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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67958260

In the months leading up to the 7 October attacks by Hamas, they did begin to see things: practice raids, mock hostage-taking, and farmers behaving strangely on the other side of the fence.

Noa, not her real name, says they would pass information about what they were seeing to intelligence and higher-ranking officers, but were powerless to do more. "We were just the eyes," she says.

It was clear to some of these women that Hamas was planning something big - that there was, in Noa's words, a "balloon that was going to burst".
The BBC has now spoken to these young women about the escalation in suspicious activity they observed, the reports they filed, and what they saw as a lack of response from senior Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officers.

... "We would see them practising every day what the raid would look like," Noa, who is still serving in the military, tells the BBC. "They even had a model tank that they were practising how to take over...