Israeli officials had detailed information about a Hamas plan to launch an unprecedented attack on Israel more than a year before it took place, but did not consider the scenario realistic, the New York Times reported Thursday, citing top-secret information. documents.

Israeli military intelligence was in possession of a roughly 40-page document from the Palestinian Islamist movement that detailed, point by point, an attack like the one carried out by members of its military arm, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, on October 7, with as a result of which some 1,200 people in Israel lost their lives, according to the report.

The document, which was circulated in Israeli intelligence circles under the code name “Jericho Wall,” did not specify when the attack would be launched, but it did contain specifics about how Israel’s security measures would be overwhelmed. to then raid military bases and cities.

More specifically, the document referred to rocket barrages and drones that would destroy security cameras and automated machine guns, before fighters crossed over to the Israeli side by parachute, in vehicles and on foot — elements that were at the heart of the October 7 attack.

But it “could not be ascertained” whether the plan had been “fully” approved by the Hamas leadership, nor whether and to what extent it could become a reality, said an internal Israeli military document obtained by The New York Times.

In July, an analyst with the intelligence agency’s elite Unit 8200 warned that training sessions for Hamas fighters had been held that closely resembled the plan described in the document codenamed “The Wall of Jericho.” But a colonel of the Israeli military command with responsibility for the Gaza Strip ruled out the scenario of such an attack: he called it a “fantasy” and indeed “completely”.

“I categorically reject the idea that this is a fantasy scenario (…) this is a war plan,” not just an attack “against a village,” the analyst insisted in encrypted emails consulted by the US newspaper.

“We already had a similar experience 50 years ago on the southern front with a scenario that seemed fantastic. History can repeat itself if we are not careful,” the analyst prophetically continued, referring to the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

According to the Times report, although the document had been circulated among the Israeli military hierarchy, it was unclear whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or other members of his cabinet had read it, or were aware of its contents.

The Israeli political leadership has repeatedly denied that anything was known in advance.