Hamas attack on October 7th announced three hours before the Shin Bet service. Why didn't the law enforcement react
Ceremony to commemorate the victims of the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023 Photo: Ilia Yefimovich / DPA / Profimedia
The Israeli Information and Internal Security Agency, Shin Bet, sent a preliminary alert to the police on “a suspicious activity” in the Gaza Strip three hours before the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023, but the police only received it after they occurred, according to a report of this agency published by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
Shin Bet transmitted preliminary alert after discovering that Hamas's members activated mobile phones with SIM Israeli cards in the Gaza Strip at 3:03 in the morning -the first attack taking place at 7:03 -, but the police did not receive the alert until around 8 in the morning due to a failure of its internal system.
According to the statements of high police officials cited in the report, the night before the attack took place “an update of the systems”, which led to the delay in receiving the alert from Shin Bet. “Nobody realized until the dawn of the day,” it is mentioned in the information published in the Israeli newspaper.
It seems that even at the Shin Bet level, the information began to examine a few hours later, and they were not transmitted to all the police districts until around 8 in the morning, when the attacks against the city of Sderot had already started, the Kibbutz most close to the Gaza Strip, as well as the massacre at the Nova Music Festival.
The attacks of October 7, 2023 represented for Israel the biggest security disaster in its history. Although the army and Shin Bet have made reports to try to clarify the errors and causes that allowed them, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refuses to initiate a state investigation.
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In addition, the conclusions of these reports, or at least those that have been made public, include few unknown disclosures or information, many of the details already appearing on the national press. This is why much of the Israeli society, especially the families of the abducted, have been asking for the government to create “a state -investigation commission”, with large prerogatives to investigate and cite civil servants.
So far, only six high Israeli officials, both from the army and the internal information agency (Shin Bet), have left their positions because they were not able to prevent or limit the attacks after which about 1,200 people lost their lives and another 251 have been abducted and taken to the Străia Gaza.
