About three months into the war, I was asked to accompany Charles Kushner, father of Jared Kushner, on a tour of Kibbutz Kfar Aza. At the end of the visit, just before he returned to his vehicle, he turned to me and asked with genuine pain: “How is it possible that all the signs of Hamas’s planned attack were there, and Israel failed to detect them?”
It was a difficult question, but instead of answering immediately, I asked him: “Charles, in 2008, when the financial crisis shook the United States, did you see the signs?”
“Yes,” he admitted.
“And as a businessman, did you lose money?”
“Yes,” he replied.
“Exactly,” I said. “You saw the signs, yet you clung to assumptions and beliefs that made you dismiss them as background noise rather than a real threat. That is precisely what happened to us.”
The next October 7
The scenario of “the next October 7” is not a question of if but of when – and how severe it will be. The developments unfolding in recent years in Judea and Samaria, the Negev, and the Galilee – alongside a significant security vacuum – indicate that Israel is on the verge of a violent, unexpected, large-scale, and deadly eruption, driven by both internal and external enemies.
Ignoring these signs shows that failed paradigms do not disappear; they simply change form while maintaining the same dangerous assumptions: that we will always have prior warning, and that intelligence will arrive on time.
The indicators leading up to October 7 were clear in hindsight: explicit statements by Hamas leaders, intensive weapons smuggling, and a focused, methodical military build-up. All of it was in plain sight. The problem was not a lack of information – it was an excess of arrogance.
Today, the dangerous processes taking place in Judea and Samaria, as well as the Negev and the Galilee, are no less alarming. Grandiose Hamas declarations have been replaced by the quieter but more subversive incitement led by the Palestinian Authority. Rockets have been replaced by the flood of illegal weapons entering Israel through Jordan, Egypt, and the southern border. And Hamas’s organized military force is being replaced by armed PA security units, local militant cells capable of mobilizing within hours, and hundreds of thousands of armed Arabs – equipped with stolen, smuggled, or improvised weapons, often hidden in courtyards and villages awaiting the moment they are called into action.
To interpret this reality as “just another local escalation” is not naïve – it is dangerous.
The trigger for the next eruption may not be a planned terror attack.
It could begin with a localized clash between settlers and Palestinians in open grazing land, or the death of Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas, prompting violent power struggles.
Such an eruption could start in Judea and Samaria and spread within hours to the Negev and Galilee, exploiting the fact that the front line is now the home front – where Israelis are exposed on highways, in communities, and in every public space.
As before October 7, the other side may once again hold a significant numerical advantage, especially when Israeli security forces are stretched thin across multiple arenas, as they were during Operation Guardian of the Walls.
The attacks that occurred this week in Judea and Samaria join an escalating wave of attempted attacks, all pointing to the same dangerous trajectory. These incidents are not random. They are part of an organized effort to ignite Judea and Samaria in a way that will spill into the Negev and Galilee and open a new front. When the desire to inflame the region meets growing operational capability, this is no longer a wake-up call – it is a full-blown alarm.
Israel must act urgently and decisively – in Judea and Samaria, in the Negev and the Galilee – against the threats and the actors driving them, to prevent the next national disaster.
The writer, an IDF reserve lieutenant-colonel, is CEO of the Israel Defense & Security Forum (IDSF) and serves as the operations officer of the Gaza Division in the IDF reserves.