Netanyahu releases Oct. 7 timeline to shift the blame-but exposes a 3½-hour delay

Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office has published a detailed account of his movements and decisions on the morning of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack, in an apparent effort to reinforce his argument that Israel’s security establishment failed to warn him while there was still time to prepare communities along the Gaza border.

The chronology portrays Netanyahu as acting decisively once informed: questioning the absence of prior intelligence, considering the elimination of Hamas’s leadership, ordering a full mobilization of reservists and demanding that the Gaza boundary be sealed.

But the same timeline highlights a politically difficult gap. According to the Prime Minister’s Office, Netanyahu was first told at 6:29 a.m. that an attack was underway.

The full situation assessment with Israel’s senior security leadership began at 9:55 am—three hours and 26 minutes later, as Israeli communities were being overrun and hostages taken into Gaza.

The release comes amid a renewed battle over responsibility for Israel’s worst security failure. Netanyahu said this week that officials had deliberately chosen not to wake him earlier despite warning signs during the night. He argued that, had he been alerted, he would have placed the military on high alert and warned the Gaza-border communities. He rejected suggestions of treason, describing the episode instead as a catastrophic professional failure. Ynet reported his remarks and the surrounding dispute.

According to the newly published chronology, Netanyahu’s military secretary first contacted him at 6:29 am, around the time Hamas began its rocket barrage and mass infiltration.

During a second call at 6:44, Netanyahu reportedly asked why the intelligence previously presented to him had contained no warning, requested an assessment of whether a large reserve mobilization was necessary and raised the possibility of eliminating Hamas’s leaders.

Netanyahu left for the Kirya military headquarters in Tel Aviv at 7:30, after his convoy had been prepared. During the journey, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant reportedly told him that officials still lacked a clear picture. Netanyahu then ordered a situation assessment in the underground command center.

The PMO says Netanyahu arrived at about 8 am, although Shin Bet records cited in the account place his arrival at 8:22. Between approximately 8:30 and 9:30, he received intelligence and field reports from his military staff.

At 8:40, Gallant convened IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi and Shin Bet director Ronen Bar to assemble a clearer operational picture before meeting Netanyahu. That detail may help explain part of the delay, but it also raises a central question: why Israel’s prime minister and its top security chiefs were not brought together immediately as the scale of the attack became apparent.

At 9:47, Netanyahu’s military secretary received a situation-assessment document that the head of the Shin Bet had prepared at 5:15, more than an hour before the assault began and over four and a half hours before it reached the military secretary, according to the PMO account. Netanyahu’s office is likely to present that sequence as evidence that potentially important information remained within the security system instead of reaching the elected leadership.

The first full meeting under Netanyahu’s leadership began at 9:55. Those present included Gallant, Halevi, Bar, the Mossad director, the national security adviser and the head of the IDF Operations Directorate.

According to the PMO, Netanyahu ordered the border sealed to stop further infiltrations and prevent captives from being taken into Gaza. He also rejected an IDF recommendation for a partial reserve call-up and ordered a full mobilization, directed that a war order be issued and instructed the military to prepare for possible escalation on the northern front.

Those decisions form the political heart of the release. By contrasting Netanyahu’s orders with the military’s allegedly more limited initial recommendation, the account seeks to present him as the official who grasped the scale of the crisis once given the necessary information.

The chronology, however, does not establish that an earlier warning would have prevented the attack. Nor does it resolve broader questions about the government’s policies toward Hamas, Israel’s long-term threat assessments or Netanyahu’s responsibility as the country’s longest-serving prime minister. It documents what his office says he did after 6:29, but it does not settle the argument over the strategic decisions that preceded that morning.

Its publication followed a separate controversy involving Netanyahu’s wife, Sara Netanyahu, and opposition leader Yair Golan. In a Channel 14 interview, Sara Netanyahu suggested, without presenting evidence, that Golan’s rapid response on Oct. 7 indicated that he knew about the attack before the prime minister. Golan, a former deputy IDF chief of staff who drove south and rescued survivors from the Nova festival, said he left at around 8 a.m. and threatened a defamation lawsuit. The Times of Israel reported that he demanded a retraction and apology.

Against that backdrop, the PMO timeline appears designed to redirect the debate away from insinuations about Golan and toward a more consequential question: what Israel’s military and intelligence officials knew before 6:29, who received that information, and why Netanyahu was not contacted sooner.

Yet the document cuts both ways. It strengthens Netanyahu’s contention that information did not reach him promptly, particularly by drawing attention to the 5:15 Shin Bet assessment and a briefing reportedly given to his military secretary at 6:13. At the same time, it supplies a precise record of the slow formation of the government’s command response after the attack was already underway.

The result is less an answer to the dispute over responsibility than a new framework for it. Netanyahu is asking the public to judge him principally on the orders he gave once fully briefed. His critics are likely to ask why the briefing took so long,, and whether ultimate responsibility for the country’s preparedness can be separated from the prime minister who led it.