Israel’s state comptroller has concluded that Israel did not have an up-to-date evacuation plan in place when the October 7 attacks occurred in a new report about the lead-up to the atrocity.
The report reviewed the evacuation and relocation of more than 200,000 people from areas affected by the subsequent war, mostly southern regions near the border with Gaza and northern communities that came under missile attack from Lebanon-based Hezbollah.
It found that the guidelines for precisely such a mass-evacuation event were more than a decade old at the time of the attacks.
The framework was devised in 2012, and a revised version proposed in 2022 was not approved due to a dispute over budgetary measures.
Instead, the evacuation operation was carried out according to impromptu ministerial decisions.
For example, the original guidelines envisioned public facilities to host displaced people, but most evacuees were instead housed in hotels.
The report also specifically cited the case of Kiryat Shmona, a northern community that was not included in the “Safe Distance” framework, which mandates the evacuation of towns up to 5km from the Lebanese border in the event of a war.
More than 10,000 residents decided to leave the city of their own volition before a formal evacuation order was issued on October 8, more than a week after Hezbollah began launching missile strikes.
"The government and the IDF failed in evacuating the residents and absorbing them,” stated the report, concluding a “systemic failure” had occurred.
"The picture that emerged in the report is one of total disorder,” it added.
And the comptroller found that evacuation drills in recent years had not prepared for an event on the scale of October 7 and that there was no single system to allow the government to monitor evacuees’ locations in real time.
It suggested that arguments between the National Emergency Authority (NEMA, part of the Defence Ministry), the Interior Ministry and the IDF over who was responsible for evacuation coordination may have contributed to the failings.
Responding to the report, the Defence Ministry said NEMA “acted and continues to act with an expansive approach since the beginning of the war”.
The IDF said that 1,000 soldiers from the Home Front Command were deployed to assist the evacuation and relocation efforts under the framework approved by NEMA.
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