own. Each town had to fend for itself until the army showed up. In certain places, the army took more than ten hours to arrive. The main reasons for the delay were chaos and the lack of Situational Awareness (SA). SA, as far as the army is concerned, refers to the ability to identify, process, and comprehend the critical elements of information about an environment, particularly one that is variable and complex. You can only hit something if you know where it is. 

Air Defense lives and breathes on SA. An Iron Dome operator needs to know everything that is flying in the sky: Incoming threats, his own interceptors, and a 787 coming in to land at Ben Gurion Airport. He has to know where he may not overfly, such as over critical military installations and civilian infrastructure. Much of this information changes in real time, so the Iron Dome operator must keep up with the flow of information. On October 7, the IDF lacked SA. They did not have a clear picture of where Hamas terrorists were, how many of them were at any given location, and which direction they were heading. Had they had access to this information, they could have planned a response, sending soldiers to the places where they were needed when they were needed. They could have used SA to predict the location of the next attacks, for instance, at more distant cities such as Netivot and Ofakim.

Iron Dome SA uses a high-powered computer to fuse data from as many sensors as it can get its virtual hands on. It fuses radar data from Air Defense Systems, from airports, both civilian and military, and even from weather radars. The data is processed and an instantaneous “Sky Picture” is produced. This Sky Picture forms the backbone of SA. One can imagine a similar system for a ground-based SA, but where airborne SA requires radars, ground-based SA requires video. A ground-based SA would monitor a slew of video feeds. Sources could include highway cameras, cameras on the perimeter fences of towns, on drones, both civilian and military, on boats in the Mediterranean Sea, and even the cameras from the cell phones of passers-by. First, the data would be geo-located, meaning, determining the geographical location where the camera is looking. Then, real-time video analysis would be performed. The analysis would identify weapons, convoys of vehicles moving at high speed, and large gatherings of people. It would identify not only threats, but also their development. Due to the huge volume of data, the analysis would have to be performed automatically, using Artificial Intelligence (AI). With an SA system in place on October 7, things would have worked as follows: The SA would have scanned videos from the perimeter fences of Kibbutz Kfar Azza and Nahal Oz and from highway cameras on Route 25, connecting the two Kibbutzim with Netivot, and it would have predicted that those 14 pickup trucks with machine guns on the roof speeding at 80 miles an hour were headed for Netivot. Soldiers could have been sent in time to defend the town before the attack took place. Had such an SA been in place on October 7, things would have turned out very differently. The IDF would have known where to send troops, how many troops to send, and how to get there without being fired upon. Moreover, SA could have been used to prevent the massacre altogether. The nights before the massacre, IDF observers noticed strange activity from Hamas, as if they were rehearsing some kind of an attack. When the observers reported this activity to their superiors, they were rebuffed and accused of being alarmists. The last time they tried to alert their superiors was at 2:00 am on October 7, four and a half hours before the attack. IDF brass told them to stand down. Had an SA system been in place, it could have analyzed the video data and determined that the same terrorists were using the same tactics and the same weapons night after night, and that they were, with a high probability, practicing for an imminent attack. IDF troops would have preemptively been sent to the Gaza envelope. Helicopter gunships would have been launched, lying in wait for a Hamas assault. Hamas would either have changed their plans or been defeated.

Not only AI-driven SA systems deployed on Israeli borders, but there is a pressing need for deployment in Judea and Samaria (J&S) as well. “Operation Iron Wall” was started by the IDF on January 21, 2025 to eradicate terrorism in northern Samaria, especially branches of Hamas. The operation began in the Jenin refugee camp but has since expanded to other towns in Samaria, including Tulkarm, Qabatia, and Shechem. Over the past few months, the number of acts of terror in J&S, from shootings to stabbings to Molotov cocktails, has skyrocketed. The Palestinian Authority is either unwilling or unable to stem the violence. The only way to prevent another Gaza-like sovereign terror entity was to forcefully enter local towns.

Operation Iron Wall has uncovered not only terrorists and tools of terror, but it has also uncovered a well-organized and wide-reaching terror infrastructure. The potential for an event similar to the October 7 Massacre in J&S is no longer inconceivable. All Israeli towns in J&S – towns in settlement blocs as well as outposts – as well as Israeli towns near the Green Line, such as Kfar Saba or Hadera, are susceptible to a terror attack coming simultaneously from multiple towns in multiple directions. Having an AI-driven SA system in place would not only identify that a terror attack is taking place, but it could also piece together clues that such an attack is imminent. It could also predict the evolution of an attack that has already begun, enabling the IDF to optimize deployment and to save lives.

The U.S. can benefit greatly from an AI-driven SA system. The border wall between the U.S. and Mexico is designed primarily to prevent illegal entrance into the U.S. of individual aliens, perhaps a busload or two. Like the Gaza barrier, it is not designed to stop a concerted attack. AI-driven SA could enable capabilities on the border previously thought impossible. Deployed in towers across the border wall, on drones deployed across the entire length of the border, and even on ships in the Gulf of America and the Pacific Ocean, it will analyze foot traffic near the wall and traffic patterns on Mexican roads in order to identify potential infiltrations. It will recognize preparations for distributed multi-location acts of terror, and it will recognize armed pickup trucks that need special consideration. With seaborne access to videos of vehicle traffic, not only in Mexico but in countries all across Central America, the SA can recognize evolving trends before they come anywhere near the U.S. – Mexican border.

Development of such an AI-Driven SA is already beginning in Israel. Israel is an AI powerhouse, especially in the fields of SA, image processing, and Physical Security Information Management (SIM). A working system should be up and running within a few years. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has much to gain by collaborating with Israel to secure our borders and the borders of our allies.  

Good things,

Ari Sacher