Israeli military and intelligence officials had access to Hamas’ battle plan for the October 7 attack, or something very close to it, more than a year before the attack, an investigation by US media has revealed.
According to the report, Israeli officials were in possession of a 40-page attack plan code-named “Jericho Wall” which detailed a hypothetical Hamas attack along Gaza’s southern border with Israel.
It has not been detailed how Israel obtained the document, but the report indicates Israel obtained it sometime last year.
While it did not set a date for the attack, it described in detail the tactics Hamas would employ, including the use of rockets to distract Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers and send them into bunkers. It described following that stage with drone attacks to take out security cameras and remotely-controlled machine guns along the border. The next step included gunmen flooding over the border on foot, using motorcycles and flying over with paragliders.
All of those tactics were seen being used by Hamas and other groups who participated in the October 7 attack.
It also described breaking through the Israeli border at 60 different points and listed the Re’im military base as a critical target. During the attack, Hamas rampaged through the base, which is home to the Gaza division of the IDF, overrunning it for a time.
While the document was widely circulated among military officials and the intelligence communities, it is unknown if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or other high-ranking political figures saw the document.
It was more than six hours after the attack began that the IDF announced it was sending troops to southern Israel to retake towns occupied by Hamas. An eyewitness account by an Israeli who escaped Hamas during the attack said that even the militant group was surprised by the military’s slow response.
Among the military, the attack plan was dismissed as aspirational, described as a “compass” of where Hamas wanted to go but not where it currently was.
At least one Israeli intelligence analyst warned that she believed the attack plan was more than hypothetical in the mind of Hamas leadership. According to US media, she informed superiors through encrypted email that Hamas was conducting a training exercise that mimicked the attack described in the document.
The analyst's superior, a colonel in the Gaza division, ultimately brushed off the concerns and called the attack plan “totally imaginative” and not indicative of Hamas’ actual capabilities. While he praised the analysis, he told her: “in short, let's wait patiently.”
During the email exchange, she reportedly stressed her disagreement with the colonel’s assessment. “I utterly refute that the scenario is imaginary,” she wrote. “It is a plan designed to start a war. It’s not just a raid on a village.”
Over the past year and a half, Hamas has been posting videos of it and other groups in Gaza training for an attack on Israel, including with mock buildings, attacking mock Israeli tanks and taking hostages. Some of the training exercises took place within a mile of the Israeli border, adding more questions on how Israel was caught so off-guard.
The intelligence analyst did not say an attack was imminent. However, according to the report, Israeli officials have said privately that the Hamas attack could have been thwarted if it took warnings seriously and redeployed forces to counter the coming attack.
Howver, the "Jericho Wall" document also contained sensitive information about the IDF, including troop locations and numbers which has since opened the possibility that there could be a leak within the IDF.
The battle plan, along with other documents obtained by the IDF, began with a quote from the Quran: “Surprise them through the gate. If you do, you will certainly prevail.”