On Thursday, February 27, Israel revealed the outcome of top-level internal investigations into its military’s failure regarding the harbingers of the attack launched by Hamas on the Gaza envelope settlements on October 7, 2023, and during the day of the attack.
The investigation described the insufficiency of the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) to prevent the attack as “one of the greatest failures” in its history.
Disclosing the findings of the investigations to reporters, a senior Israeli military official said on Thursday, February 27: “October 7 was a complete failure,” as the IOF “failed in fulfilling its mission to protect Israeli civilians.”
Israel’s intelligence miscalculations and misconception of Hamas’s capabilities
According to the findings, underestimating Hamas’s military capabilities was one of the main factors behind Israel’s inability to predict the attack. Israel falsely perceived the leader of Hamas in the Gaza strip at that time, Yahya Sinwar, as a pragmatist who was not seeking a major escalation with Israel.
Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate assumed that Hamas considered its war with Israel in 2021 a failure and was only focusing its capabilities on launching rockets against Israel, not carrying out a ground invasion.
Prior to the October 7 attacks, Israel classified Hamas as a secondary front, which did not pose a serious threat to its security, while focusing on Iran and Hezbollah as primary fronts.
Analysts suggest that Sinwar’s government succeeded in deluding Israel into believing it was seeking calm, following the footsteps of the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank.
A Hamas document that the IOF claims to have found in Gaza states: “We must continue to work to convince the enemy that Hamas in Gaza is interested in calm and is working for economic prosperity…”
Hamas began planning for the attack in 2016 setting the liberation of Palestine as a goal
Israel claimed that the document found by its military in Gaza, which goes back to 2021, confirms Hamas’s intention to launch a large-scale operation against Israel with the liberation of Palestine as an objective.
“The defeat of Israel is not impossible. Imagine that if there were a conflict on all fronts, the enemy would not be able to hold out. We must prepare for the liberation, this has now become feasible,” the document read.
The investigation clarified that in 2016 Hamas was preparing a plan for its special commando unit (known as Nukhba) to attack Israel and take captives. However, after Yahya Sinwar came to power in Gaza in 2017, Hamas decided to delay the plan to add deception.
In 2022, Hamas considered launching the attack twice, once in April and once in September. At that time, the movement discussed carrying out the attack during Israel’s holidays in October 2022, but the IOF does not know why Hamas did not launch the attack that year.
The element of surprise blocked Israel from fighting back
It is believed that Hamas chose to launch the attack on October 7, 2023 as it coincided with an official holiday in Israel, during which many IOF soldiers are usually off duty. This was part of the surprise element that resulted in chaos and confusion in the IOF.
Israel claims that the IOF identified five signs of unusual Hamas activity the night before the October 7 operation, but thought they did not indicate an imminent attack.
The attack took place around 6:30 am, marked by the penetration of the border fence surrounding the Gaza envelope settlements by fighters affiliated with Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, from numerous points.
At 6:37 am, the IOF’s Gaza Division Chief Avi Rosenfeld announced a significant penetration of Hamas forces. However, preliminary estimates made him believe that the operation was limited in terms of the number of fighters and the number of points being penetrated.
During the first couple of hours of the attack, the Gaza Division, which is the regional unit responsible for the Gaza strip and for protecting “southern Israel,” was defeated.
The IOF was blamed for lacking “situational awareness,” which delayed the mobilization of forces in response to the attack. The insufficient deployment of Israeli troops and firepower along the border fence, and reliance on technology and surveillance systems rather than personnel was yet another reason for the IOF’s failure in countering Al-Qassam’s fighters.
Taken by surprise, the IOF remained almost paralyzed for over six hours before being able to fight back. The findings indicate that if the Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah and Iran attacked Israel simultaneously on that day, the situation of the IOF would have been worse.
The “Defense Forces” that failed to defend its people and even itself
The long detailed investigations provided evidence that the military, which calls itself the “Israeli Defense Forces,” could not defend neither its people nor itself.
Although the inquiry demystified significant information related to the failure of the IOF on various levels, it was unable to answer the main question raised by Israeli settlers living in the Gaza envelope settlements, which is: “where was the IOF during the October 7 attacks?”
Instead of providing a logical justification for the IOF’s prolonged absence during the operation, the inquiry reaffirmed that the Israeli Air Force applied the Hannibal Directive on the day of the attack to prevent Israeli soldiers from being taken captive. The directive gave a green light to firing on “anything that moved” along the Gaza border, which resulted in the killing of Israeli citizens.
