The Israeli newspaper “Maariv” said, Tuesday, November 28, 2023, that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected all the proposals presented to him during the past few years to assassinate the head of the Hamas resistance movement, Yahya Sinwar, and the newspaper spoke about what it considered a big intelligence failure. 

The newspaper reported that the last three heads of the Internal Security Service (Shin Bet) presented to Netanyahu 6 different operations to assassinate Sinwar, noting that the proposals were not preliminary decisions, but rather “they were real operational plans that could be implemented immediately.”

The newspaper notes that Sinwar did not live underground most of the time, but rather was moving with an open agenda, and did not move between secret apartments and hideouts as Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has done since 2006.

The plans were detailed, and included different “forms” with different degrees of intensity, and one of the plans included “eliminating all major leaders in Hamas, not just Sinwar,” according to Maariv.

Former Shin Bet chief Yoram Cohen previously said, during an interview with the Meet the Press program, that his agency proposed carrying out an “offensive” operation against all Hamas leaders in Gaza, and he also stated that his successors in the position proposed the same thing at the political level.

The Shin Bet viewed Hamas as an organization whose leadership should be overthrown, based on the great danger posed by its agenda, but Netanyahu rejected all of these operational opportunities.

Reports also revealed that Hamas increased the size of its elite forces by 100% over the past year, that is, it doubled the number of commando forces allocated to the invasion of Israel, which happened within one year. Israel was aware of this step, and of the significant increase in elite numbers, but this did not result in taking the necessary steps.

The Israeli newspaper says, “The more time passes, the more the extent of the intelligence and operational failure that preceded Israel’s collapse on October 7, 2023 (the day the Al-Aqsa Flood operation began) becomes clearer.”

The newspaper added that examples of this “are evident in Sinwar’s speech, which himself spoke about a plan to attack Israel like the flood of Al-Aqsa, as well as the large Hamas exercises in May 2023, which witnessed training on the plan implemented on the ground in October, publicly in front of Israel's eyes.

The newspaper adds: "Not to mention the disturbing reports from observers, including the 8200th officer who tracked what was happening and sent a series of emails in September, carrying major warnings to her superiors."

Source: Arabic Post