According to the New York Times, Hamas had initially planned to begin a large-scale invasion against Israel in the fall of 2022, but the attack was then postponed until October 7 last year to try to gain support from Israel. ‘Iran and Hezbollah. This information emerges from the minutes of secret Hamas meetings, discovered by Israeli forces during operations in Gaza. For more than two years, Yahya Sinwar, who is hiding underground in the Gaza Strip and shielding himself from an unknown number of hostages, met with top Hamas commanders to plan what they hoped would be the most destructive and destabilizing against Israel in the history of the group, which has now lasted for four decades. The minutes, seized by the Israeli military and obtained by The New York Times, offer a detailed account of the planning of the October 7 attack, also highlighting Sinwar’s efforts to convince Iran and Hezbollah to join the assault or at least participate to a larger-scale conflict with Israel The documents, which provide new information on Hamas’ approach, reveal an elaborate plan of deception against Israel. As the group prepared the audacious attack, Sinwar hoped that it would trigger a regional crisis that would lead to the collapse of the Israeli state. The minutes cover ten secret meetings between Hamas political and military leaders ahead of the October 7, 2023 attack and include 30 pages of previously unpublished details on how Hamas organized and prepared for the operation. In an attempt to gain Hezbollah’s support, Hamas leaders highlighted “Israel’s internal fragility” as one of the main motivations for launching an attack. At the time, protests were raging in Israel over the highly contested justice reform wanted by Benjamin Netanyahu.
Although Hamas was convinced that it had the support of Hezbollah and Iran, it ultimately decided to go it alone, fearing that Israel might strengthen its new air defense system. Furthermore, the attack was partly motivated by a desire to thwart the US initiative to normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. The New York Times reports that Hamas leaders in Gaza had informed the group’s then head, Ismail Haniyeh, of the so-called “grand project”, a code name used for the attack plans. The reports were on a computer found in late January by Israeli soldiers during a search of Hamas’ underground command center in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, from which the group’s leaders had just escaped. The Times assessed the authenticity of the documents by sharing some of their contents with members and experts close to Hamas. Salah al-Din al-Awawdeh, a Hamas member and former fighter in its military wing who is now an Istanbul-based analyst, said he was aware of some details described in the documents and that keeping organized notes was consistent with the general practices of the group. A Palestinian analyst familiar with the inner workings of Hamas, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive topics, also confirmed some details and general structural operations of Hamas that were in line with the documents. The Israeli military, in a separate internal report obtained by the Times, concluded that the documents were real and represented another failure by intelligence officials to prevent the Oct. 7 attack. The Times also researched details mentioned in the meeting minutes to verify that they corresponded to actual events. The discovery of these documents sparked recriminations among Israeli intelligence agencies who at 03:17 in the morning had released a report which read: “It is estimated that Hamas is not interested in escalation and starting a clash at the moment” . Just over three hours later the attack began that brought us to the ongoing war.
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