Report: 5 months before Oct. 7, Shin Bet head told Netanyahu war in Gaza inevitable

Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu five months before the Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023, that a war in Gaza was inevitable, the Haaretz daily reported Wednesday.

The report came amid an escalating war of words and strategic leaks between the premier and the security service’s head, including widespread talk about Netanyahu potentially firing Bar.

The two met in late May 2023, after Operation Shield and Arrow against Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza. According to the report, Bar told Netanyahu that the five-day campaign had been only “the first round against the Shiite axis.”

“We must prepare for an opening strike, for a round of assassinations,” Bar reportedly continued. “Hamas is the next challenge before us, there will be no escaping from a campaign in Gaza.”

Hamas did not actively take part in the 2023 round of violence, effectively helping keep it limited. In the campaign, Israel eliminated some of Islamic Jihad’s senior leadership in a series of airstrikes, while the terror group fired some 1,500 rockets at Israel until an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire came into effect.

Netanyahu, said Haaretz, argued that Hamas was deterred, citing “a strong balance of terror against Hamas.”

Bar insisted that Israel would face a decision around launching a campaign against Hamas, possibly in reaction to a major operation in the West Bank.

“There is a strong balance of terror against Hamas,” Netanyahu reportedly replied, noting that Hamas had stayed out of fights between Israel and Islamic Jihad since the 2021 Operation Guardian of the Walls.

On the morning of October 7 that year, some 5,000 Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel from the Gaza Strip, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, amid acts of horrific brutality and sexual assault, sparking a war that hasn’t ended 17 months later.

Netanyahu’s office called the Haaretz report “more fake news. The truth is completely the opposite.”

The Prime Minister’s Office acknowledged the meeting but maintained that Bar had argued that “Hamas is deterred and strives to maintain stability in the Gaza Strip, and focuses on pressuring Israel in Judea and Samaria,” using the biblical name for the West Bank.

The premier’s office said that Bar recommended “doing nothing,” or, at most, reducing the number of Palestinian workers entering Israel.

Netanyahu, said his office, “ordered preparations to exact a heavy price from Hamas, and emphasized that the component of precise assassinations of terror leaders — as demonstrated in Operation Shield and Arrow — lies at the heart of Israeli deterrence, and that preparations must continue to be made to assassinate senior Hamas figures – from [Muhammad] Deif to [Yahya] Sinwar.”

The Haaretz report — which did not indicate how it gained knowledge of the May 21, 2023, conversation — came amid reports that Netanyahu plans to oust him as head of the agency. The premier recently removed Bar and Mossad chief David Barnea from heading the team negotiating the Gaza truce-hostage deal, an agreement that has caused Netanyahu’s right-wing flank to threaten to topple the government.

On Tuesday, Netanyahu’s office issued a scathing attack on Bar, charging that the findings of the internal probe Bar ordered into the agency’s failure to prevent October 7 “don’t answer any question.”

The Shin Bet findings, while detailing failures and saying it could have foiled the attack had it acted differently, largely pointed the blame outwards, including hinting that successive governments took insufficiently offensive policies regarding Hamas, such as avoiding targeting the terror group’s leaders as the agency allegedly advocated.

“The conclusions of the Shin Bet probe don’t match the gravity of the immense failure of the agency and its head,” said a statement attributed to Netanyahu’s “circle.”

The statement claimed Bar “completely failed” to counter the Hamas threat in general and on October 7, “misread the intelligence picture” and had a misconception regarding the level of threat it posed, arguing that the Shin Bet had contended right up to the invasion that the terror group wanted to keep the quiet.

It further contended that on October 1, Bar recommended civilian concessions to Hamas in exchange for quiet and cautioned against targeting Hamas’s leaders. It added that in an October 3 document, Bar wrote that Hamas sought to avoid a round of fighting against Israel and saw a potential for stability if Gaza was given a positive economic horizon.

Bar has said he does not plan on stepping down from his post until all the hostages are returned and a state commission is established to probe failures surrounding the Hamas onslaught, Channel 12 reported Tuesday.

The network reported Wednesday that Netanyahu has been looking into the ramifications of firing Bar, and speculated that the move could happen within weeks.