Gaping flaws on the Israeli side have been identified before, during and after the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. Intelligence services were lacking and the responses in the first, crucial hours were not up to scratch. An entire system is being questioned. And yet, no Israeli political or military leader – least of all Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – has seemed in any hurry to launch a commission of inquiry, as long as the war continues.
In July, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) published the results of an investigation, limited to the attack on the Be’eri kibbutz, which concluded that the response was poorly organized and too slow. An earlier investigation was launched in December 2023 by the state comptroller, whose office inspects and audits the policies and operations of the government. The current occupier of the post is Matanyahu Englman, a loyal follower of Netanyahu. This investigation was suspended by the attorney general, on the grounds that it risked damaging the war effort. It had been launched following a request from the Israeli organization Movement for Quality Government, which fights corruption. It’s calling for a state commission of inquiry, independent of the government.
Nevertheless, some conclusions have apparently been drawn. In April, the head of military intelligence Major General Aharon Haliva was the first officer to acknowledge his responsibility for the October 7 security fiasco and announce his resignation. In June, Avi Rosenfeld, commander of the Gaza division, followed suit. Yossi Sariel, head of Unit 8200, the cyber-intelligence elite, did the same in September. The head of the Shin Bet – Israel’s domestic intelligence service – for the country’s southern region, who has remained anonymous, has also left his post. According to New York Times revelations published on November 30, Israeli services had obtained the plans for the attack – a 40-page Hamas document code-named “Jericho Wall” – a year before it was carried out, and there were multiple signals right up to the eve of the attack.
The flaws
At 11pm on October 6, an Israeli army lookout, part of a team monitoring Hamas movements in Gaza, warned that a certain Ali Al-Qadhi, head of a section of the armed group in the north of the territory, was acting suspiciously: “It looks like he’s preparing for an assault, with his men,” she reported, according to an investigation by the Israeli daily Haaretz, published in May 2024. The recipient of this alert, an officer in the Gaza division, paid it no heed, convinced that it was routine training. A few hours later, the Islamist movement launched the deadliest attack in Israel’s history.
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