NY Times Report: Israeli Officials Dismissed Hamas’s Attack Plan Despite Advanced Knowledge

NY Times Report: Israeli Officials Dismissed Hamas’s Attack Plan Despite Advanced Knowledge

Edited by: TJVNews.com

New revelations suggest that Israeli officials possessed detailed information about Hamas’s battle plan for the October 7 terrorist attack over a year before it occurred, according to documents, emails, and interviews reviewed by The New York Times. The approximately 40-page document, codenamed “Jericho Wall,” outlined a methodical assault, including rocket barrages, drones, and gunmen entering Israel in various ways.

The translated document, which described a devastating invasion leading to around 1,200 casualties, was dismissed by Israeli military and intelligence officials as aspirational and beyond Hamas’s capabilities, according to the NYT report by Ronen Bergman and Adam Goldman. Despite being widely circulated among military and intelligence leaders, the plan was deemed unrealistic. Notably, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s awareness of the document remains unclear.

Last year, officials in the Israeli military’s Gaza division, responsible for border defense, expressed uncertainty about Hamas’s intentions, stating it was unclear whether the plan had been fully accepted, as was indicated in the NYT report. In July, a Unit 8200 analyst warned of a Hamas training exercise resembling the Jericho Wall blueprint, but her concerns were brushed off by a Gaza division colonel.

Privately, officials now admit that if the warnings had been taken seriously and reinforcements redirected to the south, where the attacks occurred, Israel could have mitigated or potentially prevented the devastating assaults that claimed 1200 lives, the NYT report said. The revelations raise questions about how Hamas gathered intelligence and whether leaks within the Israeli security establishment played a role.

The deadly terrorist attacks on Israel on October 7, described as the darkest day in the country’s history, have brought to light a significant intelligence failure. The NYT report said that recent revelations based on the “Jericho Wall” document, obtained by Israeli officials more than a year before the attacks, expose a cascade of missteps and a deeply ingrained belief that Hamas lacked the capability and motivation to carry out such an assault.

The approximately 40-page document detailed a devastating invasion, outlining a methodical assault that would overwhelm Gaza’s fortifications, target Israeli cities, and storm key military bases, including a division headquarters, as was reported by the NYT. Despite the document’s circulation among military and intelligence leaders, experts deemed the attack beyond Hamas’s capabilities, leading to a fatal underestimation of the threat.

The belief that Hamas would not dare to attack and lacked the capability to do so proved to be a fatal miscalculation. According to the NYT report, the Israeli military and the Israeli Security Agency, responsible for counterterrorism in Gaza, now face scrutiny for their unpreparedness as terrorists streamed out of the Gaza Strip.

Israeli security officials have acknowledged the failure to protect the country, prompting expectations of a government-assembled commission to investigate the events leading up to the attacks, the report in the NYT suggested. The Jericho Wall document underscores what is now considered the worst Israeli intelligence failure since the surprise attack that led to the Arab-Israeli war in 1973.

As the Israeli government faces the repercussions of this intelligence failure, questions arise about how the Jericho Wall document was obtained and why warnings were not heeded. The NYT report said that the 2016 Defense Ministry memorandum, which indicated Hamas’s intentions to move the confrontation into Israeli territory, provides further evidence that such concerns were not entirely unforeseen.

The Jericho Wall document, named after ancient fortifications in the modern-day West Bank, has surfaced as a key piece of evidence shedding light on the meticulous planning behind the October 7 terrorist attacks in Israel. The NYT report said that the document, obtained by Israeli officials over a year before the attacks, outlined a detailed strategy, including rocket attacks, drones, and breaching points along the border fence separating Israel and Gaza.

Explicit in its instructions, the document called for rocket attacks to distract Israeli soldiers and lead them into bunkers, while drones would disable security measures along the border, as was noted in the NYT report.  The plan emphasized breaking through 60 points in the wall, with fighters storming into Israel. The document even began with a Quranic quote: “Surprise them through the gate. If you do, you will certainly prevail,” the NYT report said. This same phrase has since been widely used by Hamas in its post-Oct. 7 communications.

One of the document’s key objectives was to overrun the Israeli military base in Re’im, home to the Gaza division responsible for protecting the region. As was indicated in the NYT report, sespite the audacity of the blueprint, Israeli officials underestimated its feasibility, viewing it as one of many military plans that would likely never be executed.

The Israeli military had misread Hamas’s intentions, interpreting negotiations for work permits for Palestinians in Israel as a sign that Hamas was not seeking war, the NYT reported. However, the group had been drafting attack plans for years, and Israeli officials had possession of previous iterations. What could have been an intelligence coup turned into one of the worst miscalculations in Israel’s 75-year history, the NYT report added.

The revelations from the Jericho Wall document underscore the challenges faced in assessing and responding to evolving security threats, emphasizing the critical importance of accurately gauging the capabilities and intentions of potential adversaries.

In September 2016, a top-secret memorandum signed by then-defense minister Avigdor Lieberman outlined concerns about a potential Hamas invasion and hostage-taking, the NYT reported.  The memo, viewed by The Times, revealed that Hamas had acquired sophisticated weapons, GPS jammers, and drones, while increasing its fighting force to 27,000 people. Hamas aimed to reach 40,000 members by 2020.

Last year, Israel obtained the Jericho Wall document, prompting the military’s Gaza division to draft its own assessment. The plan was described as an “unprecedented” invasion, but the division referred to it as a “compass,” suggesting Hamas had a goal but had not fully realized the plan,  the NYT report said.

On July 6, 2023, a Unit 8200 analyst warned of concerning Hamas training exercises closely mirroring the Jericho Wall plan. The analyst’s email exchanges, viewed by The Times, indicated that Hamas was building the capacity to carry out the large-scale maneuver outlined in the document, according to the NYT report. However, a colonel in the Gaza division dismissed the exercises as part of a “totally imaginative” scenario.

“I utterly refute that the scenario is imaginary,” the analyst wrote in the email exchanges. The Hamas training exercise, she said, fully matched “the content of Jericho Wall,” as was reported in the NYT.

“It is a plan designed to start a war,” she added. “It’s not just a raid on a village.”

The communication breakdown continued, with the analyst invoking lessons from the 1973 war, where Israeli defenses were initially overrun. THE NYT report reiterated that while the emails did not predict imminent war, they highlighted the narrowing gap between Hamas’s capabilities and its aspirational goals.

The failures to connect the dots draw parallels with past intelligence shortcomings, such as the failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks. The NYT said that in both cases, critical information was available, but a failure of analysis and imagination impeded effective preventative measures.

As Israel grapples with the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks, these revelations underscore the imperative of learning from past mistakes and refining intelligence assessment processes to anticipate and address evolving security threats.

The aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks unveils a stark reality: a failure to accurately assess the threat posed by Hamas and a costly disregard for the evolving capabilities of this bloodthirsty terrorist group.