On September 26, 2023, a chartered jet linked to Egyptian intelligence landed at Ben Gurion Airport, and spymaster Abbas Kamel spent about an hour telling Israeli officials that Gaza was close to combustion, The Atlantic reports.
Roughly two hours later, Benjamin Netanyahu took a stage 30 miles away to mark 50 years since the Yom Kippur War and lectured the country on missed intelligence warnings. Within weeks, Netanyahu's own ignored intelligence warnings would lead the way to the most devastating genocide the world has seen in decades.
The intelligence warning of a Hamas attack were so rampant and well known before October 7, that the decision to move troops away from Gaza before the attack commenced appears all too suspicious.
While some of these warnings have made the headlines, what those headlines fail to grasp is how many warnings arrived, and for how long Israel had to prepare for an attack before they weakened defences at the last moment.
It is a fact that Israeli leaders had Hamas' plan of attack a year before October 7, 2023, it is also a fact that they were aware of plans like these for years at that point. In total, we found 18 times Israeli leadership was warned of an attack from Hamas, 13 of those during 2023.
Years of warning
Long before the attack, the Israeli regime knew Hamas was planning a raid of this kind.
- September 2016: A top-secret Defense Ministry memo, signed by then-defense minister Avigdor Lieberman, warned that Hamas was preparing an invasion and hostage-taking operation.
- 2018: Egypt handed Netanyahu a document warning that money from Qatar, Turkey and Iran was going straight to Hamas's military wing.
- 2018: Shin Bet warned the National Security Council that Hamas had a plan for a broad raid and only lacked the money.
- 2019: Military intelligence repeatedly reported that Qatari cash was reaching the military wing. A senior officer testified to this before the State Comptroller, as reported by Yedioth and The Times of Israel.
- 2022: The IDF obtained Hamas's 40-page attack plan, known as Jericho Wall, more than a year in advance and dismissed it as aspirational.
2023: from foreign governments and back channels
