In December 2021, Israel’s military said a high-tech upgrade to the barrier that had long surrounded the Gaza Strip would protect nearby Israeli residents from the threat of violence from militants.

“Today there is an obstacle, both underground and above, with advanced measures, that will prevent entry into Israel in the best possible way,” Brig. Gen. Eran Ofir, who led the project, said in remarks addressed to communities in range of Hamas rockets. The upgrade cost $1 billion and took three years to complete.

But this Washington Post video shows how on Oct. 7, Hamas exploited vulnerabilities created by Israel’s reliance on technology at the “Iron Wall” to carry out the deadliest single assault in Israel’s history. The video details how Hamas fighters neutralized long-range cameras, sophisticated sensors and remote-control weapons — a tactic known inside the group as the “blinding plan” — to breach the high-tech fence.

The video can be viewed in the player at the top of this page.

The Post reconstructed the attack by analyzing hundreds of videos and photos posted online, including visuals filmed on Oct. 7 and during preparations by Hamas fighters. We reviewed videos and audio recorded on body cameras worn by militants, scoured footage from Israeli security cameras and spoke to witnesses. We also examined maps and planning documents recovered from slain Hamas fighters.

As our examination reveals, The Post found footage showing 14 separate breaches of the barrier. By comparing the footage with maps, satellite imagery and other data, reporters pinpointed where the intrusions occurred — from the Erez crossing in the north to Kerem Shalom in the south. Israel said there were around 30 breaches in all.

Training videos showing militants attacking mock-ups of Israeli compounds had been posted to social media months earlier and were visible to all. We found that Hamas had also been expanding its training camps for several years, activity that is visible in widely available online maps. The Post geolocated those camps using terrain and other distinctive features that could be seen in the training videos.

Videos posted to social media after the attack began showed that Hamas fighters had been training for months on the tactics it used to breach the fence.

Yet Israel’s security establishment misjudged Hamas’s intentions, according to analysts. Officials believed that the group, which controls Gaza’s government, did not want war. Israel’s military had recently directed much of its attention — and shifted some of its troops — toward unrest in the occupied West Bank.

“We didn’t believe that Hamas had this capability, and so we didn’t see it coming,” Charles Freilich, a former deputy national security adviser in Israel, told The Post in an interview.

The Israel Defense Forces declined to respond to questions submitted by The Post for this story, saying that it would answer them “after the war.” The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is under pressure to resign because of the security and intelligence failure, also declined to comment.

Press play on the video at the top of this page to see how the fence failed.

Chris Dehghanpoor, Loveday Morris, Shira Rubin, Jon Gerberg, Samuel Granados, Lauren Tierney, Artur Galocha, and Aaron Steckleberg contributed to this report.

After locating what they described as the entrance to a Hamas tunnel under an evacuated hospital in northern Gaza, Israeli army engineers filled the passage with exploding gel and hit the detonator.

The blast engulfed the building and sent smoke spewing out of at least three points along a nearby road in a district of the city of Beit Hanoun, surveillance footage showed.

"The gel spread out and exploded whatever they had been waiting for us in the tunnel," an army officer told eporters at a briefing at Zeelim Ground Forces Base in southern Israel.

Clearing the tunnels is an important part of Israel's military campaign against Hamas in the Gaza Strip in response to the Hamas terrorist group's deadly attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7.

When not using munitions to map out the bunkers, access shafts and tunnels which both sides say run for hundreds of kilometers (miles) under Gaza, the army opts for tracker robots and other technology operated remotely.

The officer could not be identified under the rules of the briefing, and declined to provide further details of below-ground combat which he said was a work in progress. He did not name the hospital in Beit Hanoun.

"I think there are other methods being developed," he said. "That is where creativity and innovation come in handy."

In Beit Hanoun, where his forces were operating, some gunmen had stormed the Israeli military from tunnel shafts and had been killed, he said.

Israel's policy, he said, was not to send personnel in the other direction to confront Palestinian fighters who would have a defender's advantage in narrow, dark, under-ventilated and collapsible passages with which they were familiar.

"We don't want to go down there. We know that they left us a lot of side-bombs (improvised explosives devices)," he said.

One such bomb, rigged to the cover of a tunnel-access shaft at ground level, had killed four special forces reservists last week.

Web of tunnels

Hamas has tunnels for attack, smuggling and storage, security sources say. Dozens of shafts can lead to each tunnel at depths of between 20 and 80 meters (65-260 feet).

Destroying a shaft is relatively easy and quick, the officer said, adding: "Any platoon can do it."

The Israeli military said last week that 130 shafts had been destroyed so far, but gave no figure for demolished tunnels.

The tunnels are harder to tackle. The officer said several ton of the exploding gel - on which he declined to give any technical details, other than to say it is brought in by truck - are required for every few hundred meters of tunnel.

After-action analysis is difficult. The officer said around half of the shafts in his Beit Hanoun operation zone had been destroyed, but acknowledged that these can be rebuilt.

"It's hard to say how many tunnels (are destroyed) because they are all connected," he said.

Hamas has denied using hospitals as cover for such tunnels. It has dismissed assertions by Israel that it has a command center under Gaza's biggest hospital, Al Shifa, which Israeli forces entered on Wednesday.

Efforts to avoid endangering hostages

Hamas took some 240 people back to Gaza as captives in the Oct. 7 attack in which about 1,200 people were killed, Israel has said. One of a handful of hostages released said she and at least two dozen others had been held in a tunnel.

The army officer said care was being taken not to endanger tunnels that may contain hostages.

"We sometimes get indications that this (a target) might be related to hostages. And then we know not to attack it unless we get an approval (that it is clear)," he said

Like much of northern Gaza, Beit Hanoun has been emptied of civilians, who fled south under orders from Israel as it sent in ground troops to try to wipe out Hamas.

"The only population left is the terrorists," the officer said, adding that sometimes a secondary explosion set off by a tunnel destruction blast "will bring down a building a few hundred meters away."

Hamas terrorists taken captive have provided Israel with intelligence on the tunnel network, he said, but this information has been limited.

"Most of them don't know about the whole city. But they know their own village, they know pretty well the tunnel system," the officer said.

The officer said it could take months to destroy Gaza's entire underground network.

"I think it's more complicated than the New York City subway," he said.

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