According to The New York Times on Thursday, Israeli officials were aware that Palestinian Hamas was planning a large-scale attack prior to its October 7 assault, but they chose to disregard the information.
According to the publication, an Israeli government-obtained document “outlined, point by point, exactly the kind of devastating invasion that led to the deaths of about 1,200 people.”
The publication was given access to the dossier, which did not give a timeline for the attack but did outline a plan that Hamas seems to have adopted: a first round of rocket fire, attempts to disable surveillance, and waves of gunmen entering Israel from the air and land.
The Times said the document, which included sensitive security information about Israeli military capacity and locations, circulated widely among the country’s military and intelligence leaders, though it was not clear if it was reviewed by senior politicians.
But a military assessment last year determined it was too soon to say the plan had been approved by Hamas, and when an analyst with the country’s signals intelligence warned the group had carried out a training exercise in line with the plan, she was dismissed.
The newspaper quoted her as saying that it was a “plan designed to start a war,” but a colonel who was reading her analysis advised “let’s wait patiently.”
The Times compared the intelligence failure to that which occurred in the US prior to the September 11, 2001 attacks, noting that the warnings did not indicate that Hamas was likely to carry out the plan anytime soon and that the intelligence community continued to believe that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was not pursuing war with Israel.
Israeli officials claim that 1,200 people—mostly civilians—were murdered in the Hamas attack, and that approximately 240 individuals were held hostage.
Israel’s retaliatory ground and air offensive in Gaza has killed more than 15,000 people, also mostly civilians, according to Hamas authorities.
