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Notes -
Wasn't Oct 7 mostly IDF incompetence, and not hamas prowess?
"IDF" is not a good term here. While some of the people responsible are top of the IDF command, it's by no means ends there. Pretty much all Israeli establishment has been captured in the worldview that allowed it to happen, and sole dissenting voices have been dismissed as kooks. Israel military intelligence has a special "contrarian" unit whose sole task had been to produce scenarios challenging the established way of thinking and poking holes in established paradigms. Sort of advocatus diaboli. They weren't able to make a dent in the wall of denial that something like Oct 7 is possible even in theory. And it's hard to call it "incompetence" per se - many of the people involved were highly knowledgeable, smart and competent professionals - but within the limits of their world model. Escaping those confines is hard for any person, and it turned out that this particular world model, while very attractive - in fact, so attractive that many people still cling to it right now, unable to part with it even with the benefit of the hindsight - this model is spectacularly wrong. How to prevent it from happening again is a very hard question, I am not sure Israel will find an answer, though I sincerely hope they do.
On the other hand, Hamas spent 18 years meticulously organizing and preparing for this kind of attack and followup confrontation with the IDF. It's not random that IDF can not locate the hostages, or eliminate Hamas in one sweep, and not because they are a bunch of bumbling fools - they aren't. Hamas made a lot of preparations for this exact scenario, including developing a system of underground communications, storages and munitions, and associated warfare paradigm that still has no adequate answer from the IDF side. It's not to say Hamas is now stronger than the IDF, they are not, by far, but they came prepared and successfully exploited - and continue to exploit - the weaknesses in IDF's military approach, be it sensitivity to casualties from both sides, or unwillingness to stay on the ground for a prolonged period of time, or vulnerability to propaganda efforts targeted at the wokes in Europe and the US.
So it was both. Hamas did their homework, for 18 years, and Israel didn't and completely ignored what Hamas has been doing, because it didn't fit their worldview. The result was the catastrophe of October 7.
What is that worldview?
I described it a number of times already, but basically the worldview that the war with and ultimate destruction of Israel is not the primary priority of Arab population and government in Gaza and PA, and skillfully combining mutually beneficial economic projects and very limited single-point military interventions, to suppress a small hard core of warmongers, it is possible to achieve security for Israel and long term peace, with Arab population living independently besides Israel as maybe not friends at first but not engaging in active hostilities. Moreover, most of the Israel elites were under impression that not only this strategy is possible in principle, it has been successfully implemented in Gaza and Hamas is largely pacified and contained, and its capabilities are confined to small-scale terror acts which can be easily kept at a minimum by routine intelligence/police work. This is why a lot of peace activists lived close to the borders of Gaza and why the music festival has been organized right there on the border - because, following this worldview, single one-off terror acts could strike anywhere and the danger is the same in Tel Aviv or Haifa (maybe even more, since terrorists tend to attack population centers) as on the Gaza border, and living close to the actual population helps bringing people together and strengthens the peace.
This is not a stupid concept per se - Israel has achieved similar position with Egypt, Jordan, Syria and even in PA you could argue it is moving in that direction. So in theory, without empirical adjustment, this was possible, and certainly very attractive, humanistic and optimistic. The problem is, that's not at all what Hamas and Gaza population were. Unfortunately, this things do not work by analogy or statistically - if most snakes aren't venomous, it doesn't mean that particular one about to bite you isn't. You can't rely on statistics in such cases, and you can't make hope your main strategy, ignoring empiric data that point otherwise. Unfortunately, that's what Israel had been doing for at least 18 years (in fact, even longer, pretty much since Oslo agreements). They wanted this nice peace picture so much, they ignored the reality that did not match it.
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