A recently disclosed 40-page document, codenamed “Jericho Wall,” reveals that Israeli authorities were aware of Hamas’s battle plan for the October 7 terrorist attack over a year prior to its occurrence.
The document detailed a methodical assault, involving rockets, drones, security cameras, and automated machine guns, aimed at overwhelming fortifications around the Gaza Strip, taking over Israeli cities, and storming key military bases.
Israeli military and intelligence reportedly received signals indicating such an invasion, but dismissed it as a wishful plan, considering it overly ambitious and beyond Hamas’s capabilities.
The attack, carried out exactly as outlined in the document, resulted in the loss of approximately 1,200 civilian lives.
The translated document, which was reviewed by The New York Times, did not set a date for the attack, but described a methodical assault designed to overwhelm the fortifications around the Gaza Strip, take over Israeli cities and storm key military bases.
Nearly two months into the Israel-Hamas war, a new report has suggested that officials in Israel had received documents detailing the planned Hamas attack, a year before it happened.
Further, it suggested the Israeli officials dismissed the documents as “overly ambitious” and something “not possible for Hamas” to carry out.
It remains unclear whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or other top Israeli officials saw the document. Experts in Israel initially deemed the outlined assault beyond Hamas’s capabilities.
In July (three months before the attack),a veteran analyst with Unit 8200 warned of a Hamas training exercise resembling the outlined blueprint, but concerns were dismissed.
Last month, Israel’s domestic security service chief, Ronen Bar, took responsibility for intelligence failures, acknowledging a lack of warning that could have thwarted the deadliest attack on the Jewish state.
“Despite a series of actions we undertook, regrettably, we failed to provide a sufficient warning that would have allowed us to thwart the attack. As the head of the organisation, the responsibility for this falls on me,” he said in a letter to the organisation’s employees as per Israel-based Haaretz.
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Israel’s security agencies like Mossad and Shin Bet are known for their intelligence-gathering capabilities but Hamas’s attack shocked many experts, who could not believe that a terrorist organisation could pull off an assault of this nature.
The series of attacks by Hamas and subsequent counterstrikes by Israel resulted in the death of 1,200 people in Israel, with over 13,000 Palestinian casualties since the war began.
Hamas also held nearly 240 people as hostages, with some released following a recent ceasefire agreement.
The pause in fighting allowed for a truce, though Israel resumed the bombardment of Gaza on Friday morning.
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