The probe report by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) on October 7 revealed how it misread intelligence material for years, believing the militant group Hamas in Gaza did not pose a significant threat to Israel. It also believed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who Israel killed in a drone attack, was a pragmatist who didn't want a war with Israel.
The top-level investigation into the military’s failures during the lead-up to the attack was released on Thursday.
Here are some important findings presented by the IDF:
1) The IDF's Gaza division was "defeated" for several hours as chaos and confusion slowed the fightback. There were just 767 IDF troops at the border for over 5,000 terrorists on that day.
2) The General Staff did not realise that the Gaza Division had fallen or the severity of the attack, thereby failing to put together an accurate picture of the operational situation.
3) Most of Hamas’s atrocities were carried out within the first six hours of the attack and during those hours, many Israeli border communities, IDF posts, and main routes in the western Negev area were under Hamas control.
4) The intelligence material was insistently misinterpreted over the years and the military overly relied on an early warning to prepare its defences.
5) The IDF assumed there was no imminent threat and that the military’s deployment on the border was according to protocol.
6) The IDF believed the Hamas terror group in Gaza did not pose a significant threat to Israel and that it was uninterested in a large-scale war. The military assumed that Hamas saw its civil control in Gaza as a strategic asset and wanted to strike a deal with Israel.
6) Israel believed that its tunnel networks had been degraded and that any cross-border threat would be thwarted by Israel’s high-tech border fence.
7) Though the Military Intelligence Directorate had intel outlining Hamas’s intent to launch a wide-scale attack against Israel, it was dismissed as unrealistic and unfeasible.
8) The Military Intelligence Directorate believed that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was a pragmatist who was not seeking a major escalation with Israel.
(9) Israeli military officials believed they had intelligence superiority over Hamas and assumed that Hamas could never surprise them due to the abundant information they had about the militant group.
10) The IDF believed Hamas was also carrying out minimal efforts to prepare for infiltrations and drone attacks and was focusing on building up its rocket launching capabilities.