One of the questions that has been asked since the 10/7 attack was how Hamas caught Israel so unprepared to respond. Within days of the attack there were reports that Hamas had been planning and training for it for more than a year. CNN reported there were half a dozen training camps set up to drill Hamas fighters in preparation for the attack. So how did Israel miss it?

According to a story published today by the NY Times, Israel didn’t miss it. In fact, they had Hamas’ detailed attack plan a year ago. They just didn’t believe Hamas could pull it off and so didn’t prepare to respond to it.

The approximately 40-page document, which the Israeli authorities code-named “Jericho Wall,” outlined, point by point, exactly the kind of devastating invasion that led to the deaths of about 1,200 people.

The translated document, which was reviewed by The New York Times, did not set a date for the attack, but described a methodical assault designed to overwhelm the fortifications around the Gaza Strip, take over Israeli cities and storm key military bases, including a division headquarters.

Hamas followed the blueprint with shocking precision. The document called for a barrage of rockets at the outset of the attack, drones to knock out the security cameras and automated machine guns along the border, and gunmen to pour into Israel en masse in paragliders, on motorcycles and on foot — all of which happened on Oct. 7…

The document circulated widely among Israeli military and intelligence leaders, but experts determined that an attack of that scale and ambition was beyond Hamas’s capabilities, according to documents and officials.

They basically decided it wasn’t realistic and ignored it. Meanwhile, Hamas was preparing. The plan got more attention earlier this year after Hamas carried out an intense, day-long training. An analyst with Israel’s signals intel agency thought the training looked familiar and said so but a colonel brushed off her concerns.

“I utterly refute that the scenario is imaginary,” the analyst wrote in the email exchanges. The Hamas training exercise, she said, fully matched “the content of Jericho Wall.”

“It is a plan designed to start a war,” she added. “It’s not just a raid on a village.”

In retrospect, the whole thing comes down to a failure of imagination and also a too firm belief among senior leaders that Hamas was not interested in attacking. Apparently they were convinced by the fact that Hamas had negotiated for the right to cross the border to work jobs in Israel that they were no longer a threat. In fact, they may have been using this access to gather information for the attack.

The story doesn’t put it this way exactly but the bottom line is that Israel simultaneously thought too little of Hamas’ capabilities and too much of their good intentions. It’s a dramatic failure which the article compares directly to the US failure to predict 9/11.

Comments on this article are disappointingly dumb. Mostly just a bunch of progressives demanding Netanyahu go to prison (The Times says it’s unclear if Netanyahu knew about the plan). But there were a few sensible comments like this one.

Even if you felt the plan was aspirational, beyond their capability, wouldn’t you at the very least review every element of the plan and ask yourself if your defenses were sufficient to thwart each facet of the plan?

Hard to imagine in retrospect. Even if you don’t believe it will happen why not use the info to challenge your own systems and see if there are in fact vulnerabilities?

A number of people are wondering whether the fact that the analyst who tried to raise the alarm was a woman had anything to do with the failure to take this seriously enough. That’s probably just feminist daydreaming at this point but to be fair it’s not impossible. Clearly the whole region and Israel in particular, would have been better off if they had listened to her concerns and prepared to respond to the threat. I’d be interested in reading/watching an interview with her exploring what she thinks about why the Israeli security apparatus could not be dragged into taking this threat seriously even when they had the entire plan in their hands and evidence Hamas was preparing for it.

Here’s the CNN report published last month on Hamas’ training sites.