An Israeli military investigation says years of intelligence on Hamas were misread, leaving Israel unprepared for the October 7 attack.
Key Developments
- The head of the “Jericho Wall” inquiry acknowledged a deep intelligence and conceptual failure.
- Israeli intelligence possessed information on Hamas plans dating back to 2016.
- Investigators say the military remained convinced Hamas was deterred despite mounting evidence.
An official Israeli military investigation has concluded that Israel’s failure ahead of Hamas’ October 7, 2023 operation stemmed not from a lack of intelligence but from years of misinterpreting available information and clinging to the belief that Hamas had been effectively deterred.
The preliminary findings were revealed by Maj. Gen. (res.) Roni Numa, who heads the Israeli military’s investigation into the so-called “Jericho Wall” intelligence document, during remarks broadcast by Israel’s public broadcaster KAN.
According to Numa, the investigation goes beyond reconstructing the events of October 7 and instead examines why Israel’s military and intelligence establishment failed to understand Hamas’ intentions despite years of accumulating warnings.
“We failed to realize that we did not understand Hamas,” he said.
Years of Intelligence
According to the investigation, Israeli intelligence had gathered information as early as 2016 outlining plans to breach Israel’s defensive system around the Gaza Strip.
Those assessments were updated in 2019 and again in 2022, yet investigators found they never translated into decisive operational preparations.
The report states that the Jericho Wall document reached senior military officials, including commanders of the Southern Command and Military Intelligence.
Rather than recognizing it as the continuation of an evolving operational strategy, however, the document was reportedly treated as an isolated intelligence assessment.
Investigators say this reinforced an entrenched belief that Hamas lacked either the capability or the intention to launch a large-scale attack.
Technology over Expertise
Numa also criticized what he described as an institutional overreliance on technology at the expense of human expertise.
According to the investigation, some intelligence units believed Arabic-language specialists could be replaced by automated translation systems.
He described that approach as a fundamental analytical error that weakened Israel’s ability to understand Hamas’ thinking, intentions and operational planning.
The findings suggest technological confidence increasingly displaced linguistic and cultural expertise within the intelligence community.
‘A Conceptual Failure’
Perhaps the investigation’s most significant conclusion is that Israel’s failure was not one of intelligence collection but of intelligence analysis.
According to the report, the assumption that Hamas had been successfully deterred became deeply rooted across Israel’s security establishment, surviving through three successive chiefs of staff and multiple senior intelligence commanders.
As increasingly detailed intelligence accumulated, the military’s underlying assessment remained unchanged.
The investigation concludes that the failure lay not in the absence of information but in the inability to interpret it correctly.
Israeli military leaders, the report says, remained prisoners of an established strategic concept that prevented them from recognizing the scale of the threat, despite possessing intelligence that, in retrospect, pointed toward Hamas’ preparations for the October 7 operation.
The findings add to a growing series of official Israeli military inquiries that have attributed the events of October 7 to systemic failures in analysis, planning and decision-making rather than to a single intelligence lapse.
Israeli Admission: Armed Gaza Militias Failed—And Could Turn Against Israel
(Israeli Media, QNN, PC)
Another excuse to cover up that they wanted the raid to go ahead, giving them the excuse to use harder, crueler, meaner, torture. The rape dogs were already being trained. Their own soldiers were telling the military it was actually happening, yet it took soldiers away from the area then took seven hours to travel an hour’s journey.
I am not believing their lies claiming stupidity, it went as they planned it, even to killing their own to add numbers to the injured or dead, mostly by israeli fire.
That cage israelis have put Palestinuans into is more watched than any royal Palace or prison anywhere in the world. So stop with the lies and made up excuses, israel, we see through all of them.