“The Israel Defense Forces Military Intelligence Directorate received information and plans outlining Hamas’s intent to launch a wide-scale attack against Israel over a period of several years, but dismissed the plan as unrealistic and unfeasible,” according to a probe of the intelligence failures leading up to the October 7 attack.
“Instead, the Military Intelligence Directorate falsely assumed that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was a pragmatist who was not seeking a major escalation with Israel, and that the terror group viewed its 2021 war as a failure and was focusing its capabilities on rocket fire and not a ground invasion.”