An Israeli military inquiry into the series of errors in the lead-up to and during the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023, has acknowledged the army’s “complete failure” to prevent it.
In what investigators say was a highly coordinated attack that took years of planning, groups of Hamas-led fighters broke out of Gaza and attacked Israeli communities and a music festival along the frontier.
In total,1,139 people died during the attack and about 250 taken captive.
The report details a history of misconceptions about the risk posed by Hamas and a refusal to accept warning signs of an attack, as well as the army’s inability to coordinate a response.
While the report has laid bare many of the Israeli army failings on October 7, 2023, similar investigations into the political failings have been repeatedly blocked by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition.
How did Israel’s army underestimate Hamas?
The report says the army has a decades-long “fundamental misunderstanding” of Hamas, leading senior officers to underestimate the group’s capabilities and intentions.
Military planners had assumed Hamas posed no significant threat to Israel and that it was uninterested in a large-scale war, according to investigators.
Planners also believed Hamas’s tunnel networks had been significantly degraded, with any cross-border threat easily thwarted by Israel’s high-tech separation barrier.
Despite warning signs, such as unusual activities by Hamas fighters, Israeli authorities insisted that the group was focused on maintaining governance within Gaza and would attack Israel by rocket, rather than a large-scale ground invasion.
They also misjudged Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, assuming he was “not interested in a wider war”.
What warning intelligence did Israel ignore before the attack?
In the hours leading up to the attack, the report said, the Israeli military either ignored or misinterpreted several indications that an attack was imminent.
On the evening before the attack, several female spotters alerted their commanders to unusual activity along the border. Additionally, officers reported the mass activation of Israeli SIM cards known to be in the hands of Hamas fighters, as well as suspicious movements in Hamas’s rocket deployment;
However, commanders instead relied upon what they said were “reassuring signs” that Hamas was simply conducting a military exercise.
How did Israeli intelligence misinterpret events?
According to the report, Hamas began considering the October 2023 incursion as early as 2016.
However, Israel’s intelligence community dismissed such reports as “unrealistic”, believing Hamas to have been deterred by the Israeli response to the uprising in May 2021, when Israel killed 232 people in Gaza.
The Israeli army has since realised that Hamas had decided as early as April 2022 to launch its assault. By September of that year, it was 85 percent ready and in May 2023, it set October 7 as the date.
What were the Israeli operational failures that day?
Many.
The army was unprepared for the attack, investigators found, and the deployment of troops was significantly delayed, allowing Palestinian fighters to push on with no immediate resistance.
In one kibbutz, Nir Oz, which the army is accused of having abandoned, one survivor later told the Israeli chief of staff that the last Palestinian fighter had left long before the first Israeli soldier entered.
Assessments of fighter numbers were also found to be wide of the mark, with planners wildly underestimating the scale of the attack.
It was later determined that 5,600 fighters crossed the border in three waves, backed by a barrage of some 4,000 rockets and 57 drones.
As a result, Israel’s Gaza Division of a little more than 700 soldiers was overwhelmed and, for hours, remained “defeated” and military planners were unaware of that while coordinating their response.
It wasn’t until around 12pm [10:00 GMT], when reinforcements began to arrive, that Gaza Division began to operate.
The report also noted that the Israeli air force struggled to distinguish between Hamas fighters and Israeli civilians. While the report avoids going into details, the military accepted some Israelis had been killed by friendly fire.
Simultaneous to the attack, investigators found, many aircraft were deployed against the homes of senior Hamas commanders in Gaza instead of defending civilians and soldiers under attack.
Did commanders order the Hannibal Directive?
According to several Israeli newspapers, yes, and many civilians died as a result.
The Hannibal Directive, which orders that the Israeli military to employ all force possible to prevent Israeli combatants from being taken captive, including killing anyone around them, was ordered during the attack, the Israeli daily, Haaretz reported.
As such, orders were issued on October 7 for Israeli forces to prevent Hamas from returning to Gaza with captives “at all costs” which included killing civilian non-combatants.
Some of the pilots flying over the battlefield were reportedly unwilling to act upon the Directive and on occasion held off from firing altogether, from concern about hitting civilians.
Nevertheless, subsequent investigations have shown several civilians were killed as a result of the Hannibal Directive.
One, Efrat Katz, was killed by helicopter fire as she was being transported to Gaza by Hamas fighters.
In Kibbutz Be’eri, an Israeli tank fired two shells into a house known to be holding over a dozen captives, including 12-year-old twins. Only two captives survived.
What are the key takeaways?
Before the attack, key warnings, such as increased fighter activity and intelligence reports, were either ignored or misinterpreted.
Assessments by the Israeli army underestimated the scale of the attack, with poor communication and poor intelligence-sharing among commanders adding to the failures
The Israeli army was slow to respond to the Hamas-led attack and reinforcements were too slow in arriving.
No similar investigation has been undertaken into the actions of the government before and during the attack.
