Israel Ignored Egyptian Warnings that Hamas was Planning ‘Something Big’: Report

Egyptian intelligence repeatedly told Israel that Hamas was planning “something big,” but the warnings were discounted, an intelligence official in Cairo told the Associated Press on Monday, underscoring the failures that allowed the militant Islamist group to mount a devastating raid over the weekend. 

"We have warned them an explosion of the situation is coming, and very soon, and it would be big,” the official, whose name was not disclosed, told AP.

“But they underestimated such warnings." 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has since denied that Egypt warned them of an imminent Hamas incursion, adding that such claims are a "complete lie", according to a report.

“Israeli Prime Minister's office says reports about a warning that was passed from Egypt ahead of the Gaza war are false,” Axios correspondent Barak Ravid said on X, the former Twitter. 

Egypt often mediates between Israel and Palestinian factions, and the two countries are close security partners. An estimated 700 Israelis were killed in the multi-pronged Hamas attack, and more than 400 Palestinians have died in reprisal bombings in Gaza. 

Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, Israel’s chief military spokesman, told reporters the army would get to the bottom of its failures. "First, we fight, then we investigate," he said.

Experts, and current and former officials say Israel had grown to rely on its technological advantage in monitoring Hamas-ruled Gaza, even as Hamas leaders stopped using mobile phones and computers to evade detection. 

"They've gone back to the Stone Age," Amir Avivi, a retired Israeli general, told AP. “The other side learned to deal with our technological dominance and they stopped using technology that could expose it."

"This is a major failure," said Yaakov Amidror, a former national security adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "This operation actually proves that the [intelligence] abilities in Gaza were no good."

While Hamas went through months of drills and preparation for its deadly assault, Israel was focused on its northern border, where it saw the Hezbollah militia as a bigger threat, and on the West Bank, where a campaign of intimidation of Palestinians by Israeli settlers had led to increased clashes with militants in Jenin and other towns, experts said.

The Israeli military also was distracted by a protracted struggle over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to curb the power of Israel’s judiciary that has split Israeli society. Hundreds of Israeli reservists threatened to boycott military service over the plan. 

“Hamas knows Israel is deeply divided,” Joost Hilterman, head of Middle East programs at the International Crisis Group, told The Messenger. 

The judicial fight “roiled the IDF in a way that was, I think, we discovered was a huge distraction,” Martin Indyk, a former U.S. special envoy for Israel-Palestinian negotiations, told AP.