Israel was aware of the Hamas attack more than a year before it happened: NYT
A blueprint reviewed by The Times laid out the attack in detail. Israeli officials dismissed it as aspirational and ignored specific warnings.
Despite obtaining Hamas's plans for their 7 October attack more than a year ago, Israeli military and intelligence failed to acknowledge the likelihood of the attack despite multiple warnings from inside the Israeli military complex, deciding the attack to be aspirational, difficult and thus unlikely, the New York Times says.
In an approximately 40-page translated document -codenamed "Jericho Wall" by Israel- Hamas outlined a point by point plan of the attack that took place.
The Hamas attack led to the death of 1,200 people with hostages taken.
As of today, 3 December, Israel's retaliation has led to the death of over 15,000 Palestinian civilians, of which almost half has been women and children, and thousands more arrested within Israel.
Hamas's plan was meticulously detailed and precise, and was followed methodically during the attack. It included details about the location and size of Israeli military forces, communication hubs and other sensitive information, raising questions about how Hamas gathered its intelligence and whether there were leaks inside the Israeli security establishment
The document circulated widely among Israeli military and intelligence leaders, but experts determined that an attack of that scale and ambition was beyond Hamas's capabilities, according to documents and officials. It is unclear whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or other top political leaders saw the document, as well.
Last year, shortly after the document was obtained, officials in the Israeli military's Gaza division, which is responsible for defending the border with Gaza, said that Hamas's intentions were unclear.
"It is not yet possible to determine whether the plan has been fully accepted and how it will be manifested," read a military assessment reviewed by The Times.
Then, in July, just three months before the attacks, a veteran analyst with Unit 8200, Israel's signals intelligence agency, warned that Hamas had conducted an intense, daylong training exercise that appeared similar to what was outlined in the blueprint.
But a colonel in the Gaza division brushed off her concerns, according to encrypted emails viewed by The Times.
"I utterly refute that the scenario is imaginary," the analyst wrote in the email exchanges. The Hamas training exercise, she said, fully matched "the content of Jericho Wall."
"It is a plan designed to start a war," she added. "It's not just a raid on a village."
Officials privately concede that, had the military taken these warnings seriously and redirected significant reinforcements to the south, where Hamas attacked, Israel could have blunted the attacks or possibly even prevented them.
Instead, the Israeli military was unprepared as Hamas fighters streamed out of the Gaza Strip. It was the deadliest day in Israel's history.