October 8, 2023

Gaza war

Israel's Security Cabinet formally approves a state of war

Netanyahu had already told the country it was at war. The overnight cabinet vote supplied the formal legal act — and dated the war's beginning back to 06:00 the previous morning.

8 October 2023: the section-40 decision

Israel's Security Cabinet approved a "war situation" and significant military steps under section 40 of Basic Law: The Government. The decision was announced publicly on 8 October 2023.

The government statement treated the war as having begun at 06:00 on 7 October, when the Hamas-led assault from Gaza started. Section 40 requires a government decision before Israel starts a war or takes significant military action almost certain to lead to one, and permits that authority to be delegated to the Security Cabinet.

What the cabinet decided

The cabinet set the objective of destroying the military and governing capabilities of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad so that they could not threaten Israel for years. Its operational decisions included stopping Israel's supply of electricity, fuel and goods to Gaza.

This was the Security Cabinet, not the smaller emergency War Cabinet formed several days later. Netanyahu's televised "we are at war" statement on 7 October was not itself the section-40 decision.

The fighting was already underway

The declaration did not begin the combat. As it was announced, Israeli forces were still fighting Hamas-led attackers inside southern Israel and intensifying airstrikes on Gaza.

In the 7 October assault, armed groups had breached the Gaza boundary, attacked Israeli communities and military sites, killed about 1,200 people and taken 251 people into Gaza, a figure later verified by the UN inquiry. The IDF said more than 3,000 rockets were fired during the attack.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 9 sources 2 audit passes

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →

What the sources leave uncertain

The cabinet voted during the night after the 7 October attack and announced the decision on 8 October, while declaring that the war had begun retroactively at 06:00 on 7 October.
“Declared war” is standard media shorthand. The government's exact language was that the Security Cabinet “approved the war situation” and significant military steps under section 40.
The claim that this was the first formal declaration since 1973 is widely reported and reflects Israel's treatment of intervening Lebanon and Gaza campaigns as wars without comparable formal declarations.