Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar asked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to approve the assassination of Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar on October 1, 2023, six days before the terror group invaded southern Israel and started the Gaza war, but Netanyahu ignored the request, according to a Saturday report.
The Prime Minister’s Office immediately denied the report, saying Netanyahu at the meeting in question discussed a scenario of targeted killings in Gaza while Bar actually asked that Israel provide civilian incentives and benefits to Hamas to buy quiet.
The report, by Channel 12 news, said it drew its material from the Shin Bet’s own investigations into its October 7 failures, and that the probes show the security service to have utterly misjudged Hamas’s intentions.
The report said Bar met with senior Shin Bet officials at 3:30 a.m. on October 7 — three hours before the attack began — after receiving evidence that Hamas was behaving suspiciously.
The two indications, the report said, were dozens of SIM cards being turned on in Gaza and senior commanders of Hamas’s military wing descending into the terror group’s tunnels.
According to the report, Bar initially believed that Hamas was preparing for an invasion of Israel, although the scale he expected was of dozens of terrorists and not the thousands that would storm the country within hours.
However, the report said that as the night went on, Bar became less convinced that Hamas intended to invade, as senior Shin Bet officials told him that the SIM cards had been activated in the past and that Hamas was most likely preparing for an Israeli attack.
The theory that Hamas was preparing for an Israeli attack was passed on to the IDF between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m., the report said. Nevertheless, Bar sent two counterterrorism squads to the border with Gaza because he believed a small-scale terror attack could be attempted.
At 5 a.m., a decision was made to cancel the security cabinet meeting meant to be held on Sunday, October 8, so that Hamas did not interpret the meeting as approval to strike Gaza and initiate an Israeli preemptory attack.
Also at 5 a.m., it was decided to immediately wake up Netanyahu’s military secretary, Maj. Gen. Avi Gil, and inform him of the intelligence that had been gathered, the report said.
Bar’s chief of staff, however, only called Gil at 6:13 a.m., according to the report. During the phone call, the chief of staff told Gil: “There are signs indicating an infiltration, but on the other hand [Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s] phone and that of another senior Hamas official are in their apartments and not in the tunnels.”
The report said that at 6:29 a.m. Gil called Netanyahu, at which point the Hamas onslaught, during which terrorists would go on to kill 1,200 people and kidnap 251, had just begun.
The report said the Shin Bet did not regard the Hamas Nukhba forces that led the invasion as a strategic threat, instead believing the border fence was a potent defense against the terror group’s ground forces.
The Shin Bet was reportedly much more concerned about the potential threat of Hamas naval forces among other dangers, and did not even realize that the attack was looming when indications mounted in the hours before the war.
Hamas naval commandos did infiltrate Israel via sea, killing about 19 civilians and 14 soldiers near Zikim.
Though successive Shin Bet chiefs Yoram Cohen, Nadav Argaman and Bar did recognize that Hamas was growing stronger, for years they urged Netanyahu to green-light the killings of Sinwar and Hamas military leader Muhammad Deif, who were eventually killed by Israel last year, the report said. “But Netanyahu preferred the IDF’s stance, of quiet in return for quiet,” according to the report. The security service also bitterly opposed Netanyahu’s policy of encouraging Qatar to pump money into Gaza, the report said.
In the year leading up to October 7, Bar also sought to warn Netanyahu of the dangers of the rift in Israel over the judicial overhaul, and the potential emboldening of Israel’s enemies as a result, but Netanyahu ignored him, the TV report said.
The Shin Bet held a discussion in early September 2023 on the issue of readiness for a campaign in Gaza, which was also attended by IDF operations officers. The possibility of a Hamas invasion was not discussed, but it was concluded that the Strip and the West Bank were heating up and that readiness had to be raised, the report said.
Bar also sought a meeting of security chiefs with Netanyahu. In mid-September, he warned that “we are on the way to a multifront campaign.”
On October 1, the prime minister held a meeting of security chiefs “at which Bar recommended killing Sinwar. The prime minister ignored” the request, the report said.
The Prime Minister’s Office called the report “a complete lie” and said “the opposite is the case.”
In a statement, it confirmed that a meeting of security chiefs was held on October 1, headed by Netanyahu, regarding Gaza. At that meeting, it said, Bar “recommended giving civilian benefits to Hamas in return for buying calm.”
Bar actually said that “targeted strikes should not be carried out in Gaza and Lebanon to prevent another round [of war] in Gaza,” the PMO claimed.
By contrast, Netanyahu at the meeting recommended “a scenario of escalation by eliminating the Hamas leadership in Gaza.”
The statement added that on October 3, Bar delivered a firm assessment that Hamas was seeking to avoid another round of conflict against Israel and that calm could be maintained for some time “if Israel gave Gaza an economic horizon.”
For years, Netanyahu spearheaded the policy of allowing Qatari money into Gaza.
Netanyahu has been widely reported to be preparing to fire Bar, and has removed him from the team negotiating the ongoing hostage-ceasefire deal.