The Israeli army on Thursday launched the primary findings from its inside investigations into the colossal army and intelligence failure of Oct. 7, 2023, describing how senior officers vastly underestimated Hamas after which misinterpreted early warnings {that a} main assault was coming.
The inquiries tried to reply the query that has confounded Israel since that day, when hundreds of Hamas-led gunmen overran Israeli communities, military bases and a music pageant: Where was the army?
Israeli army officers stated they spent tens of hundreds of hours probing the army’s intelligence-gathering and its subsequent response to the assault, wherein about 1,200 individuals, largely civilians, had been killed and 250 taken hostage, within the deadliest day for Jews because the Holocaust. Survivors waited long hours to be rescued by troopers after an assault that started within the early hours of a Jewish vacation.
Briefing reporters the day earlier than publishing a few of their preliminary findings, Israeli army officers, who couldn’t be named below military guidelines, advised that the failure stemmed from flawed assumptions about Hamas’s capabilities and intentions, in addition to what some army officers have referred to as an “habit” to express intelligence, which was missing.
The mistaken view of Hamas had gone largely unchallenged inside Israeli intelligence circles and senior command, and it led to a collection of failures. These included a chaotic army response within the first hours of the assault after troops deployed alongside the border had been swiftly overwhelmed and the army’s Southern Command and Gaza Division was overrun.
The findings of military and intelligence failures largely match detailed investigations by native and worldwide information media. However the army is now presenting its personal model of the occasions for the sake of accountability, Israeli army officers stated.
The army didn’t coordinate its investigations with different our bodies, such because the Shin Guess inside safety company, which can be answerable for intelligence-gathering in Gaza, or the police.
It additionally didn’t handle years of presidency coverage and decision-making main as much as the assault. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly stated that he’ll reply the powerful questions after the conflict, rejecting a broad public demand for an impartial fee that may apportion private accountability.
The army’s inside inquiries weren’t geared toward discovering particular person accountability, officers stated. That will come later, they stated, below Israel’s incoming army chief of workers, Eyal Zamir. He’s changing Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi in early March. They stated the primary purpose was to be taught classes from the debacle.
Basic Halevi has accepted private accountability for the army’s failure below his command to guard Israelis and announced final month that he was 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 anticipated within the coming weeks and months.
A number of the army’s key findings, as laid out by officers, embrace:
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Hamas had deceived Israel over latest years into pondering it was fascinated about calm and bettering financial circumstances in Gaza. The army primarily centered its assets on Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, each formidable enemies.
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There was nothing improvised concerning the assault. The army acknowledged reviews that it had discovered a Hamas operational invasion plan code-named “Jericho Wall” by 2022, which it says was initially conceived in 2016. It took Hamas time to construct up the mandatory pressure, unknown to Israel. The roughly 40-page doc outlined, level by level, the sort of devastating invasion that got here on Oct. 7. In a written abstract of a number of the fundamental findings, the army stated that “the knowledge was typically misinterpreted as an unrealistic or unfeasible plan.”
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Earlier than Oct. 7, army assessed that the menace posed by Hamas amounted to a restricted variety of raids at 4 to eight factors alongside the border, not the handfuls seen throughout the assault, and that any such assault would contain dozens of militants, not hundreds.
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There had been an Israeli assumption that any main shift in Hamas could be preceded by an early intelligence warning, however there was no prior intelligence of an assault deliberate for Oct. 7 and no tactical alert. Because of this, solely common forces had been deployed for border protection, as typical for a Saturday that was additionally a Jewish vacation.
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Some early alerts of one thing irregular taking place in Gaza had been obtained throughout the night time between Oct. 6 and seven, such because the activation of dozens of cellphones fitted with Israeli SIM playing cards. However Israeli officers additionally discovered sufficient reassuring indicators to feed into current preconceptions of Hamas’s capabilities, the army stated. (The preliminary report didn’t particularly handle warnings by lower-level army lookouts of unusual exercise within the months main as much as Oct. 7 assault that seem to have been dismissed.)
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The assault got here in three waves. The primary, within the preliminary half-hour, concerned about 1,200 Hamas commandos. The second, from roughly 7 a.m. to 9 a.m., consisted of about 2,000 extra commandos and gunmen from different armed organizations. The third was largely a civilian mob urged on by Hamas’s army commander.
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Solely by about 1 p.m. did Israeli army headquarters and commanders on the bottom handle to piece collectively image of the general scale of the assault. The preliminary response by armed civilians, and officers and troopers who rushed to the battle on their very own was inadequate to blunt the blow of the primary few hours. Three brigade commanders and several other battalion and firm commanders had been killed. It took till the night time of Oct. 9 for the army to declare it had regained operational management of the border areas.
The army started in latest days to current its findings to residents of communities that got here below assault. Reactions had been combined, with some residents saying the inquiries coping with their villages raised extra questions than solutions, and others saying they gained new perception.
Amir Tibon, an Israeli journalist and resident of one of many villages, Nahal Oz, praised the army’s inquiry as “in-depth and severe.”
He stated he “felt it touched on all of the tough factors, with none whitewashing.” However he added that it was primarily a tactical report that might not substitute the necessity for a full impartial fee of inquiry.
Mr. Tibon, the creator of a latest ebook, “The Gates of Gaza,” about his household’s ordeal on Oct. 7 and the broader Israeli-Palestinian battle, stated the army inquiry had offered him with some new particulars of what he described as “the heroic battle for the protection of Nahal Oz,” although not many.
One factor he realized, he stated, was that three waves of assailants had entered his village, not two, as he had beforehand thought, and that the third one arrived at about 11 a.m.
“That exhibits absolutely the insanity of how lengthy it took for the military to handle to get organized and to ship a big pressure to rescue us,” he stated.
The Hamas-led assault set off a devastating 15-month conflict as Israel sought to eradicate Hamas in Gaza, killing greater than 48,000 Palestinians, a majority of them ladies, kids and the aged, in response to Gaza’s well being ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between combatants and civilians. The conflict has left a lot of the enclave in ruins and unfold right into a broader regional battle.
