Ed Morrissey

That seems strange; why else would hundreds of Hamas operatives want to use Israeli SIMs, other than to operate in Israeli areas? Apparently, Israeli intel thought that the deterrent of a "devastating" IDF response would prevent such an attack, but clearly Hamas never thought the IDF would produce a sustained offensive in Gaza. In that sense, both sides made fatal miscalculations, but this one seems especially bad. Why else monitor these literal signals except as a warning of an attack?

The Israeli news outlet Ynet reported that Netanyahu was unaware of this until the story broke last night. That would be very strange too, and perhaps a little convenient for Netanyahu.