IDF intelligence chiefs never told Israel’s most senior military and political leaders that Unit 8200 had in April 2022 obtained a document setting out Hamas’s plans for what proved to be the October 7 invasion and slaughter in southern Israel, Channel 12 reported on Saturday.
The existence of the document, which Israeli military intelligence codenamed “Jericho Walls,” was first reported in The New York Times in November 2023.
The 40-page plan, the Times reported at the time, laid out almost exactly how Hamas eventually wound up carrying out the attack: “The document called for a barrage of rockets at the outset of the attack, drones to knock out the security cameras and automated machine guns along the border, and gunmen to pour into Israel en masse in paragliders, on motorcycles and on foot — all of which happened on Oct. 7.”
Israeli intelligence officers reportedly determined that the terror group was incapable of carrying out an assault of such a large scope, or possibly unwilling, and dismissed concerns about it.
According to a Channel 12 report on Saturday night, the Arabic language document, which was written in October 2021, was obtained by Unit 8200 in April 2022 and translated. It was seen by IDF intelligence chief Aharon Haliva, 8200 commander Yossi Sariel, Gaza division commander Avi Rosenfeld, and then IDF Southern Command chief Eliezer Toledano, the report says.
It was not seen by IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, deputy chief Amir Baram, Israel Air Force chief Tomer Bar, or senior IDF operations officers Oded Basyuk and Shlomi Binder. It was also not seen by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, or the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
The document showed “Hamas was not deterred,” contradicting the prevailing IDF assessment, former IDF intelligence chief Aharon Ze’evi-Farkash told Channel 12. Therefore it should obviously have been followed up rather than dismissed. “It needed to be thoroughly checked.”
The TV report said that in the months preceding October 7, IAF chief Bar, in the months felt the Air Force was not getting adequate intelligence on developments in Gaza and that meetings were held with Unit 8200 about this concern — the last one of which was held about a week before October 7. But even then, Bar was not told about the Hamas “Jericho Walls” battle plan document.
The air force had seen “no scenario” for the kind of mass breach of the border, with dozens of points of entry, that Hamas carried out on October 7, Brigadier General (Res.) Yaron Rosen, a former senior IAF officer and pilot, told Channel 12, and thus there were “no relevant orders” to activate that morning, and the IAF was forced to improvise. Had it known of the attack plan, it would have drawn up a response and “hopefully” would have been able to prevent the invasion, Rosen said.
The Channel 12 report also described efforts by an intelligence officer in the IDF Southern Command identified by the initial “Aleph” to alert more senior military officers to what he recognized as “something extremely unusual going on — heightened readiness on the other side [in Gaza]” in the hours before Hamas invaded.
It said “Aleph” contacted Haliva and IDF southern command chief Yaron Finkelman to report these indications, and that this was after Israeli intelligence officers had already noticed that dozens of Hamas terrorists had activated Israeli SIM cards in their phones, another tell-tale sign of attack that was ignored.
Haliva was on vacation in Eilat, Channel 12 stated, and did not immediately return to work following “Aleph’s” report.
As had been previously reported, Finkelman headed to the IDF’s Southern Command headquarters overnight October 6-7 and alerted Halevi, who held telephone consultations but did not order a major alert.
“Aleph” also contacted Unit 8200 commander Sariel via WhatsApp to what he described as “a highly unusual event,” seeking intelligence from a “particularly important” technical network that had for years provided information on Hamas activities, the TV report said. Sariel, checking, was told that this network had not been working for the past several hours. The network was only reactivated at around the time that the invasion began.
Several Unit 8200 soldiers also recognized unusual activity in Gaza in the hours before the invasion and sent six emails to a “non-relevant user,” the report stated.
Saturday night’s report was the latest in a long series of revelations that began emerging soon after October 7 about material in Israel’s hands pointing to the looming Hamas invasion that was ignored, dismissed or misinterpreted. The TV channel said its report was compiled under military censorship limitations, and that it was unable to detail an additional dramatic piece of information regarding the hours before the invasion “that should have lit all the red lights.”
Some 1,200 people were killed across southern Israel during the October 7 Hamas-led terror onslaught, and 251 people were seized as hostages. Of that number, it is believed that 111 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of 39 confirmed dead by the IDF.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 40,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting that erupted with the October 7 assault, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 17,000 combatants in battle as of August, and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.
Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 334.