Amir Cohen/Reuters
The Israeli military knew about Hamas' plans to attack southern Israel weeks before October 7 — even how many hostages the militant group planned to capture, according to a report from Israeli public broadcaster Kan.
The Israel Defense Force's Gaza Division reportedly distributed an internal intelligence document on September 19, 2023, outlining the details of Hamas' planned raid, according to Kan.
The document, which Kan reportedly saw, states that the IDF had observed Hamas conducting a series of trainings where militant fighters practiced attacking both Israeli military stations and civilian kibbutzim communities.
The IDF also knew, according to the document viewed by Kan, that Hamas trained its units on how to capture hostages and how to guard them once they were taken back to the Gaza Strip.
The IDF's Southern Command and Gaza Division also wrote in the document, according to Kan, that they expected Hamas to take between 200 and 250 hostages. The officials even had intel on how Hamas intended to treat the hostages in certain extreme circumstances and what rules Hamas set for executing hostages, Kan reported.
Israel mistakenly believed, the Times of Israel reported, that Hamas would never be able to get past its high-tech border security — an "Iron Wall" composed of concrete, tunnels, and razor wire, complete with remote-controlled machine guns, that was installed two years before the attack.
That oversight prevented top Israeli intelligence leaders from doing anything about the internal report detailing Hamas' plans, Kan News reported.
And it wasn't just a few weeks before October 7 that Israel reportedly knew about Hamas' plans.
More than a year before the attack, Israel had a 40-page document detailing, play-by-play, exactly how Hamas would attack the southern border, The New York Times reported last year. But, Israel never took Hamas' plans seriously, assuming the militant group would never get past Israel's defenses, the Times reported.
Hamas militants attacked southern Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people and taking hundreds hostage, many of whom are still being held in captivity.
The exact number of hostages Hamas took is unclear, but Israel has estimated it was around 240, with about 116 still in Gaza, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Israel's subsequent airstrikes and war against Hamas in Gaza have killed more than 37,000 Palestinians, many of whom are women and children, according to Palestinian health authorities.
