What does the report into Israeli military failures on October 7 say?

An Israeli military inquiry into the series of errors in the lead-up to and during the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023, has acknowledged the army’s “complete failure” to prevent it.

In what investigators say was a highly coordinated attack that took years of planning, groups of Hamas-led fighters broke out of Gaza and attacked Israeli communities and a music festival along the frontier.

In total,1,139 people died during the attack and about 250 taken captive.

The report details a history of misconceptions about the risk posed by Hamas and a refusal to accept warning signs of an attack, as well as the army’s inability to coordinate a response.

How did Israel’s army underestimate Hamas?

The report says the army has a decades-long “fundamental misunderstanding” of Hamas, leading senior officers to underestimate the group’s capabilities and intentions.

Military planners had assumed Hamas posed no significant threat to Israel and that it was uninterested in a large-scale war, according to investigators.

Planners also believed Hamas’s tunnel networks had been significantly degraded, with any cross-border threat easily thwarted by Israel’s high-tech separation barrier.

Despite warning signs, such as unusual activities by Hamas fighters, Israeli authorities insisted that the group was focused on maintaining governance within Gaza and would attack Israel by rocket, rather than a large-scale ground invasion.

They also misjudged Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, assuming he was “not interested in a wider war”.