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Israeli Intelligence Predicted Hamas Attack, Netanyahu Ignored Warning

The destruction left by the Israeli airstrikes on the city of Gaza on Nov. 8. (AFP)
The destruction left by the Israeli airstrikes on the city of Gaza on Nov. 8. (AFP)
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Israeli Intelligence Predicted Hamas Attack, Netanyahu Ignored Warning

The destruction left by the Israeli airstrikes on the city of Gaza on Nov. 8. (AFP)
The destruction left by the Israeli airstrikes on the city of Gaza on Nov. 8. (AFP)

Two documents surfaced in Tel Aviv on Tuesday, revealing that the research division of the Israeli military intelligence, known as Aman, had predicted an impending attack by either Hamas or Hezbollah, or both, in 2023.

A warning about this was communicated to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

However, it seems that Netanyahu paid little attention and took no action to alter his policy that encourages Palestinian movements or the Lebanon-based Hezbollah to plan attacks.

The head of the research division at Aman personally warned Netanyahu in letters sent to him in March and July that the sociopolitical crisis that rocked Israel was encouraging Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas to risk action against Israel, even simultaneously.

Brigadier General Amit Sa’ar wrote to Netanyahu on March 19, a week before the first attempt to confirm the judicial overhaul legislation, and the attempted dismissal of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and again on July 16, a week before the Knesset vote on repealing the “reasonableness standard”.

He attached raw intelligence reports to each of the letters, which were published by the Haaretz daily. The reports contained a brief analysis warning of an impending danger of military escalation.

The first letter was sent with the heading, “The view from over there – how is Israel perceived in the [regional] system?” Sa’ar noted that “all actors in the systems indicate that Israel is in a blistering, unprecedented crisis threatening its cohesion and weakening it for our main enemies, Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas.”

“This weakness is an expression of a process ending in the collapse of Israel, and the current situation is an opportunity to accelerate and deepen its distress.”

Sa’ar clarified that “this analysis is not an interpretive view of reality, but the basis for a situation assessment by leadership figures, intelligence, and communications systems. It is already leading to changes in decision-making and risk-taking of various actors, who analyze and deduce implications from Israel’s internal condition.”

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Shining Light on Austin Tice who Went Missing in Syria

A banner for journalist Austin Tice, who disappeared while reporting in Syria in 2012, hangs outside the National Press Club building in Washington, US, May 2, 2023. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File phot
A banner for journalist Austin Tice, who disappeared while reporting in Syria in 2012, hangs outside the National Press Club building in Washington, US, May 2, 2023. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File phot
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Shining Light on Austin Tice who Went Missing in Syria

A banner for journalist Austin Tice, who disappeared while reporting in Syria in 2012, hangs outside the National Press Club building in Washington, US, May 2, 2023. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File phot
A banner for journalist Austin Tice, who disappeared while reporting in Syria in 2012, hangs outside the National Press Club building in Washington, US, May 2, 2023. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File phot

In recent months, American officials have raised the fate of Austin Tice in talks with Syria’s new leadership, led by its interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa.

The American citizen vanished in 2012 in a Damascus suburb.

According to Britain’s The Economist, the American side still insists that Tice may be alive and says there is no evidence of his death.

The magazine has spoken with an Assad-regime insider and gained one of the first authoritative public accounts of the abduction and an insight into one of the former Syrian regime’s darkest secrets.

The source is Safwan Bahloul, a high-ranking general in then Syrian president Bashar Assad’s security state. He has chosen to speak out and share details of Tice’s ordeal. He confirms that Tice was held not by opposition groups, but rather by the Syrian state, with Assad’s full knowledge, and was held for some time in a compound of the former president’s most trusted aide. The general also reveals his own culpability.

In the summer of 2012, Bassam al-Hassan, a shadowy adviser in Assad’s inner circle, learned that Tice was in the suburbs of Damascus. He set in motion a plan to seize him, according to General Bahloul. A freelance journalist contributing to the Washington Post, Tice was preparing to take a break in Lebanon after a grueling period reporting in opposition-held Syria. He sought a fixer to try to cross the border, and it turned out the fixer was working for Hassan, the general claims.

After he was captured, Tice was held in a garage inside Hassan’s compound, not far from the presidential palace, says the general. The site lay outside the regime’s formal prison system—off the books and under direct control of Assad loyalists. Was Assad aware of the abduction? “He knew, absolutely, he was happy with the capture,” the general says.

Bahloul was ordered to interrogate Tice. The journalist “had a satellite communications device...an iPhone and another small phone. I started going through his phone book, you know, trying to have a clue who he is.”

Bahloul confirms that Tice managed to escape his cell for 24 hours (this was originally reported by Reuters). The general himself was suspected of aiding the escape attempt (something he denies), though he was later cleared.

“He rubbed his body with the soap in order to lubricate his chest when getting through the window, and he used the towel...There was broken glass, cemented broken glass on top of a fence. So, he put it upon it, and then he climbed it and threw himself to the other side,” said the general. Tice was recaptured.

Bahloul has settled his affairs with Syria’s new rulers and is one of a handful of senior officers not to have fled the country. He says he did not see Tice again after his fourth and final interrogation. The last confirmed information on the reporter was a video uploaded to YouTube in September 2012 in which he is seen blindfolded and surrounded by masked men shouting “Allahu Akbar.”

American officials believe the video was staged to make it look like Tice had been captured by militants and not the regime. The video was masterminded by Hassan and shot in the countryside north of Damascus, says Bahloul.

In December, as the Assad regime crumbled, thousands of desperate prisoners were broken out of Syria’s sprawling torture-and-detention network after Assad fled to Moscow, raising hopes that Tice might be among them. He was not.

Today the Trump administration and Tice’s family continue to ask questions. One possibility is that he is alive and still in Syria, perhaps hidden somewhere in the remote farmland of the country’s Alawite coastal heartland, parts of which remain outside the control of Sharaa’s security forces. Another is that he was spirited out of the country to Iran, or Hezbollah-controlled parts of Lebanon. Or he may have been abandoned in a hidden prison, or killed amid the chaos of the revolution, another victim of Assad’s reign of terror. One man may have the answer: Hassan, the shadowy adviser, who is believed to have fled to Iran and may now be in Beirut.