The Israeli navy on Thursday launched the primary findings from its inside investigations into the colossal navy and intelligence failure of Oct. 7, 2023, describing how senior officers vastly underestimated Hamas after which misinterpreted early warnings {that a} main assault was coming.
The inquiries tried to reply the query that has confounded Israel since that day, when 1000’s of Hamas-led gunmen overran Israeli communities, military bases and a music pageant: Where was the army?
Israeli navy officers mentioned they spent tens of 1000’s of hours probing the navy’s intelligence-gathering and its subsequent response to the assault, by which about 1,200 folks, principally civilians, have been killed and 250 taken hostage, within the deadliest day for Jews for the reason that Holocaust. Survivors waited long hours to be rescued by troopers after an assault that started within the early hours of a Jewish vacation.
Briefing reporters the day earlier than publishing a few of their preliminary findings, Israeli navy officers, who couldn’t be named below military guidelines, urged that the failure stemmed from flawed assumptions about Hamas’s capabilities and intentions, in addition to what some navy officers have referred to as an “habit” to express intelligence, which was missing.
The mistaken view of Hamas had gone largely unchallenged inside Israeli intelligence circles and senior command, and it led to a collection of failures. These included a chaotic navy response within the first hours of the assault after troops deployed alongside the border have been swiftly overwhelmed and the navy’s Southern Command and Gaza Division was overrun.
The findings of military and intelligence failures largely match detailed investigations by native and worldwide information media. However the navy is now presenting its personal model of the occasions for the sake of accountability, Israeli navy officers mentioned.
The navy didn’t coordinate its investigations with different our bodies, such because the Shin Guess inside safety company, which can be chargeable for intelligence-gathering in Gaza, or the police.
It additionally didn’t tackle years of presidency coverage and decision-making main as much as the assault. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly mentioned that he’ll reply the robust questions after the conflict, rejecting a broad public demand for an unbiased fee that may apportion private duty.
The navy’s inside inquiries weren’t aimed toward discovering particular person duty, officers mentioned. Which will come later, they mentioned, below Israel’s incoming navy chief of workers, Eyal Zamir. He’s changing Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi in early March. They mentioned the principle aim was to be taught classes from the debacle.
Common Halevi has accepted private duty for the navy’s failure below his command to guard Israelis and announced final month that he was stepping down. Aharon Haliva, the previous head of Israel’s navy intelligence, resigned in 2024, as did the pinnacle of the Israeli navy’s Gaza brigade. Extra resignations are anticipated within the coming weeks and months.
Among the navy’s key findings, as laid out by officers, embody:
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Hamas had deceived Israel over current years into pondering it was focused on calm and bettering financial circumstances in Gaza. The navy primarily centered its assets on Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, each formidable enemies.
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There was nothing improvised concerning the assault. The navy acknowledged studies that it had discovered a Hamas operational invasion plan code-named “Jericho Wall” by 2022, which it says was initially conceived in 2016. It took Hamas time to construct up the required drive, unknown to Israel. The roughly 40-page doc outlined, level by level, the type of devastating invasion that got here on Oct. 7. In a written abstract of a few of the principal findings, the navy mentioned that “the knowledge was usually misinterpreted as an unrealistic or unfeasible plan.”
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Earlier than Oct. 7, navy assessed that the menace posed by Hamas amounted to a restricted variety of raids at 4 to eight factors alongside the border, not the handfuls seen throughout the assault, and that any such assault would contain dozens of militants, not 1000’s.
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There had been an Israeli assumption that any main shift in Hamas can be preceded by an early intelligence warning, however there was no prior intelligence of an assault deliberate for Oct. 7 and no tactical alert. Consequently, solely common forces have been deployed for border protection, as standard for a Saturday that was additionally a Jewish vacation.
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Some early alerts of one thing irregular occurring in Gaza have been acquired throughout the evening between Oct. 6 and seven, such because the activation of dozens of cellphones fitted with Israeli SIM playing cards. However Israeli officers additionally discovered sufficient reassuring indicators to feed into present preconceptions of Hamas’s capabilities, the navy mentioned. (The preliminary report didn’t particularly tackle warnings by lower-level army lookouts of unusual exercise within the months main as much as Oct. 7 assault that seem to have been dismissed.)
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The assault got here in three waves. The primary, within the preliminary half-hour, concerned about 1,200 Hamas commandos. The second, from roughly 7 a.m. to 9 a.m., consisted of about 2,000 extra commandos and gunmen from different armed organizations. The third was principally a civilian mob urged on by Hamas’s navy commander.
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Solely by about 1 p.m. did Israeli navy headquarters and commanders on the bottom handle to piece collectively an excellent image of the general scale of the assault. The preliminary response by armed civilians, and officers and troopers who rushed to the battle on their very own was inadequate to blunt the blow of the primary few hours. Three brigade commanders and a number of other battalion and firm commanders have been killed. It took till the evening of Oct. 9 for the navy to declare it had regained operational management of the border areas.
The navy started in current days to current its findings to residents of communities that got here below assault. Reactions have been blended, with some residents saying the inquiries coping with their villages raised extra questions than solutions, and others saying they gained new perception.
Amir Tibon, an Israeli journalist and resident of one of many villages, Nahal Oz, praised the navy’s inquiry as “in-depth and severe.”
He mentioned he “felt it touched on all of the troublesome factors, with none whitewashing.” However he added that it was primarily a tactical report that would not substitute the necessity for a full unbiased fee of inquiry.
Mr. Tibon, the creator of a current e-book, “The Gates of Gaza,” about his household’s ordeal on Oct. 7 and the broader Israeli-Palestinian battle, mentioned the navy inquiry had offered him with some new particulars of what he described as “the heroic battle for the protection of Nahal Oz,” although not many.
One factor he discovered, he mentioned, was that three waves of assailants had entered his village, not two, as he had beforehand thought, and that the third one arrived at about 11 a.m.
“That exhibits absolutely the insanity of how lengthy it took for the military to handle to get organized and to ship a big drive to rescue us,” he mentioned.
The Hamas-led assault set off a devastating 15-month conflict as Israel sought to eradicate Hamas in Gaza, killing greater than 48,000 Palestinians, a majority of them girls, youngsters and the aged, in response to Gaza’s well being ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between combatants and civilians. The conflict has left a lot of the enclave in ruins and unfold right into a broader regional battle.
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