Israel's domestic intelligence agency, Shin Bet, is planning to establish a school of Islamic studies following its failure to anticipate the Hamas-led attacks on 7 October 2023, focusing on religious ideology rather than the decades of Israeli occupation, dispossession and violence that shaped the emergence of Hamas and other Palestinian factions.
The initiative, reported by the Israeli news website Walla, raises questions about Israel's attempts to explain its intelligence failures by a lack of understanding of Islam, rather than examining the political realities that gave rise to Hamas and the institutional failures that allowed the attack to take place.
The project is being spearheaded by Shin Bet chief David Zini and will provide specialised education on Islam, its different schools of thought and Palestinian society to intelligence personnel working across various departments.
The school will operate alongside Shin Bet's existing Arabic-language training programme, which also provides instruction to some Israeli military personnel.
According to Walla, the project will involve academics, researchers, specialist institutions and current and former senior intelligence officials, with its curriculum tailored to the operational challenges facing the agency.
The initiative follows internal investigations into Israel's intelligence failures preceding 7 October, when Palestinian fighters breached the Gaza perimeter and attacked Israeli military positions and communities.
Despite possessing extensive intelligence about Hamas's preparations, Israeli security agencies failed to anticipate the scale and timing of the assault.
Walla reported that one conclusion drawn by Israel's intelligence establishment was that officials lacked sufficient understanding of Islam, Palestinian culture and Hamas's ideological foundations, particularly in Gaza.
Investigators reportedly identified shortcomings in their understanding of the movement's development following the release of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar from Israeli prison in 2011, as well as the continuing influence of the organisation's founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.
Sheikh Yassin was assassinated in an Israeli airstrike in 2004, while Sinwar was killed by Israeli forces in Gaza in October 2024.
A senior Israeli intelligence official told Walla: "We did not realise the extent to which Hamas hates Israel, how unwilling it is to accept any compromise, or how strong and prepared it was before 7 October, even though the warning signs were clearly visible."
However, framing Hamas primarily through its religious ideology risks reducing a movement rooted in the Palestinian experience of occupation to a question of Islamic beliefs.
Hamas was established in 1987 during the First Palestinian intifada uprising against Israeli occupation, nearly two decades after Israel occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza in 1967.
Although the movement emerged from the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and draws on Islamist ideology, its formation and development were closely related to the Palestinian struggle against Israeli military rule, territorial dispossession and the denial of national self-determination.
Hamas has previously offered Israel a long-term truce if it withdraws from the entirety of the West Bank and Gaza, while signalling its acceptance of a Palestinian state only on those territories.
Its political and armed activities have arguably been shaped by continued occupation, repeated Israeli military offensives, the blockade of Gaza and the failure of successive political efforts to secure Palestinian statehood.
Treating Islam as the central explanation for Hamas's actions therefore risks confusing the movement's ideological identity with the political and historical conditions that produced it.
The focus on Islam also comes amid the Netanyahu government's growing cultivation of far-right political movements in Europe, including parties and figures associated with Islamophobia and hostility towards Muslim immigration.
Israeli officials, particularly Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli, have increasingly sought alliances with European nationalist parties around a shared opposition to alleged "radical Islam". The outreach has included France's National Rally, Spain's Vox and Austria's Freedom Party, as Israeli leaders increasingly portray the country as a defender of Western civilisation against an alleged Islamist threat.
Hamas's 7 October assault on Israel took place in a year when Israeli violence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem had already killed more Palestinians in any full year since the UN began recording fatalities in 2005.
Israeli military raids, particularly in Jenin and Nablus, had intensified, while illegal settlement expansion and settler attacks placed growing pressure on Palestinian communities.
In Gaza, Israel had launched another major military offensive in May 2023, carrying out hundreds of airstrikes. The escalation left 33 Palestinians dead, including at least 12 civilians, according to the UN, and damaged thousands of homes.
These developments came against the backdrop of Israel's blockade of Gaza, imposed in 2007, which had devastated the territory's economy and severely restricted the movement of its population.
Just a day before the 7 October attack, The New Arab reported that 2023 had already become the deadliest year for Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank, with Israeli forces killing 47 children since January, surpassing the 45 killed throughout 2022.
Tensions had also intensified at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem, while the prospect of Saudi-Israeli normalisation threatened to further marginalise the Palestinian national question.
Israel's occupation overlooked in 7 October reckoning
Hamas named its operation "Al-Aqsa Flood", citing Israeli actions at the holy site, the blockade, Palestinian prisoners and the occupation among its stated grievances.
The focus on religion risks obscuring a more immediate explanation for Israel's failure to anticipate the attack, as its intelligence agencies had already possessed detailed warnings about Hamas's plans.
Israeli investigations into the 7 October attack have exposed failures that went far beyond a lack of cultural or religious understanding.
Israeli intelligence reportedly possessed detailed information about Hamas's plans, including a document outlining an assault remarkably similar to the one eventually carried out, but senior officials dismissed the scenario as unrealistic.
In September 2026, an investigation published by Haaretz revealed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had also reportedly received a direct warning from UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed around 10 days before the attack that Hamas was preparing a major offensive.
According to the report, Netanyahu reassured the Emirati leader that Israel was prepared for any scenario but failed to pass the warning to senior Israeli security officials. An Emirati source subsequently confirmed the reported conversation to The Times of Israel, although Netanyahu's office denied it had taken place, calling the allegations an "absolute lie".
Warnings from Israeli surveillance personnel stationed near Gaza were also reportedly ignored, raising questions about institutional complacency and the failure to act on intelligence already available, rather than simply a lack of understanding of Hamas's ideology.
Despite these revelations, three years after the attack, Israel has still not established an independent state commission of inquiry into the political, military and intelligence failures surrounding 7 October, amid opposition from Netanyahu and disputes over how such an investigation should be conducted.
