According to Israeli public radio and television Kan, the Israeli military intelligence service was aware shortly before October 7 of a planned Hamas attack, the aim of which was to take several hundred hostages in Israel.
Unit 8200, responsible for eavesdropping, wrote a report on September 19 detailing training by elite units of the Palestinian Islamist movement with a view to raids against military positions and kibbutzim in southern Israel. The Israeli media adds that officials from the Southern Military Command, responsible for the Gaza Strip, were aware of this report.
Between 200 and 250 hostages targeted
According to the radio and television station, the memo noted that the Islamist movement was targeting “200 to 250 hostages”. An estimate which unfortunately turned out to be correct since 251 people were kidnapped during the attack on October 7.
Asked by AFP about KAN’s revelations, an Israeli military spokesperson indicated that the army was “investigating the events that occurred on October 7 and what preceded them.” “The goal of this investigation is to learn and draw the necessary lessons,” added the spokesperson, according to whom “the conclusions will be presented (…) to the public in complete transparency,” he said. announcement.
However, at the political level, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stubbornly refuses the opening of an official commission of inquiry into October 7 before the end of the ongoing war in Gaza, now in its ninth month.