Israel Welcomes the Return of the Women Who Warned of a Raid From Gaza

The Israeli Army lookouts were monitoring Hamas in Gaza across a security fence from a base in southern Israel. As it turned out, Hamas was also watching them.

The four women released by Hamas on Saturday after more than 15 months in captivity in Gaza are “spotters” for the army who were stationed in a small military base about a half-mile from the border.

In the first minutes of the Hamas-led dawn assault on Oct. 7, 2023, gunmen burst through the fence and overran the base, Nahal Oz. Dozens of soldiers were killed, including 15 spotters. The gunmen also dragged seven lookouts — unarmed female conscripts in their late teens — onto trucks and drove them into Gaza. Some were still in their pajamas, some bloodied from wounds.

One of them, Pvt. Ori Megidish, 19, was rescued three weeks later by Israeli forces. Another, Cpl. Noa Marciano, 19, was injured in an Israeli airstrike and then killed by militants inside Gaza’s Shifa hospital, according to the military. Hamas said she died in the bombing.

Four of the remaining five, Naama Levy, Karina Ariev and Daniella Gilboa, who are now all 20, and Liri Albag, 19, were released on Saturday as part of a cease-fire deal providing for the release of scores of Palestinian prisoners, many of them convicted of killing Israelis. A fifth spotter, Agam Berger, is slated to be released in the coming days or weeks under that deal, which came into effect on Jan. 19.

Ms. Levy, Ms. Berger and Ms. Albag were recent recruits who had arrived at the base less than two days before the attack. The Israeli military has not disclosed the rank of the captured soldiers.

The capture of the lookouts underscored what many Israelis view as the worst military, intelligence and governmental debacle in their country’s history. Their families are still waiting for a formal investigation into the fall of Nahal Oz.

Relatives and former lookouts said the women were on constant alert for the possibility of a cross-border raid, though they did not envisage anything on the scale of the one that happened.

“All the time, they told us there’d be a raid,” said Amit Yerushalmi, 22, a former lookout who served at the Nahal Oz base from December 2021 until about a week before the assault. But she said they had expected a localized event along the fence, like an attempt to abduct a couple of soldiers.

“We would joke about whose shift the raid would fall on,” Ms. Yerushalmi said.

In the months leading up to the assault, Ms. Yerushalmi said, there were growing signs of something afoot. She said the spotters saw convoys of 20 to 30 white pickup trucks filled with Hamas fighters driving along the border with increasing frequency, stopping occasionally and peering into Israel through binoculars. They would also put up drones a few times a day, Ms. Yerushalmi said.

The spotters reported the activity, she and several relatives of the other lookouts said, but were told by their superiors that their job was to be the eyes, not the brains, of the Israeli military. Their reports, they said, appeared to have been dismissed.

The Israeli military declined to comment on the specific claims, but said in a statement that it was “reviewing the events of October 7 and what preceded them” with the goal of deriving lessons for the continuation of the army’s operations.

When the attack came, thousands of Hamas-led gunmen and marauders burst through the fence and overran military bases, border villages and towns, as well as a music festival. About 1,200 people were killed in Israel that day, and another 250 were taken as hostages into Gaza, according to the Israeli authorities. The assault set off a 15-month war that has killed more than 46,000 Palestinians, Gaza health authorities say, and has left much of the coastal enclave in ruins.

It took hours for any backup forces to arrive at Nahal Oz. The lookouts’ commanders were at a different base, farther from the border.

“I still don’t know what really happened there,” said Eyal Eshel, the father of Sgt. Roni Eshel, one of the 15 lookout soldiers killed at Nahal Oz. Mr. Eshel conducted his own research into the events and is pressing for a formal inquiry into the failures on that day.

“I understood one thing,” Mr. Eshel said of the research he had done on the fate of the spotters. “Their abandonment and the disdain for them was so great.”

The evening before the raid, the lookouts were in a festive mood, sharing a sabbath meal together, singing and saying goodbye to a team member, Staff Sgt. Shahaf Nissani, 20, who was completing her mandatory service. Her mother had delivered food to the base.

The lookouts worked four-hour shifts, with eight hours’ rest in between. They were trained to never take their eyes off the screens in the operations room.

Karina Ariev’s family was not overly worried when she was assigned to Nahal Oz, said her cousin Anna Astmaker. “This was within the borders of the country,” she said. But Ms. Ariev told them she did not feel safe there, her cousin said.

Ms. Ariev, the daughter of immigrants from Ukraine, was on duty from midnight until 4 a.m. early on Oct. 7. Sergeant Eshel was part of another group that took over at 4 a.m.

At 6:29 a.m., militants fired a barrage of rockets out of Gaza, providing a smoke screen as exploding drones knocked out key communications and surveillance towers.

As sirens warned of incoming rocket fire, the off-duty lookouts ran from their sleeping quarters to an aboveground shelter.

Within minutes, waves of Hamas commandos had burst through Israel’s vaunted defenses, some in white pickup trucks, and the base was quickly overrun.

In the operations room, Sergeant Eshel was using codewords to report the raid as it unfolded in a voice rising with urgency, according to an audio recording released by the military. Then the cameras were destroyed, and the monitoring screens went blank.

Dozens of armed soldiers who were stationed at the base on a rotation fought to their last bullets. The assailants shot and threw grenades into the shelter where the lookouts were hiding, killing and injuring many of them.

Ms. Ariev called her parents from the shelter to say goodbye, according to Ms. Astmaker. She told them to continue to live if she did not survive, and continued texting with them until 7:20 a.m., when all contact was lost.

Footage soon emerged on social media of Ms. Ariev and other lookouts being taken to Gaza.

There has been scant information about them since. Ms. Ariev appeared in a hostage video a year ago with Ms. Gilboa and Doron Steinbrecher, one of three women released on Jan. 19.

Ms. Albag appeared this month in the most recent hostage video released by Hamas, which analysts said was probably intended to put pressure on Israel for a cease-fire deal.

The surveillance soldiers who were in the operations room at the time of the assault were alive for nearly six hours until midday, waiting to be rescued, according to information gathered by Mr. Eshel and testimony given last year to an informal inquiry that he initiated with other bereaved families and survivors of the assault.

In a battle around the operations room, four combat soldiers fought to their deaths, the inquiry found. The assailants then set the operations room ablaze. Seven more combat soldiers and only one of the lookouts managed to find their way through the thick smoke and escape through a small bathroom window. Sergeant Eshel and the others on duty died in the inferno.

Only one other lookout escaped alive from the shelter. In all, more than 50 soldiers were killed in the Nahal Oz base, 15 of them lookouts.

Sergeant Eshel was classified as missing for 34 days until the military confirmed her death, based on DNA. But, Mr. Eshel said, “There are a lot of open questions.”

Israel’s military chief, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, announced his resignation this past week and said that before he departs, in March, the military would finalize the series of long-awaited internal inquiries into its failure on Oct. 7. The results of the internal inquiries will be made available to the public, the military says.

Mr. Eshel believes his daughter knew she would not make it out alive. The oldest of three siblings, she always signed off her messages with five red heart emojis, one for each member of the family, he said. In her last message to her mother from the operations room, at 9:27 a.m., she said not to worry and signed off with only four hearts.