Could October 7 Have Been Prevented?

Jericho Wall, the ignored warnings, and the competing theses

This week’s argument in Israel — a Haaretz investigation into an Emirati warning to Benjamin Netanyahu, a Ronen Bergman piece in Yedioth Ahronoth on a secret channel with Hamas, and a libel suit announced by the prime minister — is not about a footnote. It is about an older question: was 7 October 2023 a surprise that could not have been seen, or the product of a refusal to listen?

Documented facts and competing theses must be kept apart.

1. The central document: “Jericho Wall”

The reference text remains the investigation by Ronen Bergman and Adam Goldman, published on 30 November 2023 in The New York Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/30/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-attack-intelligence.html

What that article established, and what later IDF internal inquiries confirmed:

• In 2022, Israeli military intelligence obtained an approximately 40-page Hamas document, the latest version of a plan developed since the early 2010s. Israelis code-named it “Jericho Wall.”
• The document opens with a Quranic verse: “Surprise them through the gate. If you do, you will certainly prevail.”
• The plan describes, in order: a rocket barrage to drive soldiers into shelters; drones against cameras and automated machine guns on the fence; a breakthrough at dozens of points (the document speaks of about sixty); an assault by paraglider, motorcycle and on foot; the overrun of the Gaza Division and bases including Re’im; attacks on kibbutzim.
• Hamas had gathered highly precise intelligence on the Israeli deployment: locations, force sizes, communication hubs.

On 7 October, Hamas executed the plan “with shocking precision.” Every building block in the document appears in the actual attack.

What the document was not: a date. Jericho Wall is a method of attack, not a calendar.

What was done with it: the Gaza Division treated it as a “compass” — Hamas knew where it wanted to go but had not arrived. Officers including Military Intelligence chief Aharon Haliva, Southern Command chief Eliezer Toledano and Yaron Finkelman judged the plan unrealistic. A Gaza Division colonel in July 2023 called the scenario “totally imaginative.”

It is not established that Netanyahu personally read Jericho Wall. The Times wrote that the document circulated widely among senior military and intelligence leaders; transmission to the political top is unproven.

2. The one who listened: the Unit 8200 analyst

On 6 July 2023, a veteran Unit 8200 analyst wrote to colleagues. Hamas had just run a day-long exercise under the eyes of senior commanders: a dry run of shooting down Israeli aircraft, taking a kibbutz, overrunning a training base, killing the cadets. During the drill, Hamas fighters used the same Quranic verse that opens Jericho Wall.

She wrote, in emails reviewed by the Times:

“I utterly refute that the scenario is imaginary. […] It is a plan designed to start a war, not just a raid on a village. We already had a similar experience fifty years ago on the southern front regarding a scenario that seemed imaginary. History could repeat itself if we are not careful.”

An explicit reference to Yom Kippur 1973. A Gaza Division colonel held the line: imaginary scenario. His view prevailed.

The female field observers at Nahal Oz had, for months, reported abnormal activity along the fence. The IDF meta-investigation (Turgeman committee, 2025) said their intelligence, properly analysed, could have exposed Hamas’s unusual activity. It was not treated as such.

3. The other documented warnings

Shin Bet, September 2023. A Fatah intermediary meets Sinwar in Gaza. Sinwar speaks of a “huge surprise,” repeats the Arabic word zilzal (earthquake), asks that the message be passed to the Israelis. The message reaches the Shin Bet around 15 September. Ronen Bar briefs Netanyahu. A security meeting follows. The dominant reading: West Bank tension — not an invasion from Gaza.

Egypt. General warnings of the “make the ground tremble in Gaza” type, without a date or method.

The night of 6–7 October. Aman flags unusual activity in Hamas’s aerial array. A raid is discussed as a possibility. To avoid burning sources, and because of signs read as reassuring, Southern Command and the General Staff take only minor steps and schedule an update for 8:30 a.m. The attack begins around 6:30 a.m.

Bergman has shown that from 2:00 a.m., the prime minister’s intelligence officer received the material through two channels and woke up to read it. The claim that “they decided not to wake him” is, on this specific point, contradicted by that timeline.

Aman letter of 23 July 2023 (Bergman, Ynet, 10 September 2026). Brigadier General Amit Sa’ar sends Netanyahu the most severe warning letter of that period. It quotes a clandestine channel with Hamas, code-named “Srogim”: Sinwar’s messages pass through the brother of a Hamas official.

Quoted in the letter:

“There are multiple explosive fuses. The extremists in your government are leading you to light them and set the entire region on fire, and you alone will bear responsibility for the consequences.”

Netanyahu says the warnings he received before the massacre concerned only Hezbollah and Iran. Bergman writes that this is false: this letter explicitly cites a Hamas channel.

Article: https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/rjispaaugl

4. The Haaretz investigation (8 September 2026)

This is not Bergman. Authors: Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval, for the book Hostages: 843 Days of Abandonment.

Core allegation. In late September 2023, about ten days before the massacre, Mohammed bin Zayed calls Netanyahu from Abu Dhabi. Forty-five minutes. MBZ warns that Sinwar is preparing a major operation. Netanyahu reacts calmly, talks more about the West Bank, does not pass the warning to Halevi or Bar. Both men have said they were never informed of such a call.

What supports the story without proving the call itself: – A senior Middle East intelligence official confirms to Ynet that the UAE passed Israel, shortly before 7 October, a warning from a “very reliable” source about a “significant and imminent” Hamas action. He does not confirm that it was a personal MBZ–Netanyahu call. – The UAE refuses the categorical denial requested by the Prime Minister’s Office. Its statement: channels exist; relevant intelligence “has been and continues to be communicated.” – Naftali Bennett says the report “is true,” without producing a document. – Eldar says he has documents and records. Nothing is public.

Netanyahu’s denial. No call between early September and 7 October. Call logs, the National Security Council and the military secretariat were checked. MBZ calls go through an encrypted device brought to the PMO; entries are logged; there is no trace. A libel suit has been announced.

State of the facts. That an Emirati warning reached Israel is highly probable. That it took the form of a 45-minute personal call to Netanyahu, followed by a deliberate withholding, is not established by a public official document.

5. What official inquiries say

As of September 2026 there is still no independent state commission of inquiry. There are IDF internal probes, a Shin Bet inquiry, and the Turgeman meta-investigation.

Turgeman’s six causes (2025): a conceptual failure on Hamas’s intentions; an intelligence failure in assessment and warning; neglect of the defensive plan linked to Jericho Wall; a degraded organisational culture; a gap between the defined threat and the actual force posture; deficient decisions on the night of the attack.

Committee quote: “The surprise of Oct. 7 did not emerge from a vacuum. On the night of Oct. 7, direct intelligence had accumulated which, if professionally analyzed, could and should have led to an alert and a significant operational response.”

The Shin Bet (declassified summary, March 2025) accepts its failure. It adds that government policy allowed Hamas to accumulate weapons and funds (Qatari money diverted to the military wing). Ronen Bar said the attack could have been prevented.

Military report: 767 soldiers on the border facing more than 5,000 attackers. Command collapse. Villages left on their own for hours.

6. Four theses in the field

Thesis A — The failure is first military and intelligence.
The “conception” (Hamas is deterred, it governs, it does not want war) blinded Aman, the Shin Bet and the General Staff. The signals existed; the mental frame invalidated them. This is Bergman’s thesis, that of the IDF/Shin Bet inquiries, and the structural analogy with 1973. It is the best documented.

Thesis B — The failure is first political.
The “money for quiet” doctrine, the choice to treat Hamas as a useful manager against the Palestinian Authority, the refusal of a pre-emptive strike on Sinwar, the thinning of the south, the 2023 domestic crisis: all of that was set at the top. An independent civilian commission (2024) said the disaster “was not fate.”

Thesis C — Netanyahu was not informed that night.
The prime minister’s current line: had he been woken, he would have put the entire army on alert. This thesis runs into two facts: the PM’s intelligence officer received the material from 2:00 a.m.; and the chiefs who would have called him also believed any action would be limited.

Thesis D — The Emirati warning changes the nature of the fault.
If MBZ personally warned Netanyahu and Netanyahu passed nothing on, collective blindness becomes individual withholding of critical information. This is the Haaretz/Bennett thesis. It is politically explosive six weeks before elections. It is not yet proven in the documentary sense.

7. Could October 7 have been prevented?

Prevent any Hamas attack, someday? No one can guarantee that. Hamas had prepared the operation for years and also misled some of its allies on timing.

Prevent this massacre — thousands crossing the fence essentially unopposed for hours, collapse of the Gaza Division, 1,200 dead, 250 hostages? Yes, in large part. Military inquiries say so. The signals were sufficient, in July and on the night of 6–7 October, to raise the alert level and cut the scale dramatically.

What was missing was not information. It was permission to believe it.

Knowing how to listen did not mean collecting warnings. Israel already knew how to do that. It meant letting a Unit 8200 analyst, a Nahal Oz observer or an Aman letter destroy the story the system told itself: Hamas is a manageable problem, the fence replaces soldiers, Sinwar is a pragmatist, quiet can be bought.

Everything that said otherwise was filed as noise.

Sources

1. Ronen Bergman, Adam Goldman, “Israel Knew Hamas’s Attack Plan Over a Year Ago,” The New York Times, 30 November 2023. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/30/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-attack-intelligence.html
2. Ronen Bergman, Ynet / Yedioth Ahronoth, 10 September 2026. https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/rjispaaugl
3. Shlomi Eldar, Ruth Yuval, Haaretz investigation / book Hostages: 843 Days of Abandonment, 8 September 2026.
4. Turgeman committee, IDF meta-investigation, November 2025.
5. Declassified Shin Bet inquiry summary, March 2025.
6. Aman internal probe / Times of Israel, February 2025, on the handling of Jericho Wall.

The established facts fit in one sentence: the plan was known, people said so, the system chose not to believe them. The rest — who knew what, at what hour, and who decided to stay silent — is still a political battlefield, in the absence of a state commission of inquiry.