Gaza Division operations and airstrikes in the first hours of October 7 were based on limited information. The first long moments after the Hamas attack was launched were chaotic. Reports were coming in, with their significance not always clear. When their meaning was understood, it was realized that something horrific had taken place.

Documents obtained by Haaretz, as well as testimonies of soldiers, mid-level and senior IDF officers, reveal a host of orders and procedures laid down by the Gaza Division, Southern Command and the IDF General Staff up to the afternoon hours of that day, showing how widespread this procedure was, from the first hours following the attack and at various points along the border.

A very senior IDF source confirmed to Haaretz that the Hannibal procedure was employed on October 7, adding that this was not used by the divisional commander. Who did give the order? This, said the source, will perhaps be established by post-war investigations.

One of these decisions was made at 7:18 A.M., when an observation post at the Yiftah outpost reported that someone had been kidnapped at the Erez border crossing, adjacent to the IDF’s liaison office. “Hannibal at Erez” came the command from divisional headquarters, “dispatch a Zik.” The Zik is an unmanned assault drone, and the meaning of this command was clear.

This wasn’t the last time that such an order was heard over the communications network. Over the next half hour, the division realized that Hamas terrorists had managed to kill and abduct soldiers serving at the crossing and at the adjacent base. Then, at 7:41 A.M., it happened again: Hannibal at Erez, an assault on the crossing and the base, just so that no more soldiers be taken. Such commands were given later as well.

At that point, the army did not know the number of people who had been kidnapped. “We thought they numbered dozens at that stage,” a military source told Haaretz. Firing mortars at the Gaza Strip would endanger them as well. Furthermore, another order given at 11:22 A.M., according to which no vehicle would be allowed to return to Gaza, took this a step further.

“Everyone knew by then that such vehicles could be carrying kidnapped civilians or soldiers,” a source in Southern Command told Haaretz. “There was no case in which a vehicle carrying kidnapped people was knowingly attacked, but you couldn’t really know if there were any such people in a vehicle. I can’t say there was a clear instruction, but everyone knew what it meant to not let any vehicles return to Gaza.”