Hundreds? We have written records of war there from 1350BC. The area was probably first settled 10,000 years ago. I'm sure there would be 8500 years more records of war had writing been invented... and we didn't keep losing the records in wars.
-- Israel Intelligence is usually pretty good, but preparations must have been going on for months, involving thousands of people. How did they not figure something out.
-- there is a wall, military forces. This is heavily guarded, but that was completely ineffective
-- Israel has very good missile defense. Never before have they had the volume to overwhelm that defense
-- things had seemed peaceful lately, and Israel was trying to gain closer ties with some countries in the region