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The Israeli military knew about Hamas' plans to attack southern Israel weeks before Oct. 7 – and even how many hostages the militant group planned to take, a report from the agency said. Israel's public broadcaster Cannes.
According to Kahn, the Gaza Division of the Israel Defense Forces distributed an internal intelligence document on September 19, 2023, detailing the planned Hamas operation.
The document, allegedly by Kahn, said the IDF saw Hamas conduct a series of training exercises in which militant fighters practiced attacking both Israeli military stations and civilian kibbutzim communities.
The IDF also knew, according to documents seen by Kahn, that Hamas trained its units how to capture hostages and guard them after they were taken back to the Gaza Strip.
The IDF's Southern Command and Gaza Division also wrote in the document that they expected Hamas to take 200 to 250 hostages, according to Kahn. Officials even had intelligence on how Hamas intended to treat hostages in some extreme situations and what rules Hamas had in place for executing hostages, Kahn reported.
Israel mistakenly believed, The Times of Israel reportedThat Hamas would never be able to overcome its high-tech border security — an “iron wall” composed of concrete, tunnels and razor wire, complete with remote-controlled machine guns, that was installed two years before the attack.
That oversight prevented Israel's top intelligence leaders from doing anything about an internal report detailing Hamas' plans, Cannes News reported.
And Israel reportedly knew of Hamas' plans just weeks before October 7.
More than a year before the attack, Israel had a 40-page document detailing how Hamas would attack the southern border, The New York Times reported last year. But, Israel never took Hamas's plan seriously, assuming the militant group would not be able to get past Israel's defenses, the Times reported.
Hamas militants attacked southern Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people and taking hundreds hostage, many of whom are still in captivity.
The exact number of Hamas hostages is unclear, but Israel estimates it to be around 240, with around 116 still in Gaza. The Wall Street Journal reported.
More than 37,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have been killed in subsequent Israeli airstrikes and fighting against Hamas in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Health Authority.
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