According to Kan, Israel’s public broadcaster, Israeli military intelligence issued clear warnings of an impending attack more than two weeks before Hamas launched its attack from the Gaza Strip on October 7 last year.
Plans to attack military bases and settlements and take up to 250 hostages, including women and children, were outlined in a document distributed within the Gaza Division of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on September 19, the KAN report said .
The report came from the highly regarded Unit 8200, an IDF unit responsible for intelligence gathering but apparently ignored by senior officers. The worst-case scenario considered was that several dozen terrorists could enter Israel at three points.
A KAN military correspondent said: “The security system at the time was working to pacify the Gaza Strip, through improving living conditions for the civilian population, work permits for Palestinians and lifting restrictions on goods.”
The IDF had relied on border defenses reaching deep into the ground, but by October 7 everything had collapsed, the correspondent reported. Senior Gaza Division officers apparently dismissed the warnings.
Netanyahu criticizes the US for withholding weapons
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has criticized the fact that the US government continues to block arms deliveries to Israel.
In a video message in English, he told US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that it was “unthinkable that the government has withheld weapons and ammunition in recent months to [sic] Israel.”
“Blinken assured me that the government is working day and night to remove these bottlenecks. I really hope this is the case,” he said in the video published on Tuesday.
Several media outlets recently reported that the US – Israel’s closest and most powerful ally – had indicated that arms deliveries could resume in the coming days.
More deaths in central Gaza
Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip have killed 17 people and injured dozens of others, Palestinian authorities said on Tuesday.
Bodies had been recovered from the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza Strip and taken to a local hospital, state news agency Wafa reported.
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) reported on Tuesday that it had eliminated terrorist cells and located large quantities of weaponry in the center and south of the region.
It added that IDF forces continued operations in the Rafah area in the far south.
The commander of an Islamic Jihad group sniper cell had been eliminated by an IDF fighter jet led by IDF ground forces, the report said.
More than 37,300 people have been killed since the start of the current war, which broke out after the October 7 attacks by Hamas and Islamic Jihad from the Gaza Strip, according to the Hamas-controlled health authority in the region.
The figures do not distinguish between civilians and combatants and cannot be independently verified.
