By Joel Leyden
Israel News Agency / Jewish News Agency
Jerusalem, Israel — May 24, 2024 … Reports that Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu had warnings of a Hamas terror attack on October 7, 2023 have been confirmed as false. It’s been known that lower ranking IDF INTEL had witnessed Hamas training for an invasion on the Gaza border, but the lower ranking intelligence officers reports were buried by their supervisors and never reach the head of IDF Intelligence or the Prime Minister’s Office.
The Prime Minister’s Office issued the following statement today:
“The claim that Prime Minister Netanyahu received early warning from IDF Intelligence about a possible attack from Gaza is the opposite of the truth. Not only was there no warning of any kind about a Hamas intention to attack Israel from Gaza, but a completely opposite assessment was provided.
Two references to Hamas in four intelligence documents illustrate that Hamas did not want to attack Israel from Gaza and that it favored a peaceful arrangement. The first reference, from March 19, 2023, notes that Hamas’s strategy is “leaving Gaza on the back burner” and focusing attacks against Israel from other arenas.
The second reference from May 31, 2023 recommended that Israel join the “regional de-escalation trend” and “take a step forward toward a peaceful arrangement with the Gaza Strip and the Hamas sovereign.”
All of the security bodies consistently supported these assessments that Hamas was not interested in escalation but in an arrangement with Israel and that Hamas was deterred.
As to the claim raised in the documents about the negative effect on our enemies of a lack of cohesion in Israel, the Prime Minister himself repeatedly warned about this danger when he spoke of those refusing to serve in the Israel Defense Forces.
For example, on July 17, 2023 the Prime Minister warned that the internal debate “is gnawing away at our deterrence against our enemies who could be tempted to act aggressively against us.”
Yet, Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu was accurate when he warned Israel’s enemies that on the day of reckoning “the internal debate will not impair our determination and strength to strike them whenever necessary.”
The reports that Netanyahu knew of a Hamas attack were based on four documents obtained from the IDF by a freedom-of-information request by Israeli NGO Hatzlaha, a political rival to Netanyahu: The Movement for the Promotion of a Fair Society. That political rivals were attacking Netanyahu during the Israel Hamas War and trying to divide and weaken Israeli society would only benefit Israel’s enemies.