Tel Aviv [Israel], June 19: Israeli military intelligence sounded clear warnings regarding a pending attack more than two weeks before Hamas launched its attack from the Gaza Strip on October 7 last year, according to Kan, the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation.
Plans to attack military bases and settlements and to take up to 250 hostages, including women and children, were set out in a document distributed within the Gaza Division of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) on September 19, the Kan report said.
The report came from the highly regarded Unit 8200, an IDF unit responsible for collecting intelligence, but had apparently been ignored by senior officers. The worst-case scenario being considered was that a few dozen terrorists could enter Israel at three points.
A Kan military correspondent said: "The security system at the time was working towards pacification of the Gaza Strip, by means of improving living conditions for the civilian population, work permits for Palestinians and the lifting of restrictions on goods."
The IDF had relied on the border defences reaching deep into the ground, but everything had collapsed on October 7, the correspondent reported. Senior officers in the Gaza Division had apparently dismissed the warnings.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has criticized the fact that the US government is still withholding arms supplies to Israel.
In a video message in English he said he told US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that it was "inconceivable that in the past few months the administration has been withholding weapons and ammunition to [sic] Israel." "Blinken assured me that the administration is working day and night to remove these bottlenecks. I certain hopes that's the case," he said in the video published on Tuesday.
Various media have reported recently that the US - Israel's closest and most powerful ally - had indicated arms deliveries could resume in the coming days.
More killed in Gaza
Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip have claimed the lives of 17 people and injured dozens more, Palestinian authorities reported on Tuesday.
Bodies had been recovered from the Nuseirat refugee camp in the centre of the Gaza Strip and taken to a local hospital, the state-run Wafa news agency reported.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reported on Tuesday that it had eliminated terrorist cells and located large amounts of weaponry in the centre and south of the region.
It added that IDF troops were continuing operations in the Rafah area in the far south.
The commander of a sniper cell of the Islamic Jihad group had been eliminated by an IDF fighter jet with the direction of IDF ground troops, it said.
According to the Hamas-controlled health authority in the region, more than 37,300 people have been killed since the start of the current war, which erupted after the October 7 attacks mounted by Hamas and Islamic Jihad from the Gaza Strip.
The figures do not distinguish between civilians and combatants and cannot be independently verified.
Source: Qatar Tribune