Three days prior to the deadly cross-border raid carried out by Hamas, Egypt had alerted warned Israel, says chairman for the US congressional panel.
Michael McCaul, a member of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, said that the administration had warned him.
The reports, according to PM Benjamin Netanyahu are “absolutely false”.
This was also a blow to Israeli intelligence services since they failed to offer any warning or prevention of the worst attack executed by Palestinian assailants since Israel’s statehood inception 75 years ago.
“We are aware that it was Israeli pilots were informed by the Egyptians to avoid any incident of this kind,” Mr. McCaul said after he received intelligence briefing on Wednesday on the Middle East crisis as reported by the AFP news agency.
The Texas Republican said additionally; “I do not want to get too much into classified but a warning was issued.” The latter, I believe; the third.
The AP news agency reported this week that Egypt had advised Israel “some-thing big is coming” from Gaza many times, an Egyptian intelligence official said.
“We told them that a blast was bound to happen any time soon, and that it will be massive. But they didn’t take us seriously,” said the officer on condition of anonymity.
In turn, a Cairo official asserted that Israelis had downplayed the threats emerging from Gaza and deliberately concentrated on the West.
Sir Alex Younger, ex MI6 chief, claimed that it was Israeli “complacency” which allowed Hamas forces to kill four people on 7 Oct.
In today episode of BBC radio 4’s ‘Today’ he said, that israel might have thought that hamas didn’t want war again; therefore, any contradictory intelligence was disregarded.
He added, “My guess – since I’m not privy it all – is that some of the data which would get broken through would provide interpretations differing in hindsight”.
Moreover, it seemed that there was excessive dependence on technical methods to keep track with what goes in Gaza which eventually made them feel secure about nothing.
As reported by the Financial Times (quoting two anonymous officials who had knowledge of the issue), there was neither any hard intelligence about particular plans for an attack.
Mr Netanyahu on Wednesday branded as “outright fake news” any report claiming that Israel got some prior warning about the deadly attack.
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