Israel’s Shin Bet Ignored Intel Prior to Al-Aqsa Flood Operation – Israeli Media

December 28, 2023

Palestinians in Gaza celebrate the launch of Al-Aqsa Flood operation on October 7. (Photo: Mahmoud Ajjour, The Palestine Chronicle)

By Palestine Chronicle Staff  

Shin Bet colleagues had marked it as insignificant, concluding that “if this really nears implementation, we’ll receive additional intelligence”.

Israeli’s internal security service, the Shin Bet, received information that the Palestinian Resistance Movement Hamas was planning to carry out “a big move” in early October, the Israeli broadcaster Channel 12 has reported.  

According to The Times of Israel, Channel 12 cited sources in the security agency, saying the Shin Bet got the tip from a source in Gaza who warned that Hamas was planning to carry out a military operation during the week after the Jewish fast day of Yom Kippur. 

The source had reported the information to the security agency after hearing it from another person who had told him the details, the report said.

Shin Bet colleagues had marked it as insignificant, concluding that “if this really nears implementation, we’ll receive additional intelligence” corroborating it, the report said, according to The Times of Israel.

The information was, however, according to the report, “not brought to the attention of senior Shin Bet officials, and the agency chief Ronen Bar never heard about it.” 

Channel 12 cited unnamed Shin Bet sources saying that the lack of corroborating intelligence, in addition to the source only having started speaking to the Shin Bet a short while before, had led to the tip not being taken seriously, reports The Times. “Though they have since admitted that the source is highly reliable,” the report adds.

The Shin Bet responded to the channel’s report saying it was currently focusing on the fighting in Gaza. It would “investigate after the war how the intelligence failure had happened…,” The Times said.

“In any case, focusing on a specific piece of intelligence cannot reflect the full intelligence picture of that time,” the Shin Bet reportedly said.

According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 21,320 Palestinians have been killed, and 55,603 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7.

Palestinian and international estimates say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.

(PC, Anadolu)