The Israeli media has renewed talk about the intelligence failure that occurred on October 7, 2023, and about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s continued intransigence on the prisoner exchange file.

Channel 12 reported on a massive training exercise that it said the Al-Qassam Brigades - the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) - conducted months before Operation Flood of Al-Aqsa, to ensure its ability to surprise Israel.

According to the channel, the late Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and the commander of its military wing, Mohammed Deif, held a meeting of the Supreme Military Council and concluded that the training was successful and that Israeli intelligence agencies did not notice that it might mean launching an attack on Israel.

According to the channel's investigative correspondent, Omri Manev, the training took place in May 2023, during which 2,000 Hamas elite forces were called in to ensure the movement's ability to launch a surprise attack.

Regarding the ongoing stagnation in the prisoner exchange process, the channel's political affairs correspondent Yaron Abraham said that Netanyahu must remember that the Israelis will not resort to Khalil al-Hayya (Deputy Chairman of Hamas), nor Mohammed Sinwar, nor Yahya Sinwar, who no longer exists.

Israel is the obstacle

Abraham expressed his belief that Hamas was not the only obstacle to reaching a deal and that Israel played a role in this matter over a whole year of negotiations that led to nothing.

In this context, Netanyahu's former office director, Brigadier General David Agmon, said that Israel should have stopped everything from the first moment and released 6,000 Palestinian prisoners to restore its captives, and after that it could have considered the way to deal with Hamas.

As for the channel's political affairs analyst, Dafna Liel, she said that Netanyahu "did not provide any answer regarding the extent to which the war's goals were achieved, and that he spoke about the issue of the kidnapped (prisoners) for only a minute and a half," adding that "the declaration of absolute victory came out while 7 of our soldiers had been killed on the same day in Lebanon and Gaza."

Finally, former Labor MK Stav Shapir said that she cannot ignore the fact that Netanyahu is still making mistakes about the real number of prisoners in Gaza, considering this evidence of his lack of concern.

Shabir pointed out that the Prime Minister was talking about the prisoners and did not know whether Hamas had 99 or 100 prisoners, and asked one of his assistants to confirm the number for him, describing the matter as evidence of his disconnection from this issue.