The operations diary of the Southern District of the Israel Police, which was exposed here for the first time, describes one by one the first minutes of the fighting in the envelope area while most of the civilians were in the protected areas.
"They wanted to put everyone in safe rooms, but they didn't take into account that when missiles are fired, the policemen are the first to go out into the field, and they are also the first to encounter the terrorists and disrupt their plans," a senior police officer in the southern district told Israel Hayom.
"A month before the massacre, ahead of the High Holidays, we conducted a district exercise that practiced all scenarios of terrorist infiltration from the air, sea and land," says District Operations Officer Amir Klein, "We adapted one by one to what happened that Shabbat, but such a number of terrorists was not taken into account in any scenario."
Ceremony in memory of the Southern District policemen who fell in the fighting near the Gaza Strip // Photo: Ilya Yegorov
The district's investigation also shows that the roadblocks set up by the policemen became the containment lines for the terrorists who planned to move to the center of the country and take over communities and military bases. The policemen who were at the roadblocks were the first to conduct the battles with the terrorists.
The investigation determined that the fact that the terrorists entered the Sderot police station saved the lives of many civilians, since about ten minutes later masses of residents were supposed to begin pouring into the synagogues, and near the station is a Seder yeshiva with about 500 students.
Police evacuate residents from the envelope on October 7, Photo: AP
The investigation also found that the party in Re'im was secured by a police command post that included 31 officers under the command of the Ofakim police chief, and that seven minutes before the terrorists arrived at the kibbutz gate, an order was given to disperse the party. The initial order to the revellers was to lie on the floor, but when the shooting did not stop, an order was given to disperse. The investigation also found that the party was supposed to take place on Thursdays and Fridays, and only four days earlier military officials had agreed to hold it on Saturday as well.
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