2023-12-01 14:29:13
What did Israeli intelligence services know about the October 7 attack? They had obtained Hamas’s plan to carry out an unprecedented attack against Israel more than a year in advance, but deemed the scenario unrealistic, he said. New York Times based on secret documents. Concretely ? Israeli military intelligence had gotten hold of a document of around forty pages from Hamas detailing, point by point, a vast attack similar to that perpetrated by commandos on October 7, responsible for around 1,200 deaths in Israel.
The document circulating in intelligence circles under the code name “Jericho Wall” did not give the date of a possible attack. It defined, however, precise methods for saturating the Israeli security apparatus around the Gaza Strip and then attacking towns and military bases. 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.
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 how Hamas obtained this information and whether there were leaks within the Israeli security “establishment”.
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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 that Hamas had just conducted resembled in several points the attack plan planned in the “Jericho Wall” document. 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 on a village,” writes this analyst in encrypted emails seen by the newspaper. “We already had a similar experience fifty years ago on the front south about a scenario that seemed imaginary. History could repeat itself if we are not careful,” concluded the analyst, referring to the Yom Kippur War in 1973.
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According to the New York Times, the document was widely circulated among Israeli military and intelligence leaders, but experts determined that an attack of this scale and ambition was beyond Hamas’ capabilities, according to the New York Times. 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 Defense Ministry memorandum 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).” Words that have the effect of a premonition.
While the government should convene a commission to study the events that led to the attacks, the Jericho Wall document exposes a series of missteps. Which resulted in what officials now consider to be the worst failure of Israeli intelligence services since the surprise attack that led to the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. The American daily even goes so far as to compare this failure to that of United States before the attacks of September 11, 2001.
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