Retired Israel Police Commander Eyal Azoulai told the unoficial civilian October 7 investigative committee on Monday that he and the entire Negev police command were left to fend for themselves after an intelligence breakdown meant they only received knowledge of the attack minutes before it happened.
Azoulai, who retired two months ago, was head of the Israel Police in the Negev and was in command on October 7.
Azoulai said that the Nova Party Massacre may have delayed the invasion of Israel as Hamas was not expecting it.
“I can say perhaps with complete certainty that the Nova party was not part of Hamas’ original plan and caused the terrorists to delay for hours. The Nova disrupted their plan and delayed the attack on the State of Israel,” he told the committee.
He defended the conduct of the police, saying they acted “impeccably, bravely, and courageously.”
Insufficient preparations
He told the committee how three weeks prior to the attack, they had held training exercises to prepare for infiltration from Gaza, from land, sea, air, and underground; the only difference was the number of infiltrators. They had practiced for a single-digit infiltration whereas “in practice what happened on October 7 was a hundredfold.”
He also said that the Nova Party had originally been approved only for October 5 and 6 but was approved for October 7 after he asked for the rationale behind not approving the date.
He claimed he had only been given a call from Shin Bet at 6:30 a.m., just as the attack began. He called the Shin Bet at around 6:40 a.m., asking for permission to disperse the party, which he received.
They called him back soon after and told him that an invasion had been declared, requiring him to inform all police under his command.
He also took aim at the army’s speed and effectiveness in responding to October, saying the army only arrived at the Nova Party as an army at 2-3 p.m., saying that army units had been active since noon but were disorganized and disorientated.
He also bashed the security concept of the State, saying that police were not included in the concept. He said that police commanders should have been called and officers mobilized during situational assessments earlier in the day.
Azoulai also claimed that the security services, including the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) and the IDF, had trained them for infiltration of “dozens” of terrorists, not the thousands that ended up pouring over the borders.
He estimated that there were 10,000 terrorists who invaded Israel on October 7, of which only about half were armed terrorists. The remainder, he claimed, were looters and other terrorists operating in the background.