• A new report says an elite IDF intelligence unit warned that Hamas was practicing for a big attack.

• An officer detailed the extensive drills in July, according to Israeli outlet Channel 12.

• The Hamas exercises reportedly included storming a kibbutz and mass killing.

An elite intelligence unit of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) saw signs that Hamas was preparing for a massive terror attack, but early warnings ultimately went ignored, according to a new report.

Israeli media outlet Channel 12 obtained internal correspondence from within the IDF's Unit 8200 showing that in early July, a non-commissioned officer (NCO) warned others in detail that Hamas had carried out extensive drills practicing various assault tactics several weeks earlier.

Unit 8200 is part of the IDF's decades-old Military Intelligence Directorate, which is responsible for collecting and processing intelligence from enemy groups like Hamas. 8200 is the directorate's main information gathering unit, and its soldiers are also tasked with analyzing and sharing intelligence with relevant officials. "The unit operates in all zones and in wartime, they join combat field headquarters in order to enable a faster flow of information," the IDF said of the unit in 2021.

In an email titled "Death in the kibbutz," the NCO described very specific training that Hamas carried out in late May.

According to Channel 12, which published its report on Monday, the militant group practiced mounting vehicles, shooting at aircraft, attacking a military base, and storming a kibbutz. Hamas went on to do all of these things on October 7 during its bloody rampage in southern Israel, which killed around 1,200 people, wounded many more, and saw more than 200 others taken hostage in the Gaza Strip.

According to Channel 12's reporting, the NCO's colleagues did not ignore the warnings, and they even collected intelligence on additional Hamas training a few days later.

"Another small and cute note — during the training, the following conversation occurred: 'What is your situation, and what is the situation of your preparation. I am waiting for instructions from you so we can enter through their gate. We are in full preparation, waiting for instructions from you," the NCO reported in a follow-up email after collecting the reports of new training.

In mid-July, a senior officer in the 8200 praised the NCO for her work but dismissed the scenarios in her warnings as unrealistic and imaginary, according to Channel 12. But the NCO, along with another colleague, pushed back and argued that the training had real, strategic implications.

"This is a plan with intentions to start a war," the NCO said at one point in defense of the seriousness of the intelligence. She quoted high-ranking Hamas militants in saying "war phrases" about preparing to kill Jews and decapitate people. "They are training, in large forces, for a big event. This is not a parade of power, this is preparation for the real thing," she said.

The IDF did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment on the Channel 12 report.

The report is the latest attempting to piece together the larger account of how the terror attacks managed to unfold and unpack the major security and intelligence lapses that occurred in the lead-up to the most catastrophic breach of Israel's defenses since the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

Shortly after Israel declared war on Hamas, reports began to surface about the various factors that potentially contributed to the carnage. For example, Israeli intelligence was focused on other threats, like Hezbollah in Lebanon, and downplayed the dangers of Hamas. The militant group, meanwhile, misled the country by indicating that it was not seeking a major confrontation and even refrained from carrying out rocket attacks in recent years. Israel also relied heavily on the remote surveillance and weaponry that it had deployed near the Gaza border, and its forces were focused on other areas of instability like those in the West Bank.

Paul Pillar, a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a Washington-based think tank, said that while part of the failure relies on intelligence, it was also a broader defense issue. Israeli officials didn't believe Hamas had the capabilities to pull off a large attack, and they were confident enough that protective measures like border fences and other safeguards would be enough to prevent such an operation.

"They were wrong about that," Pillar, who had a nearly three-decade-long career in the US intelligence community, told Business Insider. Although "it's not just a matter of intelligence analysis, but rather of larger security policy and security considerations."

Intelligence analysis, he stressed, is also a product of consensus building; a single report won't necessarily change the entire discussion overnight. And beyond what's been revealed about the warnings in hindsight, it's also unclear what other signals and noise analysts had to sift through and make sense of at the time.

Domestic political drama also factored into the bigger picture. A controversial plan to overall Israel's judiciary — led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's far-right government — created internal divisions and distractions within Israeli society, raising concerns that the country's security apparatus was weakened as a result. Experts suggested after October 7 that Hamas sought an opportunity to exploit this.

Pillar said Netanyahu's government exuded a confidence that the security situation was contained, and there was an added incentive to have this thinking prevail because of the tense political environment. This was "bound to distract from the ability to do sound analysis when it came to asking … questions about what Hamas might've actually been up to," he said.

Israel likens Hamas to the Islamic State group. But the comparison misses the mark in key ways.

 It has become an Israeli mantra throughout the latest war in Gaza: Hamas is ISIS.

Since the bloody Hamas attack on Oct. 7 that triggered the conflict, Israeli leaders and commanders have likened the Palestinian militant group to the Islamic State group in virtually every speech and public statement. They point to Hamas’ slaughter of hundreds of civilians and compare their mission to defeat Hamas to the U.S.-led campaign to defeat IS in Iraq and Syria.

“Hamas is ISIS,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared just after the attack. “And just as the forces of civilization united to defeat ISIS, the forces of civilization must support Israel in defeating Hamas.”

But in many ways, these comparisons miss the mark by ignoring the home-grown origins and base of support for Hamas in Palestinian society and by assuming that this deeply embedded movement can be stamped out like a brush fire.

These miscalculations may already have led to unrealistic expectations in Israel for victory. They also complicate fledgling efforts by the U.S. and other international mediators to end the war, which has devastated Gaza, displaced more than three-quarters of its population and killed over 13,300 Palestinians, according to health authorities in the Hamas-ruled territory.

Here is a closer look at the campaigns against these very different militant groups and what it could mean for Israel’s ground invasion and the future of Gaza.

IS HAMAS THE SAME AS THE ISLAMIC STATE GROUP?

The violent images of Oct. 7 brought to mind the scenes of cruelty unleashed by the Islamic State group during its short self-declared caliphate in Iraq and Syria nearly a decade ago.

In an unprecedented attack, Hamas fighters burst into Israeli communities, killing entire families as they cowered in their homes, burning people alive and taking some 240 hostages, including older people and young children. Israeli authorities say at least 1,200 people were killed, some of whom were mutilated so badly they still have not been identified.

In a late October interview with a Lebanese TV station, Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas official, said the Oct. 7 rampage was just “the first time” and promised similar attacks in the future aimed at annihilating Israel.

“We must punish Israel and we will do this again and again,” he told the Lebanese channel LBC.

While the Islamic State group also carried out gruesome killings, including beheading and setting live prisoners on fire, that is where many of the similarities end.

IS fighters were mostly Iraqi and Syrian, but the group also managed to attract thousands of recruits for its global jihadi movement from around the world, including Europe, Asia, the Middle East, North Africa and the former Soviet Union. These foreigners often did not speak the local language, were seen as outsiders and disliked by the local communities.

The group has also taken responsibility for a string of deadly attacks across Europe, including in Paris and Brussels.

In contrast, Hamas is an exclusively Palestinian movement. Its members are Palestinian and its ideology, albeit violent, is focused on liberating what it says is occupied land through the destruction of Israel. While branded a terrorist group by Israel and its Western allies, its deadly attacks have been focused on Israeli targets.

Hamas seized control of Gaza from the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority in 2007, a year after trouncing the PA’s Fatah rulers in legislative elections.

During its 16 years of rule, Hamas built up a system of government that includes not only its military wing, but also tens of thousands of teachers, civil servants and police. The group also has significant support inside the West Bank and an exiled leadership spread out across the Arab world.

A U.S.-led coalition defeated IS in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria two years later, though the group still has thousands of fighters in sleeper cells in both countries.

Eradicating Hamas could be a much tougher task. Israel has already backed away from its initial pledges to wipe Hamas off the face of the earth. But given Hamas’ deep roots, even its current goals of destroying the Hamas’ military and governing capabilities in Gaza still may be too ambitious.

Michael Milshtein, an expert on Palestinian affairs at Tel Aviv University and former head of the Palestinian desk in Israel’s military intelligence, said the comparisons of Hamas to IS work in a limited context but otherwise are misleading.

“I do think that the slogan is right when you are trying to express and reflect the brutality of Hamas,” he said. “But of course we’re speaking about different entities.”

WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF HAMAS?

Hamas was established during the first Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation in the late 1980s and has survived repeated assassinations of its top leaders and four previous wars with Israel since 2008.

While Israel claims to have inflicted heavy damage on the group during the latest war, much of its fighting force and network of tunnels appear to remain intact. Its exiled leadership maintains working relations with key countries like Egypt and Qatar.

Nathan Brown, an expert on Hamas, said he doesn’t see “any way” in which Hamas can be eradicated. “By continually talking this way, the Israeli leadership is not just setting up expectations, but really I think digging themselves into a hole,” he said. Israel has laid out its security demands for a postwar Gaza, but offered no plan for who might run the territory.

Brown, a political science professor at George Washington University, said that after a bruising war, Hamas may be forced to reinvent itself, perhaps by controlling local residents’ committees or going back to being an underground militant group. But he said it will maintain some sort of presence, while remaining active in the West Bank and continuing to be a regional player.

“Hamas will be there,” he said.

CHALLENGE FOR US DIPLOMACY?

Israel’s ambitious goals against Hamas have complicated the task of the U.S. as it works with Qatari and Egyptian mediators to end the war.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected in the region later this week to discuss, among other things, the principles for a postwar Gaza.

For now, Israel remains committed to its goals. Netanyahu has vowed to strike Hamas with Israel’s “full force” as soon as the cease-fire expires. This would mean an expansion of Israel’s ground offensive into southern Gaza – where the vast majority of the territory’s population is now concentrated – setting the stage for a complicated and bloody operation.

The U.S., which initially backed Israel’s war in Gaza, is now pressing Israel to avoid large-scale civilian casualties or mass displacement if the fighting resumes.

But with the war enjoying broad support among the Israeli public, Blinken faces a difficult task. Although diplomatic efforts are focused on extending the cease-fire, any formula to end the war would have to allow Israel to declare victory, even if Hamas remains intact.

Milshtein says toppling Hamas’ government and destroying its army remain feasible objectives. But he believes there is a growing awareness among Israeli decision makers that “we cannot really make this organization vanish.”

3 killed in Jerusalem after Israel and Hamas agree to extend Gaza truce.

Israel and Hamas reached an agreement to extend the temporary cease-fire in Gaza for a seventh day, the Qatari government announced early Thursday, not long before the previous two-day extension was set to expire. While the truce has held in Gaza, pausing the brutal war sparked by Hamas' unprecedented Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel, violence in the other Palestinian territory, the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and in Jerusalem was keeping tension high on Thursday.

Israeli police said three people were killed in a shooting attack on a crowded Jerusalem bus stop, which a far-right member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, quickly blamed on Hamas.

"These are apparently Hamas operatives, who speak here with two voices — one voice of a so-called cease-fire and a second voice of terror," Gavir told reporters at the scene of the attack, according to BBC News. Police said the two gunmen were killed by Israeli soldiers at the scene.

In statements later Thursday, Hamas and its armed wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, claimed responsibility for the attack, calling it "a natural response to the unprecedented occupation crimes" of Israel, referring to the paused military operation in Gaza, the killing of two children in the West Bank on Wednesday and what the group called the "widespread violations that our prisoners are exposed to" in Israeli prisons.

Netanyahu, speaking later Thursday after a meeting with visiting U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, said the attack was carried out by "the same Hamas that perpetrated the terrible massacre on October 7th and the same Hamas that is trying to murder us everywhere."

He said he'd told Blinken that he had "sworn to eliminate Hamas," and "nothing will stop us. We will continue this war until we achieve the three goals: Freeing all of our hostages, completely eliminating Hamas and ensuring that no threat like this will ever come from Gaza again."

Just hours earlier, Majed Al-Ansari, the spokesperson for Qatar's foreign ministry, said in a statement that the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas would continue for at least one more day under the same parameters established last week, which would see Hamas free another group of hostages and Israel release another group of Palestinian prisoners on Thursday. Several hundred more humanitarian aid trucks would also be allowed to enter Gaza during the extended truce.

In a post to social media Thursday morning, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) wrote that, given ongoing mediation efforts towards the potential release of more Hamas-held hostages, the "operational pause" in the fighting in Gaza would continue.

During the cease-fire, Israeli intelligence has received a list every day of the names of the hostages who are expected to be released by Hamas. In a statement early Thursday, Netanyahu's office said it was provided a "list of women and children" in accordance with the terms of the agreement, and therefore the truce will continue."

The short-term cease-fire between the two sides began Nov. 24. It was initially slated for four days, but was extended for another two. That extension had been set to expire at 7 a.m. local time (midnight Eastern) on Thursday before it was extended again for a seventh day.

Frantic talks had been held in Doha Wednesday involving Qatari, Egyptian and U.S. mediators in an effort to try to extend the pause, with both Israel and Hamas indicating they would be open to another deal.

Under the current arrangement, about three Palestinian prisoners are being released in the West Bank for every one hostage freed. The hostages released so far have only been women and children, but it is possible that men could be included in a future deal.

Tension in the West Bank, where the freed prisoners have been welcomed by large crowds cheering their release and, in some cases, waving Hamas flags, has risen this week, meanwhile. Two Palestinian boys, eight and 15 years old, were killed by IDF forces during a raid on West Bank town of Jenin on Wednesday, Palestinian health officials said. Security video showed a small group of boys running, and one falling to the ground, bleeding.

The IDF said troops had opened fire on people throwing explosives at them, but it did not mention the children specifically, who were not seen throwing anything in the surveillance video. The military said troops killed two Islamic Jihad militants during the raid in Jenin.

The temporary cease-fire in the densely-packed Palestinian enclave has enabled the release of dozens of hostages, been widely lauded by the international community, and there was no indication that it would be derailed by the ongoing clashes and violence outside Gaza.  

Sixteen hostages, including an American woman, were freed by Hamas Wednesday, bringing the total number of Hamas-held hostages released since the cease-fire began to about 100. Some 210 Palestinians have been released from Israeli prisons in return, including 30 Palestinians on Wednesday, Qatar said.

Netanyahu said on Wednesday that after all the hostages are returned by Hamas, Israel's operations in Gaza would resume.

"In recent days, I have heard a question: After completing this stage of the return of our hostages, will Israel go back to the fighting? My answer is an unequivocal yes," Netanyahu said in a statement. "There is no situation in which we do not go back to fighting until the end."

More than 1,200 people, most of them civilians, were killed by Hamas militants during their Oct. 7 invasion of southern Israel, according to the Israeli military.

The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry says almost 15,000 people have been killed in Gaza by Israel's retaliatory ground incursion and airstrikes