Documents and phones that the IDF has recovered include detailed maps that could only have come from inside information.
By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
Hamas used spies for years to draw up meticulous plans of military targets to overcome during its October 7 invasion of Israel, The Guardian reported Monday on the basis of a collection of documents and phone evidence taken from captured and killed terrorists that was released by the IDF.
Considering the detail of the map of one particular base, an Israeli intelligence source said that it could have only been made by utilizing “inside knowledge.” The plan described exactly how two reduced platoons would seize the facility by isolating various positions and barracks that were clearly marked.
It also covered what each team member was supposed to do and which equipment should be used, including sniper rifles, machine guns and a thermobaric rocket, and where to set up ambush and withdrawal points.
The overwhelming number and comprehensiveness of the plans that have been found regarding how to invade, where would be best to go – even up to Judea and Samaria – and including giving fighters cellphones with Israeli SIM cards and pre-prepared Arabic-Hebrew phrase lists with such required commands as “Put your hands up,” attest to the “years of planning,” the army admitted.
Hamas itself had boasted after the stunning success of its massacre of 1,200 people, mostly civilians, on October 7 in Gaza envelope communities and at a dance rave, that it had deliberately misled Israel into thinking it was cowed, by not reacting forcefully to various IDF operations in the Gaza Strip for two years.
The IDF also believes that only very few top Hamas officials knew of the entire operation, with the fighters only receiving their orders on the day of the attack.
Knowledge of the scope of the intelligence failure to stop Hamas in time is steadily growing. First it was reported that hours before the invasion, IDF intelligence received reports that there would b a “day of battle” that would involve a Hamas attempt to get through the border to take over one or two villages and capture hostages. The report was ignored.
Spotters on the border then publicized that they had told their higher-ups of seeing terrorists doing unusual training exercises near their bases for months, but their concerns were dismissed and one was even threatened with a court-martial.
Late last month, leaked emails from the IDF’s cyber-intelligence Unit 8200 described how three months before the surprise attack, an IDF intelligence analyst sent a detailed warning to her superiors based on signal intercepts and human sources that Hamas had a concrete “operational plan,” with such elements as taking over a mock kibbutz. She had no “timetable for implementation,” however, and at least one superior rejected her fears, saying the Hamas drills were just for show.
Worse than this, The New York Times reported last week that Israeli authorities had known over a year ago what Hamas was planning – but were convinced the terrorists organization could not carry it out.
The document, which Israel code-named “Jericho Wall,” contained all the elements that were eventually implemented on October 7, including the multiple breaches of the border fence by thousands of men in trucks, flying in on paragliders and on foot, the invasion of kibbutzim and army bases and the incursion into Israeli towns. The massive rocket barrage that began the attack, the mass kidnapping of hostages, the locations that would be hit first, the approximate IDF forces they would face – all of it was in the report, said the paper.
The senior analyst had referred to Jericho Wall when she sent her warning, saying, “I utterly refute that the scenario is imaginary.”