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Israel\u2019s domestic security service on Tuesday assumed responsibility for failing to heed warning signs of a planned Hamas attack before the militants\u2019 devastating strike on Oct. 7, 2023. But the agency also faulted the Israeli government for policies it said had allowed Hamas to quietly amass weapons, collect funds and gain support, among other failures.<\/p>\n
The conclusions from the Shin Bet, as the security agency is known, were published days after a similar inquiry by Israeli military<\/a> found that senior officers had vastly underestimated Hamas and misinterpreted early warnings that a major attack was coming.<\/p>\n The report published on Tuesday consisted only of a declassified summary, leaving an unknown amount of material undisclosed. But even the summary made the agency\u2019s lapses clear.<\/p>\n Plans for a Hamas raid on southern Israel reached the desks of intelligence agents in 2018 and again in 2022, the summary said, but the agency did not treat the warnings as a meaningful threat. As a result, the agency said, it did not include it in scenarios exploring future confrontations with the militant group.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n While the Shin Bet said that it took Hamas seriously, it acknowledged that it had not responded appropriately to early indications of attack plans, or to the later signs of impending bloodshed.<\/p>\n The Israeli authorities said they were publishing the findings, even as they kept parts of the report classified, in light of the gravity of the attack. About 1,200 people were killed that day, and some 250 people taken hostage, setting off the war in the Gaza Strip.<\/p>\n The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has resisted an independent review of the events leading up to the deadliest day in Israel\u2019s history. It has instead allowed each of the country\u2019s security institutions to investigate itself, despite public demands for a commission of inquiry.<\/p>\n In a debate in the Israeli Parliament on Monday, Mr. Netanyahu said he supported the creation of a commission to investigate the Hamas attack, but suggested that such an inquiry would inevitably generate biased findings<\/a> aimed at targeting him politically.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI am not deterred by fabricated investigations and a political manhunt,\u201d he said. \u201cI will continue to insist on the truth. I will continue to demand a balanced commission of inquiry that will reach the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Netanyahu\u2019s resistance to an inquiry and to calls for his resignation contrasts with the actions of some other Israeli officials.<\/p>\n The former military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, resigned<\/a> this month after taking responsibility for what he called his \u201cterrible failure\u201d to prevent the attack. The Shin Bet chief, Ronen Bar, told the Israeli news media<\/a> on Tuesday that he did not intend to resign until all the hostages taken from Israel were repatriated, but he acknowledged that the attack could have been prevented.<\/p>\n In its report, the Shin Bet also said it had failed to coordinate sufficiently with the military and to establish a clear chain of responsibility. \u201cThis is not the standard that we expected from ourselves and the public from us,\u201d the agency said.<\/p>\n At the same time, the Shin Bet report, unlike the recent military one, directly pointed to government policies as contributing factors to the attack. It said that the government had allowed Hamas to accumulate arms and to raise money for its military wing through Qatar. And it pointed to government reluctance to undertake \u201coffensive\u201d initiatives, including targeting Hamas leaders in Gaza.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The agency also cited the treatment of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli detention and \u201cthe perception that Israeli society has weakened.\u201d Before the attack, Mr. Netanyahu advanced a plan to overhaul Israel\u2019s judiciary, setting off protests nationwide<\/a>, and many Israelis have blamed Mr. Netanyahu<\/a> for the Hamas attack, citing domestic unrest as a factor that emboldened the militants.<\/p>\n The Shin Bet report echoes the findings of an article by The New York Times<\/a> published weeks after the attack, based on interviews with Israeli, Arab, European and American officials, as well as a review of Israeli government documents and evidence. <\/p>\n Mr. Netanyahu\u2019s office declined a request for comment on the Shin Bet\u2019s findings. The Israeli news media reported that the office released an unofficial statement<\/a> to a small group of local reporters that was \u201cattributed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s inner circle<\/a>.\u201d That statement said the intelligence agency had presented \u201can \u2018investigation\u2019 that answers no questions\u201d and did not correspond to \u201cthe magnitude of the organization\u2019s enormous failure.\u201d<\/p>\n The prime minister\u2019s office laid out a series of failures by intelligence agents, including an assessment presented just days before the attack \u201cdefinitively stating\u201d that Hamas wanted to avoid a campaign against Israel. It accused Mr. Bar of falling short.<\/p>\n \u201cThe head of the Shin Bet did not see fit to wake the prime minister on the night of the attack \u2014 the most basic and obvious decision one could imagine,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n Johnatan Reiss contributed reporting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n