Dichter said in an interview with the Hebrew daily Maariv that “the intelligence failure is extremely severe.”
"No one in the State of Israel… neither the military, Shin Bet, military intelligence, nor even fortune tellers… had any information indicating that Gaza was preparing for an attack of this scale on Israeli territory," he said.
The government, the army, and the Shin Bet are all directly responsible for this failure, he added.
"With all due respect to the political leadership, at 6:30 a.m. on October 7, they were not in a position to provide intelligence information or respond at the points where the fence breaches occurred as the attack began. The army and its forces bear primary responsibility, as do the intelligence divisions of Shin Bet and military intelligence," he said.
"Every word can be fit for this," Dichter said, describing the attack as a failure, disaster, terrible accident, catastrophic consequences.
Israel has continued its brutal offensive on Gaza since a Hamas attack last Oct. 7 despite a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire.
More than 36,700 Palestinians have since been killed in Gaza, most of them women and children, and over 83,500 others injured, according to local health authorities.
Eight months into the Israeli war, vast tracts of Gaza lay in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water, and medicine.
Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, whose latest ruling ordered Tel Aviv to immediately halt its operation in the southern city of Rafah, where over a million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6.