The Israeli army on Thursday released the first discoveries of its internal investigations on the colossal military bankruptcy and intelligence of 7 October 2023, describing how the high officers have significantly underestimated Hamas and then they interpreted the first warnings that was coming an important attack.
The investigations tried to answer the question that confused Israel since that day, when thousands of armed men led by Hamas invaded the Israeli communities, the basics of the army and a music festival: where was the army?
Israeli military officials have declared that they had spent tens of thousands of hours to be lied to the collection of intelligence of the army and his subsequent response to the attack, in which about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed and 250 took hostage, on the most fatal day for the Jews from the Holocaust. The survivors waited for long hours to be saved by soldiers after an attack that started in the early hours of a Jewish holiday.
Briefing Reporter the day before publishing some of their initial discoveries, Israeli military officials, who could not be appointed under the rules of the army, suggested that the bankruptcy derived from imperfect hypotheses on the abilities and intentions of Hamas, as well as what some military officials called an “dependence” to an early intelligence, which was missing.
Hamas’ incorrect vision had been largely unchallenged within the Israeli intelligence clubs and Senior command and led to a series of failures. These included a chaotic military response in the early hours of the assault after the troops unfolded along the border were quickly overwhelmed and the southern command of the army and the Gaza division was invaded.
The results of military bankruptcies and intelligence largely correspond to detailed investigations by local and international media. But the military are now presenting their version of events for reasons of responsibility, they have said Israeli military officials.
The military did not coordinate his investigations with other bodies, such as the Shin Bet Internal Security Agency, which is also responsible for the collection of intelligence in Gaza or the police.
Furthermore, he did not face years of government policy and decision -making process that brought to the attack. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly said that he will answer the difficult questions after the war, rejecting a broad public question for an independent commission that can start personal responsibility.
The internal investigations of the military were not aimed at finding individual responsibility, the officials said. This could come later, they said, under the head of the coming military staff of Israel, Eyal Zamir. He is replacing the lieutenant general Herzi Halevi in early March. They said that the main objective was to learn lessons from the debacle.
General Halevi accepted the personal responsibility for the bankruptcy of the military under his command to protect the Israelis and announced last month that he was resigned. Aharon Haliva, a former head of Israeli military intelligence, resigned in 2024, as well as the head of the Gaza brigade of the Israeli army. Further resignation are planned in the coming weeks and months.
Some of the key results of the army, as established by the officials, include:
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Hamas has deceived Israel in recent years in thinking that he was interested in the calm and improvement of economic conditions in Gaza. The military mainly concentrated his resources on Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, both formidable enemies.
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There was nothing improvised in the attack. The army recognized reports that he had found a “Gerico Wall” of the Hamas Operational Plan, which according to 2022, which according to him was initially conceived in 2016. We wanted Hamas time to build the necessary strength, unknown to Israel. The document of about 40 pages outlined, point by point, the type of devastating invasion that occurred on 7 October. In a written summary of some of the main results, the military said that “the information was generally interpreted badly as an unrealistic or not possible plan”.
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Before 7 October, the military evaluated that the threat represented by Hamas amounted to a limited number of raids from four to eight points along the border, not the dozen seen during the assault and that this attack would have involved dozens of militants, not thousands.
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It had been an Israeli hypothesis that any great change in Hamas would have been preceded by an early intelligence warning, but there was no previous intelligence of a planned attack for October 7 and no tactical notice. As a result, only regular forces were lined up for the defense of borders, as usual for a Saturday which was also a Jewish holiday.
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Some first signs of something irregular that is happening in Gaza were received during the night between 6 and 7 October, such as the activation of dozens of cell phones equipped with Israeli SIM cards. But Israeli officials also found quite reassuring signs to feed the existing preconceptions of Hamas’ skills, the military said. (The initial summary did not specifically deal with the warnings by the lower level army of strange activities in the months preceding the attack on 7 October which seem to have been fired.)
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The assault arrived in three waves. The first, in the initial half hour, involved about 1,200 commands Hamas. The second, from 7 to 9 in the morning, consisted of about 2,000 more Commandos and men armed with other armed organizations. The third was mainly a civil crowd solicited by the Hamas military commander.
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Only at about 13:00 the Israeli military quarter quarter and commanders managed to put together a good picture of the general scale of the attack. The initial response from the armed and official civilians and soldiers who rushed into battle alone was not insufficient to mitigate the blow of the first hours. Three brigade commanders and several battalion and company commanders were killed. It took us until the night of 9 October so that the military declared that he had regained the operational control of the border areas.
The military began in the last few days to present his discoveries to the residents of the communities that have been attacked. The reactions were mixed, with some residents who said that the investigations that deal with their villages have raised more questions than answers, and others saying that they have acquired new intuitions.
Amir Tibon, Israeli journalist and residing in one of the villages, Nahal Oz, praised the army investigation as “in -depth and serious”.
He said that “he felt it touched all the difficult points, without any whitewashing”. But he added that it was essentially a tactical relationship that could not replace the need for a complete independent commission of investigation.
Mr. Tibon, author of a recent book, “The Gates of Gaza”, regarding the Calvary of his family on October 7 and the wider Israeli-Palestinian conflict, said that the military investigation had provided him with some new details on what he described as “the heroic battle for the defense of Nahal Oz”, although not many.
One thing he learned, he said, was that three waves of attackers had entered his village, not two, as he had previously thought, and that the third had arrived around 11 in the morning
“This demonstrates the absolute madness how long the army took to be organized and send a great strength to save us,” he said.
The assault led by Hamas triggered a devastating 15 -month war while Israel tried to uproot Hamas in Gaza, killing more than 48,000 Palestinians, the majority of which women, children and the elderly, according to the Ministry of Health of Gaza, who does not distinguish between fighters and civilians. The war left much of the ruined encycling and spread in a wider regional conflict.