TV report claims early October documents show Shin Bet believed Hamas was deterred; agency slams ‘selective’ quotations

Two top secret Shin Bet documents, produced three or four days before October 7, indicate the degree to which “the conception” that Hamas was deterred from attacking Israel held sway in the agency, Channel 12 news claims.

The Shin Bet, in response, tells Channel 12 that its report is quoting “selective” excerpts from the documents that deliberately misrepresent their content.

The documents were produced after disturbances at the Gaza border fence and efforts to place mines at the fence and blow it up, shortly before the Hamas invasion and massacre on October 7, the TV report says. It does not quote a source and does not say to whom the documents were conveyed.

The report quotes one of the documents stating that “the renewal of understandings between Israel and Hamas on security quiet [between Gaza and Israel] in return for concessions will enable the preservation of public order for a protracted period. Hamas is maintaining [Yahya] Sinwar’s strategy — advancing the organization’s goals without getting involved in a round of fighting.”

A second quoted excerpt states: “The latest episode of friction [at the fence] ended in what Hamas considers to be a positive fashion because it attained economic achievements without being dragged into a military confrontation. We should seek a framework that will include significant dividends for the Strip in order to preserve the quiet.”

Channel 12 says the Shin Bet, in a response, confirmed the accuracy of the quotations but said that the excerpts were misrepresentative. For instance, the excerpts leave out the fact that the reference to a “framework” regarding the Strip related to efforts to advance a deal for four pre-October 7 captive and missing Israelis.” The selective quotes, the agency added, “omitted from the same sentence a clear statement by the head of the Shin Bet that ‘high alert must be maintained for a round of fighting amid an emergency on the [Gaza] front.'”

In its response, the Shin Bet also said that it will present all the “warnings and recommendations it conveyed to the political echelon to a state commission of inquiry” into the events surrounding October 7. There, it said, this material will be presented “in full, rather than excerpts from documents.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has to date rejected calls to establish such a commission.

The TV report says the Shin Bet’s position is that, unlike the IDF, it never declared that Hamas was deterred from a major attack on Israel. According to the Shin Bet, the TV report says, it recommended directly targeting figures in Hamas on October 1, but this demand was not accepted.