Israel had detailed information about 7 October

Published 20 June 2024 at 09.18

Foreign. A previously unknown document shows that the Israeli Defense Force IDF had detailed information in advance about the Hamas attack on October 7 last year. This is reported by Haaretz.

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According to a disclosure by the Israeli public service company Kan, the document began to circulate on September 19, i.e. barely three weeks before the massacre on October 7.

The document, which was based on information from the IDF's military intelligence unit 8200, described a plan by Hamas to infiltrate Israel and take 250 hostages. There were also specific details such as instructions for their hostages to be treated in captivity.

The unnamed sources who provided Kan with the document also claim that its contents were brought to the attention of at least some senior intelligence officials, but that the warning was apparently ignored.< /p>

The document contains striking details and begins with a description of a series of exercises carried out by Hamas' elite units from Nukhba in the weeks preceding the writing of the document.

Hamas commandos also practiced infiltrating a what would represent an IDF outpost and simulated bases on the border with Israel.

The targets described in the document – ​​including IDF command and control headquarters, base synagogues, squadron headquarters, communications headquarters and soldier quarters – are precisely the kind of places that Hamas attacked in the morning on October 7, writes Haaretz.

According to the document, Hamas had planned to take 200-250 hostages – in reality, it took 251 hostages after the October 7 attack.

According to the intelligence report, the Hamas men were asked to look for phones belonging to kidnapped Israelis. Namely, the hostages were forbidden to inform their family of their condition and were ordered to another location if it became apparent that Israel discovered their whereabouts. The members of Hamas who took part in the attack were also said to have been told to threaten to kill the hostages as a way to deter escape attempts.

There have previously been reports that Israel received advance information about Hamas' plans. In July 2023, an intelligence officer warned his commanders that Hamas intended to carry out a massacre in Gaza's border communities. She wrote three documents in the six months before the October 7 attack, in which she warned that Hamas had conducted a series of exercises simulating a raid on kibbutzim and IDF outposts on the Israeli side of the border.

There is also a case involving a group of female observers who, for nearly a year prior to October 7, reported suspicious activity to their superiors regarding Hamas preparations near the border fence, including drone activity, efforts to knock out security cameras, extensive use of vans and motorcycles, as well as rehearsals for shelling tanks.

Many of the surviving observers have said that their repeated warnings were ignored by their commanders, writes Haaretz.