Who Knew What and When?

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L) meets with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant (C) and military chiefs at IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv for a security assessment on October 8, 2023. (GPO)

"We have warned them an explosion of the situation is coming, and very soon, and it would be big. But they underestimated such warnings."

"[Egypt, which often serves as a mediator between Israel and Hamas, spoke repeatedly with the Israelis about] something big."

Egyptian official

 

"[Egypt’s Intelligence Minister General Abbas Kamel personally called Netanyahu ten days prior to October 7 that Gazans were likely to do] something unusual, a terrible operation [according to the Ynet news site.

"[Unnamed Egyptian officials informed the news site they were shocked by Netanyahu’s indifference to the news and said the premier told the minister the military was] submerged [in troubles in the West Bank]."

Ynet News

Israeli soldiers patrol near the West Bank city of Tulkarm after clashes between Palestinian gunmen and Israeli forces on October 5, 2023. (Photo by Zain JAAFAR / AFP)

"A month and a half before the war, we saw that in one of the Hamas training camps they had built an exact, scaled model of an observer’s position, like the one we operate. They started training there with drones to hit the [machine gun] shooter."

"In the last two months, they started sending up drones every day, sometimes several times a day, right near the border, some 300 meters from the fence, and sometimes less than that."

IDF early-warning spotter Ilana

 

"[We flagged a lot of worrying border behavior nearby Nahal Oz, where 20 tatzpitaniyot [Israel’s predominantly female border surveillance forces] were killed on October 7. Desiatnik was one of only two surveillance soldiers at the base on the day who was not killed or abducted]." 

"It’s infuriating. We saw what was happening, we told them about it, and we were the ones who were murdered."

Yael Rotenberg and Maya Desiatnik, female surveillance soldiers

Soldiers are telling the media that their superiors did not heed warnings of unusual activity inside Gaza | Fadel Senna/AFP via Getty Images

 

"The cards they had been holding for a future attack against Israel had been shown by the Palestinians: penetrating inside Israel, airborne [assaults], the element of surprise."  

"[Effectively upstaging a] well-known plan by Hezbollah’s elite al-Radwan to infiltrate the Galilee."

Lebanese source

Smoke rises from inside an Israeli army position which was hit by missiles launched by the Hezbollah terror group, as seen from Tair Harfa village, a Lebanese border village with Israel, south Lebanon, October 20, 2023. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

Le Figaro has published allegations difficult to verify that three Hamas elite operatives were the sole individuals that held the intelligence of date and time of the October 7 massacre in southern Israel of 1,200 people; purportedly the plan was shared with allies only about a half-hour before the beginning of the invasion. The plan was solely that of Yahyah Sinwar, a hard-bitten foe of Israel who would never countenance any agreement recognizing Israel that speculation had it was being considered by his superiors in rank.

Hamas terror group leader Yahya Sinwar holds the child of an Al-Qassam Brigades member, who was killed in the recent fighting with Israel. (Emmanuel DUNAND / AFP)

Saleh alArouri, overseeing Hamas activities in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) was informed of the impending invasion a mere half-hour ahead to enable him to alert Hassan Nasrallah the head of Hezbollah. Another top Hamas representative to Lebanon, Osama Hamdan -- he of the oath that Hamas was fully prepared to launch any number of additional October 7 events in its dedication to the destruction of Israel -- discovered from media reports that the assault had taken place, according to Le Figaro.

Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal is quoted in the Le Figaro report as saying: "Only three people knew the exact date, time and details of the plan." The Islamic Republic of Iran, Hamas's sponsor along with Hezbollah, reportedly were taken by surprise on learning of the attack. Tehran characterized the attack as a response to the 2020 targeted killing in Baghdad of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani by the United States.

 

"The Al-Aqsa Flood (name given to the Oct 7 attack) was one of the acts of revenge for the assassination of General Soleimani by the US. and the Zionists", announced Brig.Gen. Ramezan Sharif, IRGC spokesman. Hamas, however, disagreed, insisting that their operation was in response to Israeli 'crimes' at the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. Mashaal, in an interview published in Le Figaro offered a conciliatory gesture to Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah.

The Islamist group, he informed the newspaper, is prepared to consider a joint P.A.-Hamas-led governing body for the Gaza Strip, and Judea and Samaria. "Rebuilding the Palestinian political scene without Hamas is a move destined for failure, but we are ready for reorganization within the framework of the PLO as part of a national consensus", Mashaal informed the French news outlet. Needless to say there have been attempts in the past to mend the hostile distance between Fatah and Hamas

Sectarian and tribal memories are long and unforgiving. Secular Fatah and Islamist Hamas agree on one thing only; their hatred for Israel and for Jews, not their methodology. Hamas's campaign is up front and readily identified, while Fatah's is more discreet, hiding behind a facade of quasi-democracy where the West is lulled into the fantasy that the PA is longing for a state of its own to live in peace beside Israel. Whereas the truth is neither envision a future for Israel and both plan for a single, 'Palestinian' state.

When Israel left Gaza unilaterally in 2005 at a time when the Strip was in the control of Fatah and mass disorder, chaotic crime broke out at Israel's withdrawal, Hamas moved in, to establish control and in the process wrench the coastal strip from Fatah. In the process of which Hamas operatives in a conflict with Fatah proved victorious in its gruesome slaughter of its competitor terrorist group. Memories are not all that short in a region known to nurse grievances for generations.

 

"Sooner or later, the United States will argue that Hamas is a reality and enjoys legitimacy among the people. We must learn from history. The Americans accepted the Taliban. (PLO founder) Yasser Arafat even won the Nobel Peace Prize" (sharing it with Israeli politicians Shimon Perez and Yitzhak Rabin for 'achieving peace in the Middle East; only two of the trio sincere, the third a risible sham). Like everything else that comes out of the mouths of Palestinians this too is delusional.

And everything plays out while Israeli ground, aerial and naval forces continue their operations across the Gaza Strip in an all-out determination to fully emasculate Hamas as a terrorist threat to Israel -- and Fatah can be accommodated as well as Hezbollah in a fully frontal campaign to rid the area of its death-cult fanatics.

Of course, there is a remaining question: if a mere three individuals only were in possession of the imminent assault against Israel, how is it that Egyptian sources had advance knowledge of a huge attack that was imminent, intelligence which it gamely attempted to pass on as a warning to their neighbour, busy confronting what might have been a ruse coming from that other quarter in Judea and Samaria?

Palestinian terrorists head toward the border with Israel from Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023. (SAID KHATIB / AFP)