Israel’s home safety service on Tuesday assumed duty for failing to heed warning indicators of a deliberate Hamas assault earlier than the militants’ devastating strike on Oct. 7, 2023. However the company additionally faulted the Israeli authorities for insurance policies it mentioned had allowed Hamas to quietly amass weapons, acquire funds and acquire help, amongst different failures.
The conclusions from the Shin Guess, because the safety company is understood, have been printed days after an analogous inquiry by Israeli army discovered that senior officers had vastly underestimated Hamas and misinterpreted early warnings {that a} main assault was coming.
The report printed on Tuesday consisted solely of a declassified abstract, leaving an unknown quantity of fabric undisclosed. However even the abstract made the company’s lapses clear.
Plans for a Hamas raid on southern Israel reached the desks of intelligence brokers in 2018 and once more in 2022, the abstract mentioned, however the company didn’t deal with the warnings as a significant menace. Consequently, the company mentioned, it didn’t embody it in situations exploring future confrontations with the militant group.
Whereas the Shin Guess mentioned that it took Hamas significantly, it acknowledged that it had not responded appropriately to early indications of assault plans, or to the later indicators of impending bloodshed.
The Israeli authorities mentioned they have been publishing the findings, at the same time as they stored components of the report labeled, in mild of the gravity of the assault. About 1,200 folks have been killed that day, and a few 250 folks taken hostage, setting off the struggle within the Gaza Strip.
The federal government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has resisted an impartial overview of the occasions main as much as the deadliest day in Israel’s historical past. It has as an alternative allowed every of the nation’s safety establishments to analyze itself, regardless of public calls for for a fee of inquiry.
In a debate within the Israeli Parliament on Monday, Mr. Netanyahu mentioned he supported the creation of a fee to analyze the Hamas assault, however instructed that such an inquiry would inevitably generate biased findings aimed toward focusing on him politically.
“I’m not deterred by fabricated investigations and a political manhunt,” he mentioned. “I’ll proceed to insist on the reality. I’ll proceed to demand a balanced fee of inquiry that can attain the reality.”
Mr. Netanyahu’s resistance to an inquiry and to requires his resignation contrasts with the actions of another Israeli officers.
The previous army chief of employees, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, resigned this month after taking duty for what he referred to as his “horrible failure” to stop the assault. The Shin Guess chief, Ronen Bar, instructed the Israeli information media on Tuesday that he didn’t intend to resign till all of the hostages taken from Israel have been repatriated, however he acknowledged that the assault might have been prevented.
In its report, the Shin Guess additionally mentioned it had didn’t coordinate sufficiently with the army and to ascertain a transparent chain of duty. “This isn’t the usual that we anticipated from ourselves and the general public from us,” the company mentioned.
On the identical time, the Shin Guess report, in contrast to the current army one, instantly pointed to authorities insurance policies as contributing elements to the assault. It mentioned that the federal government had allowed Hamas to build up arms and to lift cash for its army wing by means of Qatar. And it pointed to authorities reluctance to undertake “offensive” initiatives, together with focusing on Hamas leaders in Gaza.
The company additionally cited the therapy of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli detention and “the notion that Israeli society has weakened.” Earlier than the assault, Mr. Netanyahu superior a plan to overtake Israel’s judiciary, setting off protests nationwide, and lots of Israelis have blamed Mr. Netanyahu for the Hamas assault, citing home unrest as an element that emboldened the militants.
The Shin Guess report echoes the findings of an article by The New York Instances printed weeks after the assault, based mostly on interviews with Israeli, Arab, European and American officers, in addition to a overview of Israeli authorities paperwork and proof.
Mr. Netanyahu’s workplace declined a request for touch upon the Shin Guess’s findings. The Israeli information media reported that the workplace launched an unofficial assertion to a small group of native reporters that was “attributed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s interior circle.” That assertion mentioned the intelligence company had offered “an ‘investigation’ that solutions no questions” and didn’t correspond to “the magnitude of the group’s monumental failure.”
The prime minister’s workplace laid out a sequence of failures by intelligence brokers, together with an evaluation offered simply days earlier than the assault “definitively stating” that Hamas needed to keep away from a marketing campaign towards Israel. It accused Mr. Bar of falling brief.
“The pinnacle of the Shin Guess didn’t see match to wake the prime minister on the night time of the assault — essentially the most primary and apparent determination one might think about,” it mentioned.
Johnatan Reiss contributed reporting.
