Report: Many IDF posts on Gaza border failed inspections in days before Oct. 7

Nearly all of the army’s posts along the border with the Gaza Strip failed a routine inspection carried out just three days before Hamas’s October 7 onslaught, Channel 12 news reports.

The report says the snap inspection was carried out at 6:30 a.m. on October 4, exactly 72 hours before the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, during which some 3,000 Palestinian terrorists stormed the border and killed some 1,200 people and kidnapped 253.

The IDF struggled to mount a response on October 7, with bases closest to the border overrun and the chain of command seemingly broken amid the chaos.

According to the report, only one base managed to get passing marks on the inspection.

Channel 12 details the results of the inspection at the Nahal Oz base, which is among those that failed.

In the inspection, troops had failed to prevent unauthorized people from entering the base on foot or by car without permission; unauthorized people from entering the base’s war rooms; weaponry from being taken from the ammunition room; sensitive material being stolen; and the keys to the armory being stolen.

Nahal Oz was overrun by Hamas terrorists three days later, with dozens of the troops stationed there being killed and kidnapped to Gaza.

The IDF in response to the report says the inspection was “routine” and was aimed at improving the base’s defenses, and was not “examining a scenario simulating a sudden attack of thousands of terrorists, as had occurred on October 7.”

The IDF is in the midst of carrying out internal probes into the failures in the lead-up to Hamas’s October 7 massacre.