Renewed ‘security failure’: Bereaved October 7 families say Israel again failing to see Gaza dangers

The October Council, an anti-government group of relatives of October 7 victims demanding a state commission of inquiry into the security debacle leading to the 2023 Hamas-led onslaught, publishes a report warning that the current leadership has not adequately adjusted its security approach in the years since the unprecedented attack.

The report – which runs dozens of pages, citing testimonies from surveillance soldiers and combat troops as well as conversations between security personnel in the Gaza border communities and Council members – warns of continued adherence to an entrenched set of national security assumptions before October 7. The doctrine is said to have wrongly assessed that Hamas was deterred, contained, and focused on governance rather than offensive attacks.

The Council argues that the government is now backing a new version of the same type of conception by seeking to manage the Hamas threat through mechanisms including the Yellow Line withdrawal boundary and Washington’s peace plan for Gaza.

Citing testimony from surveillance soldiers serving along the Gaza border, the report says that “Hamas operatives are testing the IDF’s response, amid a sense that in some cases authorization to take action is delayed.”

One reservist officer serving in Gaza describes a similar concern: “We are just a few meters from the enemy, we see them with our own eyes — and the orders tie our hands. Instead of defeating them, we ‘contain’ them. Instead of addressing the root of the problem, we continue to manage the failure.”

“If, even today, those who identify a danger are afraid to speak up, that constitutes a security failure in and of itself,” the report states, saying that Hamas “has not yet been disarmed and continues to recruit, manufacture [weapons], rehabilitate itself and reestablish governing mechanisms.”

The report stresses that Hamas has been severely weakened by Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, but has not been fully dismantled.

While Israel continues to engage with Washington’s plans for international and alternative governing mechanisms for postwar Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected Washington’s latest disarmament plan for phased Israeli withdrawal alongside Hamas’s disarmament, insisting that the IDF will not withdraw further or allow reconstruction to begin until Hamas is fully disarmed.