The Israeli army on Thursday launched the primary findings from its interior investigations into the colossal army and intelligence failure of Oct. 7, 2023, describing how senior officials hugely underestimated Hamas after which misinterpreted early warnings {that a} primary assault used to be coming.
The inquiries tried to respond to the query that has confounded Israel since that day, when 1000’s of Hamas-led gunmen overran Israeli communities, military bases and a tune pageant: Where was the army?
Israeli army officers mentioned they spent tens of 1000’s of hours probing the army’s intelligence-gathering and its next reaction to the assault, through which about 1,200 folks, most commonly civilians, have been killed and 250 taken hostage, within the deadliest day for Jews because the Holocaust. Survivors waited long hours to be rescued via infantrymen after an assault that started within the early hours of a Jewish vacation.
Briefing newshounds the day earlier than publishing a few of their preliminary findings, Israeli army officers, who may just no longer be named underneath military laws, prompt that the failure stemmed from mistaken assumptions about Hamas’s functions and intentions, in addition to what some army officers have referred to as an “dependancy” to specific intelligence, which used to be missing.
The improper view of Hamas had long past in large part unchallenged inside of Israeli intelligence circles and senior command, and it resulted in a chain of screw ups. The ones integrated a chaotic army reaction within the first hours of the attack after troops deployed alongside the border have been abruptly beaten and the army’s Southern Command and Gaza Department used to be overrun.
The findings of military and intelligence failures in large part fit detailed investigations via native and world information media. However the army is now presenting its personal model of the occasions for the sake of duty, Israeli army officers mentioned.
The army didn’t coordinate its investigations with different our bodies, such because the Shin Guess interior safety company, which could also be liable for intelligence-gathering in Gaza, or the police.
It additionally didn’t cope with years of presidency coverage and decision-making main as much as the assault. High Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has many times mentioned that he’s going to solution the harsh questions after the battle, rejecting a vast public call for for an impartial fee that may apportion private accountability.
The army’s interior inquiries weren’t geared toward discovering particular person accountability, officers mentioned. That can come later, they mentioned, underneath Israel’s incoming army leader of body of workers, Eyal Zamir. He’s changing Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi in early March. They mentioned the principle function used to be to be informed courses from the debacle.
Normal Halevi has permitted private accountability for the army’s failure underneath his command to offer protection to Israelis and announced closing month that he used to be stepping down. Aharon Haliva, the previous head of Israel’s army intelligence, resigned in 2024, as did the pinnacle of the Israeli army’s Gaza brigade. Extra resignations are expected within the coming weeks and months.
One of the most army’s key findings, as laid out via officers, come with:
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Hamas had deceived Israel over contemporary years into pondering it used to be curious about calm and bettering financial stipulations in Gaza. The army basically targeted its sources on Iran and the Lebanese militant staff Hezbollah, each bold enemies.
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There used to be not anything improvised concerning the assault. The army said reviews that it had discovered a Hamas operational invasion plan code-named “Jericho Wall” via 2022, which it says used to be to begin with conceived in 2016. It took Hamas time to building up the vital drive, unknown to Israel. The roughly 40-page report defined, level via level, the type of devastating invasion that got here on Oct. 7. In a written abstract of one of the vital primary findings, the army mentioned that “the ideas used to be most often misinterpreted as an unrealistic or unfeasible plan.”
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Sooner than Oct. 7, army assessed that the risk posed via Hamas amounted to a restricted collection of raids at 4 to 8 issues alongside the border, no longer the handfuls observed right through the attack, and that this type of assault would contain dozens of militants, no longer 1000’s.
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There have been an Israeli assumption that any primary shift in Hamas could be preceded via an early intelligence caution, however there used to be no prior intelligence of an assault deliberate for Oct. 7 and no tactical alert. In consequence, best common forces have been deployed for border protection, as standard for a Saturday that used to be additionally a Jewish vacation.
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Some early indicators of one thing abnormal going down in Gaza have been won right through the night time between Oct. 6 and seven, such because the activation of dozens of cell phones fitted with Israeli SIM playing cards. However Israeli officers additionally discovered sufficient reassuring indicators to feed into present preconceptions of Hamas’s functions, the army mentioned. (The preliminary file didn’t in particular cope with warnings via lower-level army lookouts of extraordinary process within the months main as much as Oct. 7 assault that seem to have been disregarded.)
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The attack got here in 3 waves. The primary, within the preliminary 30 minutes, concerned about 1,200 Hamas commandos. The second one, from roughly 7 a.m. to 9 a.m., consisted of about 2,000 extra commandos and gunmen from different armed organizations. The 3rd used to be most commonly a civilian mob prompt on via Hamas’s army commander.
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Handiest via about 1 p.m. did Israeli army headquarters and commanders at the floor organize to piece in combination a excellent image of the entire scale of the assault. The preliminary reaction via armed civilians, and officials and infantrymen who rushed to the fight on their very own used to be inadequate to blunt the blow of the primary few hours. 3 brigade commanders and a number of other battalion and corporate commanders have been killed. It took till the night time of Oct. 9 for the army to claim it had regained operational keep watch over of the border spaces.
The army started in contemporary days to provide its findings to citizens of communities that got here underneath assault. Reactions have been blended, with some citizens pronouncing the inquiries coping with their villages raised extra questions than solutions, and others pronouncing they received new perception.
Amir Tibon, an Israeli journalist and resident of some of the villages, Nahal Ounces, praised the army’s inquiry as “in-depth and severe.”
He mentioned he “felt it touched on the entire tricky issues, with none whitewashing.” However he added that it used to be necessarily a tactical file that might no longer exchange the will for a complete impartial fee of inquiry.
Mr. Tibon, the writer of a up to date e book, “The Gates of Gaza,” about his circle of relatives’s ordeal on Oct. 7 and the wider Israeli-Palestinian struggle, mentioned the army inquiry had equipped him with some new main points of what he described as “the heroic fight for the protection of Nahal Ounces,” despite the fact that no longer many.
Something he discovered, he mentioned, used to be that 3 waves of assailants had entered his village, no longer two, as he had in the past concept, and that the 3rd one arrived at about 11 a.m.
“That displays absolutely the insanity of ways lengthy it took for the military to regulate to get arranged and to ship a big drive to rescue us,” he mentioned.
The Hamas-led attack prompt a devastating 15-month battle as Israel sought to remove Hamas in Gaza, killing greater than 48,000 Palestinians, a majority of them girls, youngsters and the aged, in keeping with Gaza’s well being ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between fighters and civilians. The battle has left a lot of the enclave in ruins and unfold right into a broader regional struggle.
