Nearly three years after Hamas’s attack on Israel, former Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant revealed that a warning did reach Israeli intelligence weeks before the assault.
Speaking to Army Radio, an Israeli media outlet, on Sunday, Gallant said, “Through the channel involving the Shin Bet, we received a message came from Hamas saying that Sinwar would shake the prisons – and the assessment of the Shin Bet and Military Intelligence Directorate was that it was connected to the kidnapping of Elizabeth Tsurkov. Beyond the Hamas warning, Gallant also alleged that Netanyahu excluded him from sensitive discussions with senior United States officials during the war, despite his position as defence minister at the time. Gallant also addressed separate reports suggesting that Netanyahu had received warnings from foreign leaders ahead of the Hamas attack, saying he had not been briefed on any such warnings while serving as defence minister.
Gallant has confirmed that Israel received a message from Hamas through a channel involving the Shin Bet, the country’s internal security agency, in the weeks before the October 7, 2023 attack .
The message included a warning from Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar that he would “shake the prisons, according to Gallant. “I first heard about these warnings from media reports,” Gallant said. “Assuming these things are true, such a warning that a prime minister receives from the leader of a country is not a political asset; it is a fundamental failure in the overall assessment of the situation,” he said.
