Records from secret meetings held by Hamas before the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel show leader Yahya Sinwar and his commanders were making plans for two years, and that their assault was put off for a year while they tried to persuade Iran and Hezbollah to either take part or commit to a larger fight with Israel.
The minutes from the meetings were seized by the Israeli military, reports The New York Times, which obtained the records and has verified them, the newspaper reported Saturday.
The records were found on a computer as Israeli soldiers searched a Hamas command center in Khan Younis, Gaza, where the leaders had escaped.
The documents also show Hamas' efforts to deceive Israel about its plans while the group laid the groundwork for the assault and the ensuing war, with Sinwar hoping that Israel would "collapse" as a result.
The records include minutes from 10 secret planning meetings among Hamas leaders, including 30 pages of previously unreleased details about how the terrorist organization works and the plans that went into the cross-border attack.
Among the findings:
- Hamas planned to launch the attack, which went by the code-name "the big project," in the fall of 2022, but waited until Oct. 7, 2023, while trying to bring Iran and Hezbollah aboard.
- The Hamas leaders said Israel's "internal situation," which appears to refer to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's plans for overhauling the nation's judiciary, led to their move for a "strategic battle."
- Hamas sent a top official to Lebanon in July 2023, where they met with an Iranian commander to request help with the strike.
- Hamas planned to speak more with Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader who Israel killed in September, but the minutes didn't confirm if that happened.
- Hamas was sure that its allies would support it but concluded it might need to act alone, as Israel had plans to deploy an advanced new air defense system.
- Hamas' decision to attack was influenced by the wish to stop efforts for normalizing relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, as well as the Israeli presence in the West Bank and its efforts for control over the Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, known to Jews as the Temple Mount.
Major confrontations with Israel were put on hold for two years, beginning in 2021 with leaders saying that they "must keep the enemy convinced that Hamas in Gaza wants calm."
The Hamas attack killed roughly 1,200 people, with the terrorists capturing 251 hostages. As a result, Israel invaded Gaza, and the war has expanded to include Hamas' regional allies, with Israel killing several Iranian and Hezbollah leaders.
Meanwhile, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has publicly denied that Iran had a role in the Oct. 7 attack, and the extent to how much Iran and Hezbollah knew has been debated.
American officials have also said that key Iranian leaders were taken by surprise, citing intelligence reports.
However, Hamas' leaders said they got support from regional allies, with some reports that Iranian and Hezbollah officials trained fighters and helped to plan the attack.
The Times confirmed the documents by sharing contents with Hamas members and experts close to the organization, and the Israeli military, in a separate internal report obtained by The Times, concluded the minutes were real, but has declined to comment.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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