What did Israeli intelligence know about the October 7 attack? They had obtained more than a year in advance Hamas’s plan to carry out an unprecedented attack against Israel, but had judged this scenario unrealistic, argues Thursday, November 30 the New York Times based on secret documents. Concretely ? Israeli military intelligence had got its hands on a document of around forty pages from Hamas detailing, point by point, a vast attack like the one perpetrated by commandos on October 7, responsible for around 1,200 deaths in Israel, according to the major American daily newspaper.
This document, around forty pages long, which circulated in intelligence circles under the code name “Jericho Wall”, did not give the date of a possible attack. It defined, however, precise points to saturate the Israeli security system and then attack towns and military bases. In other words, it describes a methodical attack aimed at overwhelming the fortifications around the Gaza Strip. In detail, the document reports a barrage of rockets, drones destroying security cameras and automated defense systems, then fighters crossing to the Israeli side by paraglider, by car and on foot… So many elements at the heart of the attack of October 7. Hamas can be said to have followed the model precisely.
A “totally imaginary” scenario
The plan also included details on the location and size of Israeli military forces, communications centers and other sensitive information. What raises questions about the way in which Hamas gathered its intelligence and whether there were leaks within the Israeli security “establishment”.
Still, it was “not possible to determine” whether the plan had been “completely” approved by the Hamas leadership and how it could translate into reality, underlines an internal Israeli army document obtained by the daily. . However, in July, an analyst from the elite intelligence unit 8200 warned that a military exercise, which Hamas had just conducted, resembled in several points the plan of the attack planned in the document “Jericho Wall “. But a colonel in the military division in charge of Gaza dismissed this scenario, calling it “totally imaginary.”
A series of missteps
“I categorically refute the idea that this scenario is imaginary […] this is a plan for a war” not simply for an attack “against a village”, writes this analyst in encrypted emails consulted by the newspaper. “We already had a similar experience 50 years ago on the southern front about a scenario that seemed imaginary. History could repeat itself if we are not careful,” the analyst wrote almost prophetically to his colleagues, referring to the Yom Kippur War in 1973.
According to the New York Times, the document circulated widely among Israeli military and intelligence leaders, but experts determined that an attack of this scale and ambition was beyond Hamas’s capabilities, according to documents and officials. It is not clear whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or other senior political leaders also saw the document.
Already in 2016, a memorandum from the Ministry of Defense consulted by the New York Times said: “Hamas intends to move the next confrontation to Israeli territory.” Such an attack would most likely involve a hostage-taking and “the occupation of an Israeli community (and perhaps even a number of communities),” the memo said. Words that have the effect of a premonition.
While the government is expected to convene a commission to study the events leading up to the attacks, the Wall of Jericho document lays bare a cascade of missteps. This resulted in what officials now consider the worst failure of Israeli intelligence services since the surprise attack that led to the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. The American daily even went so far as to compare this failure to that committed by the United States before the attacks of September 11, 2001.