he Washington Post published a lengthy report on the preparations for the attack launched by the Islamic Resistance Movement “Hamas” on Israel, on October 7, 2023, indicating that “five weeks after the Hamas attack on Israel, new evidence emerged revealing the features of The movement’s broader plan, which analysts say was not only aimed at killing and kidnapping Israelis, but also to penetrate as far as possible into the occupied West Bank.
The newspaper says: “The evidence, reported by more than a dozen current and former intelligence and security officials from four Western and Middle Eastern countries, reveals Hamas’ motives for launching a strike of historic proportions, and the results that have emerged shed new light on the tactics and methods used by Hamas.” To thwart the initial efforts of the Israeli army to stop the attack.”
After breaching the Israeli border in about 30 places, Hamas militants carried out a “mass massacre of soldiers and civilians in at least 22 Israeli villages, towns and military sites,” according to the newspaper.
Unnamed officials told The Washington Post that some of the militants were carrying enough food, ammunition and equipment for several days, and were carrying instructions to continue the incursion into Israel if the first wave of attacks that were likely to hit larger Israeli cities succeeded.
One Hamas militant unit carried “reconnaissance information and maps indicating an intention to continue the attack up to the West Bank border,” according to two senior Middle East intelligence officials and a former American official with detailed knowledge of the evidence.
The newspaper claims that Hamas has increased its outreach to West Bank activists in recent months, although the movement says it did not notify its allies in the West Bank of its October 7 plans in advance.
The newspaper quotes a former American official who was briefed on the matter as saying: “If that had happened, it would have been a major victory, a symbolic strike not only against Israel, but also against the Palestinian Authority.”
The newspaper attributed to analysts saying, “Hamas meticulously planned and prepared for a massacre of Israeli civilians on a scale that was likely to prompt the Israeli government to send forces to Gaza, as Hamas leaders publicly expressed their willingness to accept “heavy losses,” which would likely include the death of many. of civilians in the sector.
Hamas was willing to accept these sacrifices as the price for starting a new wave of violent Palestinian resistance in the region and thwarting efforts to normalize relations between Israel and Arab countries, according to current and former intelligence officials and counter-terrorism experts, according to the report.
“They have been very clear about what will happen to Gaza next,” said a senior Israeli military official familiar with sensitive intelligence, including interrogations with Hamas fighters and intercepted communications.
He added: “They wanted to buy their place in history… a place in the history of jihad… at the expense of the lives of many people in Gaza.” Secret planning and deception at a high level.
Intelligence officials the Washington Post spoke to say that planning for an attack on Israel had been underway for more than a year before the events of October 7.
Hamas officials did their best to hide these preparations, even as senior leaders dropped occasional hints about their intentions.
Throughout the Gaza Strip, Hamas conducted military maneuvers above and below ground, and trained on the use of various weapons.
Western and Middle Eastern intelligence officials said that during Hamas training, fighters carefully scanned population centers and military bases to create a matrix of potential targets.
To obtain detailed intelligence, Hamas deployed inexpensive reconnaissance drones for use in mapping Israeli cities and military installations within a few miles of the separation wall system that Israel built to isolate Gaza at a cost of $1 billion.
Intelligence officials said Hamas obtained additional information from “day laborers” in Gaza who were allowed into Israel to work, and the movement monitored Israeli sites, studying real estate photos and social media posts depicting life inside the kibbutzim.
Exact plans for how and where to attack were limited to a small circle of elite Hamas military planners, and the most important details appear to have been withheld even from the movement’s political leadership.
Israel believes that the main architect of the plan is Yahya Sinwar, the political leader of Hamas, as he and other leaders of the movement have begun issuing “hidden signals” in recent years indicating a “new practical direction.”
That was a message the Israelis wanted to hear: “Hamas does not want more wars,” said Michael Milstein, the former head of Palestinian affairs at Israeli military intelligence Aman. To support this perception, clashes between Hamas and Israel stopped after 2021, The movement in particular refrained from intervening on several occasions when its ally in Gaza, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, fired rockets or clashed militarily with Israel.
For many in Israel, it was further evidence that “Hamas has changed and no longer seeks a bloody conflict.”
Some reports indicate that “Hamas officials passed intelligence information about Islamic Jihad in Palestine to the Israelis to reinforce the impression that they were cooperating,” the Washington Post confirms.
The newspaper attributed the former deputy head of the Israeli National Security Council, Eran Etzion, to saying, “They were deceiving Israel at the strategic level, by using portable radios, underground wire networks in tunnels, and other communications that we could not listen to, while they were using the codes of the so-called networks.” Open, which they knew we were listening to.”
It is also attributed to the former Israeli intelligence official, Amos Yadlin, that Israel “in the end allowed the building of a Palestinian army at the hands of Hamas and kept telling itself that Hamas could be deterred,” adding, “Israel was deceived,” while a senior Israeli official spoke on the condition of anonymity. To discuss secret intelligence: “They planned a second phase, including an attack on major Israeli cities and military bases.”
The war broke out between Israel and Hamas after a surprise attack launched by the movement on military sites and residential areas adjacent to the Gaza Strip on October 7, which led to the killing of 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and 239 people were kidnapped, according to the Israeli authorities.
Since then, Israel has responded with intense air, sea, land, and brutal bombardment on the besieged Gaza Strip, followed by a ground operation that is still ongoing. The death toll in Gaza reached 11,180 people, including 4,609 children and 3,100 women, in addition to the injury of 28,200 people, according to what was announced. Hamas Ministry of Health, Sunday.
