An Israel Defense Forces series of investigations into the battles that took place during Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught found that it was only recognized months after the invasion and slaughter that the military’s Gaza Division, the regional unit responsible for the Strip and for protecting southern Israel, was “defeated” for several hours.

When the attack began, involving over 5,000 terrorists, just over 700 IDF troops were stationed on the border.

As a result of not realizing in real-time that the Gaza Division had fallen, the General Staff did not understand the severity of the attack and failed to put together an accurate picture of the operational situation. This became a major challenge during the efforts to block the attack.

The investigations into the battles found that the IDF failed to protect Israeli civilians and it was not prepared for a wide-scale surprise attack.

The Times of Israel and other reporters were presented with the investigations conducted by the Southern Command, Operations Division, Israeli Air Force, and Israeli Navy.

The investigations found the following:

The investigations found three main points of failure that enabled the onslaught:

1. The attack was a surprise with no intelligence warning.
2. Hamas had numerous forces and was attacking several areas simultaneously.
3. The IDF had far fewer forces and minimal capabilities available.

The IDF was surprised by the attack itself, the number of Hamas terrorists and the number of areas under attack, the ability of Hamas to maneuver around quickly, and their cruelty, all of which were planned in advance, according to the investigations.

The investigation found that under the IDF’s assumption that there was no imminent threat, the military’s deployment on the border was according to protocol. Troops took up their posts at dawn according to protocol as well. There was no bolstering of forces in light of the intelligence indications received overnight, but drones were dispatched for surveillance missions.

At 6:29 a.m., Hamas launched a multi-pronged assault on Israel, from the land, air, and sea, along with massive rocket fire. During the attack, Hamas, using explosives, simultaneously breached Israel’s border fence at 114 locations — including 37 gates that it forced open — and neutralized all but one of the IDF’s sentry towers on the border by dropping explosives on them from drones.

At 6:37 a.m., the Gaza Division declared “Parash Peleshet” a codeword referring to the most extreme infiltration scenario involving dozens of Hamas operatives breaching into Israel, at most at eight locations. This declaration automatically sets forth a process of sending reinforcements to the division, per the scenario.

Hamas’s ground attack took place in three main waves:

1. The first wave, between 6:29 and 7 a.m. involved 1,175 members of Hamas’s Nukhba force, coinciding with some 1,406 rockets, mostly aimed at Israeli bases and cities in the Gaza border area. The terrorists were focused on attacking the IDF border posts, and later planning to reach critical sites in southern Israel, including the Re’im base — the Gaza Division headquarters — a sensitive intelligence base, and the Sderot police station.
2. The second wave, between 7 and 9 a.m., involved some 600 Nukhba terrorists, coinciding with 937 rockets. The terrorists were focused on the Israeli border communities and later planned to reach critical sites deeper in Israel, including Israeli Air Force bases.
3. The third wave, between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., included some 435 Nukhba terrorists, coinciding with 1,084 rockets. The terrorists were there to provide backup for the first two waves.

During the second and third waves, starting at 7 a.m., another 1,325 members of Hamas, and 580 members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, other terror groups, and unaffiliated Palestinians, joined in the onslaught.

Alongside the ground invasion, eight Hamas terrorists invaded Israel using paragliders and another 38 terrorists attempted to infiltrate into Israel via the sea using seven speedboats, at least 16 of them successfully.

In all, between 5,000 and 5,600 terrorists invaded Israel according to the investigation.

The IDF had just 767 soldiers deployed to the Gaza border that morning before backup would arrive later. At the start of the attack, the troops attempted to defend the border, the communities, and army posts. However, the massive rocket fire in some cases forced the soldiers into bomb shelters, which hindered their ability to fight back against the invasion.

In the border fence area, IDF troops managed to thwart several attempts by Hamas to breach the barrier. However, due to the widespread attack and the limited number of forces on the border, Hamas managed to breach the fence at 114 locations.

Most of the 251 abductions occurred before noon. Up to that time, most of the terrorists who had invaded Israel either returned to the Strip or were killed in the fighting. Several dozen were also captured. The fighting continued in several Israeli communities until the evening, and over the following days, several terrorists who were hiding in Israel were found.

The IDF regained control of the border during the night of October 7.

In all, the IDF estimated that it killed more than 1,600 terrorists during the onslaught in Israel and captured 149.

After the IDF regained control of the area on the night of October 7, it began to evacuate civilians from the border communities gradually, as terrorists were still in the area. There were cases where troops came under fire during attempts to evacuate civilians.

Additionally, in some cases, wounded troops were evacuated from the battlefield before civilians, mainly due to soldiers being used to the existing military mechanisms. Normally, civilian services like Magen David Adom treat civilians while the IDF’s medical service treats soldiers. The IDF was unprepared to treat and evacuate civilians during fighting inside Israel.

One of the main challenges the IDF faced on the morning of October 7 was building an accurate picture of the current ongoing situation. The investigation found that the collapse of the Gaza Division for several hours created difficulty for the Southern Command and Operations Directorate to put together a picture of the situation, and led to wrong decisions being made.

Hamas’s onslaught was wide-scale, with simultaneous attacks all across the division’s region, including at its own headquarters — at the Re’im base. The command and control in the Gaza Division, especially in the southern region, was significantly harmed. The division’s Southern Brigade commander, Col. Asaf Hamami, was killed just after 7 a.m., as were many company and platoon commanders that morning.

As a result of the limited picture of the situation, the IDF faced challenges with getting troops to the right locations in southern Israel amid the onslaught, as it did not know what should be prioritized. In addition, many of the locations where terrorists were attacking, were only brought to the army’s attention much later.

The investigation found that shortly after the surprise attack, the IDF declared that it was at war, and began the process of flooding southern Israel with troops, starting with forces that were in their bases and on alert, and later with troops at home and reservists. The troops all were ready per the times that are determined by IDF protocol and were sent either to the Gaza border or to northern Israel, as the IDF initially feared Hezbollah could join in the assault.

Alongside the efforts by the IDF Operations Directorate to send troops to the Gaza border, many commanders and troops set out independently for southern Israel even before receiving an official order. Some troops fought in non-organic frameworks, meaning not with their usual unit.

The troops sent to southern Israel faced difficulty in reaching specific communities and IDF posts under attack, as they were ambushed by terrorists on the roads. Additionally, because many forces were heading to Gaza from the north, nearly all of them passed through Sderot and got stuck fighting there, while Hamas was massacring civilians in other communities in the southern section of the border. Sderot also took up a lot of attention because of clips circulating on social media, and broadcast on television, of Hamas terrorists in the city, while there was far less information coming from the kibbutzim.

Between 7 and 8 a.m. there were 34 areas under attack, but only 11 of them had the presence of IDF troops. This number would improve throughout the day, with the IDF reaching all of the sites by 4 p.m.

Alongside flooding the border with troops, the IDF also appointed senior officers to take charge of each of the locations of fighting.

The troops deployed to the border who dealt with the Hamas attack first faced extreme challenges, including using firepower inside Israeli communities, operating without intelligence, and in many cases, without any command and control. In a small number of instances, troops disengaged from the fight and did not engage the terrorists.

Also in a handful of cases, some officers on the ground implemented the controversial “Hannibal Protocol,” granting troops broad permission to do whatever was necessary to prevent the kidnapping of a fellow soldier, including potentially endangering their life.

The IAF’s probe found that the Air Force had correctly maintained its aircraft on standby according to protocol, and even slightly more than usual.

After the IAF declared it was at war at 7:10 a.m., all of the drones, all helicopters, and most fighter jets managed to take off on time. Two jets were unable to take off for a few moments due to Hamas’s massive rocket attacks, some of which targeted Israeli airbases.

Still, the IAF’s standby aircraft numbers were not applicable to a wide-scale surprise attack.

A major challenge the IAF faced was understanding the current situation and where it should focus, amid the possibility of a multifront attack on Israel.

Due to the unclear picture, and a lack of information coming from the ground, the IAF faced difficulty with differentiating between terrorists and civilians, leading to several cases where terrorists were not targeted over fears that they were civilians.

Instead, drone strikes were carried out next to suspects, to disperse them. In one such strike at the Nahal Oz army post, 11 female surveillance soldiers were saved after a strike was carried out next to a group of terrorists attempting to reach a room where they were holed up.

The first drone strike carried out at 7:15 a.m. near Netiv Haasara, prevented a group of Hamas terrorists from infiltrating through the border.

At 7:55 a.m., Israeli fighter jets carried out an attack plan according to the instructions given to them, which included bombing Hamas tunnels and underground command centers, under the assumption that the infiltration was being carried out using tunnels. The effectiveness of the strikes on Hamas’s invasion remains unclear.

At 9:30 a.m. IAF chief Maj. Gen. Tomer Bar instructed aircraft to strike in the border area, both to prevent terrorists from breaching into Israel and to prevent them from returning to the Strip. At least one hostage being abducted to Gaza, Efrat Katz, was killed when an IAF helicopter fired at a vehicle carrying both terrorists and hostages.

On the morning of October 7, 38 Hamas terrorists in seven-speed boats set out from the Gaza Strip for Israel. Each boat was traveling at around 30 knots (55 kmph), about 500 meters from the coast, with a distance of 600-700 meters between each one.

Two of the boats were destroyed in the sea by two Dvora-class patrol boats of the 916th Patrol Squadron; three were struck by the patrol boats as they arrived at the coast; and two managed to reach the coast without being targeted.

In all, 22 terrorists were killed while 16 managed to infiltrate Israel. Those terrorists would murder 17 Israelis at the Zikim beach area. All 16 would be killed in the coming days, some by ground forces and some by the Navy.

The Navy’s preparations for a sea-based Hamas infiltration were not applicable to what ultimately occurred on October 7. The most extreme scenario that had been prepared for was one Hamas speedboat or two divers.

Alongside defending against the Hamas infiltration, members of the Navy’s Shayetet 13 commando unit were involved in fighting on the ground in several communities, and the Navy’s corvettes and missile boats were deployed around Israel’s gas rigs at sea, fearing they could come under attack.

The IDF has carried out tactical investigations into 41 separate battles and major incidents that took place during the October 7 attack. While each battle has its own different attributes, the military’s investigations found that there are systemic lessons to be learned.

The military made the following conclusions following its investigations into the battles between October 7 and 10:

1. On October 7, the IDF failed to protect Israeli civilians; was not ready for a wide-scale surprise attack; and the bravery of civilians, members of local security teams, other security forces, and IDF troops, prevented a worse catastrophe.
2. On October 7, the IDF, at all levels, held plans and orders that were applicable to the current assessments but were revealed to not be enough for the scenario that occurred. Such difficult events were not practiced, even in the most complex exercises that were held.
3. The Gaza Division was defeated for several hours. This is an insight that was not understood in real-time, but only afterward, during the investigations. As a result, a major gap developed between the General Staff’s and Southern Command’s understandings of the severity of the situation.
4. The IDF failed to put together a picture of the operational situation, which became a major challenge during the efforts to block the attack. The solutions, including flooding the area with troops and selecting senior officers to take charge in areas under attack, were not enough.
5. The IDF and its units maintained forces on standby according to what had been determined based on its assessments. But these standby forces were not enough — in terms of time for deployment, their numbers, and capabilities — to handle what happened.
6. Many Israelis, including brave civilians, members of security forces, IDF troops, and officers, worked fiercely and heroically and fought tough battles. However, regaining control took a long time, during which many people were murdered and kidnapped.

Brig. Gen. Avi Rosenfeld, the Gaza Division chief during the onslaught, resigned in June. Southern Command chief, Maj. Gen. Yaron Finkelman, announced his resignation last month.