An internal military probe into the hours leading up to the massacre, published on Thursday, reveals that the first signs of an impending invasion were detected around 9 p.m., some nine and a half hours before Hamas and Palestinian Arabs breached the border fence.
By JNS
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office acknowledged over the weekend that the intelligence officers of six key leaders, including the premier, were alerted some three hours before the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks.
The intelligence officers received the Israel Defense Forces’ alert along with a note that Hamas was operating as usual and that the military’s Southern Command would discuss the issue in the morning, said the Prime Minister’s Office, adding that Netanyahu’s officer forwarded the message to the PMO military secretary, Maj. Gen. Avi Gil, but decided not to wake up the premier as the missive did not convey urgency.
Netanyahu “has full confidence in the military secretariat of his office,” his office emphasized in the statement, which came in response to a Channel 12 News report that seemed to shift blame onto the intelligence officer.
Saturday’s Channel 12 report cited outgoing IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi as saying that the military did not publicize the claim that the PMO had been alerted to Hamas’s suspicious activities ahead of time “even though this could have helped us in the face of the bad things that are being said about us.
“If the prime minister’s intelligence officer was a person of integrity, he should already have told him [Netanyahu] that he knew about [Hamas’s preparations on the eve of the attack] and did not update [Netanyahu]. He [the officer] did not do this,” Halevi added, according to the report.
An internal military probe into the hours leading up to the massacre published on Thursday revealed that the first signs of an impending invasion were detected around 9 p.m., some nine-and-a-half hours before Hamas and Palestinian Arabs breached the border fence.
Warning signs included preparations for rocket fire, operatives entering tunnels and the activation of dozens of Israeli SIM cards inside the Strip.
The offices of Netanyahu and then-Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant were informed of the developments during the night; however, political officials were not woken up by their military secretaries.
After the attack was launched at 6:29 a.m. the next day—the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah—some 5,500 terrorists infiltrated Israeli territory through 114 breaches in the security fence, and using seven vessels and six paragliders, according to the IDF’s findings. The Hamas-led terrorists were said to have breached the border under the cover of 3,889 rockets and 57 drones.
The military now understands that Hamas had prepared plans to “break the defense of the Gaza Division” since 2016. Yet when the Military Intelligence Directorate obtained Hamas’s attack plans, dubbed “Jericho Wall,” in 2022, they were dismissed as unrealistic.
Halevi was not informed of the “Jericho Wall” plan and only heard about it some two weeks into the war, the IDF investigation claimed.