Officials thought Gaza activity was a drill

Senior IDF and security officials reportedly held an assessment hours before the start of Hamas’s brutal onslaught on southern Israel, having received “weak scraps” of information that something was afoot, but concluded that the activity in Gaza was likely a drill.

In response to the reports, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had not received any intelligence warnings from the security establishment before the start of the devastating mass Hamas infiltration, in which some 1300 people were killed as terrorists rampaged across communities in southern Israel.

“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was updated at exactly 06:29 on Saturday, and not before, upon the outbreak of the fighting,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement. “He immediately went to the Kiryah [military headquarters in Tel Aviv], held an assessment of the situation and convened the Security Cabinet.”

The reports said that senior military and Shin Bet officials, including IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, held phone discussions just a few hours before Hamas’s devastating infiltration, after indications of irregularities were noted.

The generals reportedly concluded that the activity in Gaza was probably a drill, and agreed to hold further discussions in the morning. They reportedly chose not to raise an alert or boost forces to the Gaza border area, since the issue was not considered pressing.

The IDF had long touted its security fence, with cameras, watchtowers and hi-tech sensors, as providing security to residents of Gaza border towns. But early on Saturday, October 7, Hamas terrorists knocked chunks of it aside with explosives and bulldozers at multiple locations, then drove right through the gaping holes in jeeps and motorcycles, while others sailed over in hang gliders, as drones dropped explosives on observation towers and took out cameras.

Amid a simultaneous rocket barrage across southern and central Israel, an estimated 1500 terrorists stormed into southern Israel and slaughtered soldiers and civilians alike, with some local resistance but the military hierarchy slow to react.

Reports last week cited two sets of telephone conversations held overnight Friday-Saturday between the Shin Bet security service’s southern district chief, IDF military intelligence, the IDF’s operations branch and the Southern Command, as well as Halevi.

A separate consultation was hosted by Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar, Haaretz reported.

While the Shin Bet assessed the information presented as “weak scraps”, the agency did fear the possibility of a kidnapping attempt and dispatched a small operations team to the south. No other steps were taken, Haaretz reported.

IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said on Thursday morning that there were no major intelligence warnings, but confirmed there were some small early signs.

“There was no such warning. The signs that came up hours before could be based on different intelligence signs,” Hagari said.

In his first public comments since the war broke out, Halevi said on Thursday, “The IDF is responsible for the security of the country and its citizens, and on Saturday morning in the area surrounding the Gaza Strip, we did not handle it… We will learn, we will investigate, but now is the time for war.”

Egyptian intelligence officials told other media outlets that Jerusalem ignored repeated warnings that the Gaza-based terror group was planning “something big”. Netanyahu last week denied receiving such a warning, saying during an address to the nation that the Egyptian story was “fake news”.

At least one Egyptian official was cited as saying that the Prime Minister was directly notified of the alerts, yet dismissed them, while another speculated to The Times of Israel that the warning did not make it up the chain of command to Netanyahu’s office.

Last Wednesday, Republican Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the powerful US House Foreign Affairs Committee, gave credence to such reports, telling journalists in Washington, “We know that Egypt … warned the Israelis three days prior that an event like this could happen.”

Speaking to reporters following a closed-door intelligence briefing for lawmakers on the crisis, he added: “I don’t want to get too much into classified [details], but a warning was given. I think the question was at what level.”

Most of those killed by the terrorists were civilians, and many were slaughtered in horrifying circumstances. Visiting Israel on Thursday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken described “babies slaughtered, bodies desecrated, young people burned alive, women raped, parents executed in front of their children, children in front of their parents”.

At time of press 199 people were reported abducted to Gaza, where they are being held as hostages.