Status: 01.12.2023, 17:25 PM
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Israeli soldiers stand among photos of slain Israelis at the site of the massacre at the Re'im music festival in the Negev desert. © Ilia Yefimovich/dpa
How could Israel be so surprised by Hamas' attack that the terrorists managed to cause a bloodbath and kidnap hostages? According to a newspaper report, there was a fatal miscalculation.
New York - According to a report in the New York Times, Israel had evidence of a planned large-scale attack by the Islamist Hamas more than a year before October 7.
According to the report, there was a wide-ranging exchange between Israeli authorities on a 40-page document, code-named "Jericho Wall," which outlined a Hamas battle plan. This is said to have resembled in detail the attack that Hamas terrorists then carried out from the Gaza Strip in early October, the US newspaper reported on Thursday.
That draft is said to have come into the hands of Israeli authorities "last year" - more than a year before the attack - and then circulated in military and intelligence circles. In the end, however, it was dismissed by the experts as too demanding and difficult for Hamas to execute.
Document described precise methodological raid
The document, which the newspaper said had been translated, did not contain a date for an attack, but described a precise methodical raid aimed at overcoming the fortifications around the Gaza Strip, capturing Israeli settlements and storming key military bases, including a department headquarters. According to the document, rocket fire was planned at the beginning, drones to take out the surveillance cameras and automated machine guns along the border, and fighters to invade Israel en masse with parachutes, motorcycles or on foot. A draft that Hamas ultimately followed "with frightening precision," as the newspaper wrote.
Three months before the actual attack, according to emails seen by the New York Times, an intelligence analyst at the decoding unit warned that Hamas had undergone training that was very close to the "Jericho Wall" document. "I strongly disagree that the scenario is imaginary," she wrote to an army colonel in the Gaza force. "It's a plan designed to start a war. It's not just a raid on a village." But the military colleague maintained that Hamas was incapable of carrying out such a comprehensive plan. "In short, let's wait patiently," he said.
"Attack was a failure on our part"
"There is no doubt that the October 7 attack was a failure on our part. Of course, it was a failure," Israeli government spokeswoman Tal Heinrich told US broadcaster CNN overnight. Israel will closely examine what happened and learn from it. Asked to what extent Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knew about the attack scenario or read the documents, Heinrich said: "We will investigate. The Prime Minister also spoke about this. When the time comes, he will say more." dpa