The Lod Magistrate’s Court has ruled that official Israel Defense Forces documents prove that the military did not redeploy soldiers from the Gaza border to protect Judea and Samaria in the days leading up to Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, Channel 12 reported on Thursday.
The files were revealed as part of two defamation lawsuits filed against IDF Maj. Gen. (res.) Dan Harel by Religious Zionism Knesset member Zvi Sukkot and Samaria Regional Council Chairman Yossi Dagan.
In late 2023, Harel, who headed the IDF Southern Command during the 2005 Gaza disengagement and was later promoted to deputy chief of staff, cast blame on Sukkot for the army’s lack of preparedness on Oct. 7.
Harel claimed that soldiers were moved from the southern border to Huwara, near Nablus in Samaria, to protect a protest tent set up by the lawmaker.
Sukkot had set up q sukkah in the flashpoint Arab town on Oct. 5 after a series of Palestinian terrorist attacks, including a shooting that targeted an Israeli man, his pregnant wife and their 18-month-old child.
After Judge Menachem Mizrahi, president of the Lod Magistrate’s Court, reviewed the IDF document, he said that Harel is expected to lose the defamation lawsuits, according to Thursday’s Channel 12 News report.
Harel’s comments took a life on their own, with anti-Israel activists on social media spreading the claim that Gazan terrorists succeeded in murdering some 1,200 people on Oct. 7 because the southern border was unprotected due to the need to protect Jewish “settlers” in Judea and Samaria.
To dispel the claim, Dagan filed a request under Israel’s Freedom of Information Law demanding the release of files relating to the IDF’s manpower considerations.
The document proved that the transfer of the forces to reinforce positions in Samaria was part of a quarterly schedule approved two months before the Hamas massacre, amid an uptick in deadly terrorist attacks in the area around Huwara, the court confirmed.
In 2023, then-IDF Spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari stressed that there was no substantial change in the number of troops securing the Gaza frontier ahead of the Oct. 7, 2023, cross-border onslaught.
“The deployment of forces that carry out regular operational activities [on the border of] the Gaza Strip did not change before Oct. 7,” the spokesman told reporters at a press conference.
Judea and Samaria saw a dramatic rise in Palestinian terrorist attacks in 2023 compared to previous years, with terror shootings reaching their highest level since the Second Intifada of 2000-05, per military data.
