“It looks quite similar to what happened at that time,” said retired General Giora Eiland, a former head of Israel’s National Security Council. “As we can see it, Israel was completely surprised, by a very well coordinated attack,” he told a briefing with reporters.
An army spokesman said there would be discussions on the intelligence preparation “down the road” but for the moment the focus was on fighting. “We’ll talk about that when we need to talk about it,” he told a briefing with reporters.
For the past 18 months, Gaza had been relatively quiet, apart from sporadic cross border clashes mainly involving the smaller Islamic Jihad movement, with Hamas remaining largely on the sidelines.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government has always made great play of its security credentials and taken an uncompromising stance towards the Palestinian militant factions including Hamas, which has controlled Gaza since 2007.
(With Reuters inputs)