Israeli website reveals some results of investigations into October 7 attack

The Israeli website "Walla" reported today, Tuesday, that the General Staff is close to completing 4 central investigations into the October 7, 2023 attack, and has decided to reduce the number of participants in the investigations to prevent leaks.

On that day, Palestinian factions, most notably the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), carried out a surprise attack on Israeli settlements and military bases, which resulted in the killing, capture and detention of soldiers and settlers in the Strip, without the army being able to predict this in advance and prevent it from happening or deal with it in a way that would prevent their capture, in response to the occupation’s attacks on the Palestinian people and Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Israeli investigations revealed that Hamas fighters sought to control Kibbutz Kfar Aza and Be'eri for a long time, and that the commanders who arrived at the sites had difficulty understanding the situation on the ground, which caused operational obstacles.

Investigations also showed that the Israeli army faced major challenges in confronting Palestinian militants who were positioned on the roofs of buildings.

Investigations indicated that Palestinian militants had tried to control Kfar Aza for a long time and negotiate with Israel over it.

Investigations revealed that the militants had prepared lists of names of security officials in the Gaza envelope settlements, and had surrounded some buildings during the attack.

Investigations revealed that the Israeli army's delay in reaching the attack sites was due to the absence of a number of senior commanders and officers who were on leave on October 7.

Various leaders in the occupation army cited either communications recordings, documents from surveillance cameras inside the settlements in the Gaza Strip, or Hamas fighters’ mobile phones and recordings from cameras that were worn on their bodies.

Data and recordings of settlers' phones and documentation of soldiers' and officers' communications at the time were also used, which indicates the extent of the intelligence blindness of the leaders at the Ministry of War headquarters in Tel Aviv to what was actually happening there at the time.

Iron Dome collapse

Earlier this month, an Israeli military investigation revealed that the Iron Dome anti-missile system collapsed in the first hours of the surprise attack.

Channel 12 Israel said, "Israeli army investigations reveal a serious failure in the Iron Dome system in the first hours of Hamas' attack."

She added: "For unspecified security reasons, several Iron Dome batteries around Gaza suffered a malfunction in the first minutes of the attack. This means a complete absence of interception operations from those batteries."

"In the face of an unprecedented barrage of missiles, the air defense system operated routinely due to the lack of early intelligence warning," she continued.

She stated that "the intensity of the attack was unprecedented, as 3,700 rockets were fired at the surrounding settlements in the first four hours."

She explained that "1,400 of them were launched in the first 20 minutes of the attack alone. After several hours, the additional batteries were emptied of their ammunition, which caused half of the missile launches to fail to be intercepted."

She pointed out that "the situation worsened when the massive infiltration of militants (from Gaza) prevented the possibility of re-arming the exhausted batteries."

Israeli political, military and security officials described the October 7 attack as a "political, military, intelligence and security failure."

Between October 7, 2023 and January 19, 2025, Israel, with American support, committed genocide in the Gaza Strip, leaving more than 159,000 Palestinian martyrs and wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 14,000 missing, in one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world.

Source: Al Jazeera + Israeli press