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Policy Brief
On October 6, 1973, the Israeli authorities were warned of the imminent outbreak of war on their borders with the Arab states. This warning confirmed information received a few days previously, which Israeli political decision-makers and iintelligence services had not taken seriously. Israel was taken by surprise and its army panicked. It was a debacle. Fifty years later, almost to the day, Israel was once again taken by surprise. On the morning of October 7, 2023, hundreds of armed men crossed the barrier between Israel and Gaza, spread out into more than 20 localities, killed more than a thousand Israelis, wounded around 3,000 others, and took a number of hostages (a number that will probably only be known precisely at the end of the war) back to the Gaza Strip. Several sources report that, this time as well, Israeli politicians may have underestimated reports of an imminent attack from Gaza.
