Israel dismissed double advance warning of attack: NYT

The newspaper said a document obtained by Israeli authorities more than a year ago that outlined exactly the October 7 invasion.

Israeli troops guard a Hamas fighter near Ashkelon on October 8. Picture: AFP

Israeli officials had intelligence that Palestinian militant group Hamas was preparing a wide-ranging attack before its October 7 assault but dismissed the reports, The New York Times reported on Thursday night.

The newspaper said a document obtained by Israeli authorities more than a year ago “outlined, point by point, exactly the kind of devastating invasion that led to the deaths of about 1000 people”.

The 40-page document, codenamed Jericho Wall and which was reviewed by the newspaper, did not specify when the attack might happen, but provided a blueprint that Hamas appears to have followed: an initial rocket barrage, efforts to knock out surveillance, and waves of gunmen crossing into Israel by land and air.

The NYT said the document, which included sensitive security information about Israeli military capacity and locations, circulated widely among the country’s military and intelligence leaders, although it was not clear if it was reviewed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior politicians. But a military assessment last year determined it was too soon to say the plan had been approved by Hamas

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 NYT. The colonel reviewing her assessment suggested: “Let’s wait patiently.”

“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. It’s not just a raid on a village,” she said.

Officials privately concede that had the military taken the warnings seriously and redirected reinforcements to the south, where Hamas attacked, Israel could have blunted the attacks or even prevented them. The warnings did not suggest Hamas was likely to carry out the plan imminently, and the intelligence community continued to believe Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was not pursuing war with Israel, the NYT said, likening the intelligence failure to those in the US before the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Hamas followed the blueprint with shocking precision. The document called for a barrage of rockets at the outset of the attack, drones to knock out the security cameras and automated machineguns along the border, and gunmen to pour into Israel en masse in paragliders, on motorcycles and on foot – all of which happened on October 7.

AFP