By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

A study, based on classified documents, reveals the terror group’s shift from defense to a multifront assault plan, culminating in the devastating October 7, 2023, invasion, Gaza records show that Iran and Hezbollah plotted with Hamas to destroy Israel.

In the years leading up to its invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023, Hamas developed a concrete plan to destroy the Jewish state, in full coordination with Hezbollah and Iran, according to classified documents published by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center.

The Hamas documents reveal that in the lead-up to October 7, Iran was a critical player in funding Hamas’s plan to destroy Israel, that the Gaza-based terror group pushed for a coordinated attack from multiple fronts, and that its leader Yahya Sinwar believed that his military force could push Israel toward collapse.

Hamas’s devastating large-scale attack, which caught the nation off guard, involved coordinated land, sea, and air assaults, marking a significant escalation in its long-standing goal to destroy Israel. Despite years of military buildup in Gaza and strategic shifts, Israeli intelligence had not anticipated the scale or suddenness of the attack, leaving security forces badly unprepared.

Before 2019, Hamas’s military operations were primarily framed in defensive terms, focusing on strengthening its infrastructure in Gaza to withstand future conflicts, as outlined in a Hamas document titled “The Movement’s Strategy 2013-2017.”  The document also discussed a “realistic plan” of “implementing popular resistance in Palestine,” by initiating an intifada in the West Bank or “mobilizing… forces… to carry out jihad,” as well as “pursuing Jews and military personnel in international forums.”

However, a significant shift in dialogue emerged in 2019, with a revolution in Hamas’s thinking taking place in 2021, the internal documents recovered from Gaza show.  In 2019, the terror group began to emphasize coordination with Iran’s Quds Force and Hezbollah under a “joint defense agreement,” according to a document authored by the office of then-Hamas political bureau chief Sinwar. It laid out plans for a multifront war against Israel, with the ultimate goal of “liberating al-Quds [Jerusalem].”  Three attack scenarios Operation Guardian of the Walls in 2021 was the pivotal moment in Hamas’s strategic evolution.

The operation was an Israeli military campaign aimed at dismantling Hamas’s military infrastructure in Gaza, following escalating violence and rocket attacks from the Strip.  The month after the operation, Sinwar, then-Hamas military leader Mohammed Deif, and Deif’s deputy, Marwan Issa, sent a letter to Esmail Qaani, the commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Guard Corps, requesting $500 million over two years to fund its war effort: “We are confident that by the end of these two years or during them if Allah wills, we will uproot [Israel], and together we will change the face of the region.”  Deif and Issa were killed in Gaza in separate IDF airstrikes last year. Sinwar was killed by an IDF tank shell in Rafah last October.

Underneath the head of Hamas’s military wing Muhammad Deif

Documents reveal that Hamas was fully committed to this proposal by 2022, with Sinwar presenting a concrete plan for a multifront confrontation with Israel in a letter to then-political leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was assassinated in Tehran last July, describing three possible scenarios.

The first, described by Hamas as the “preferred scenario,” detailed a large-scale military campaign against Israel involving all “Axis of Resistance” actors, excluding Iran.

This scenario was described as a “sudden confrontation from all fronts” with the timing “linked to one of the Jewish holidays,” specifically referring to Passover. It also mentioned “reasonable participation from Yemen, Iraq, and Syria” and “guerrilla operations beyond the Jordanian borders,” alongside Hezbollah’s full force.

The second scenario — or the “intermediate scenario”— designated Hamas as the central actor in the attack. Hezbollah would only use “a quarter or a third of its power, keeping the remaining forces for deterrence and the strategic campaign,” while other “axis forces engage from the other fronts.”

The third and final scenario, described as a “scenario of necessity,” placed the preponderance of the fight on Hamas’s shoulders, with Hezbollah merely playing an indirect role by allowing the “activation of [Hamas] forces with increasing efficiency from Lebanon.”

The 2022 letter also discussed the possible establishment of a Hamas combat unit in Lebanon, with a minimum of 250 fighters, that could use Hezbollah’s operational networks to conduct raids into Israeli territory.

In Haniyeh’s response to Sinwar, he revealed that Iran and Hezbollah ultimately endorsed the first scenario, envisioning a coordinated, multifront assault on Israel: “[The first scenario] was approved in the discussion we held with our allies; we are awaiting its final review in additional meetings, particularly with the Iranians, and we will follow up on the necessary preparations for it as outlined above.”

In the months before October 7, Hamas leaders continued to discuss an attack. In April 2023, Sinwar told Hamas political bureau member Muhammad Nasser that Operation Guardian of the Walls had been a “walk in the park” for Israel in comparison to potential campaigns in the future and that the next attack would be “so powerful that it will shatter the enemy into fragments.”

The documents align with public statements made by Hamas and its allies in the years leading up to the October 7 onslaught.

In a September 2021 conference held in Gaza titled “Promise of the Hereafter – Post-Liberation Palestine,” Palestinian factions openly discussed governing the entirety of Israel’s territory, “from the river to the sea.”

The concluding statement from the conference outlined the steps needed to launch the new Palestinian state, including how to deal with the Jews and the weeding out of informants to “purge Palestine and the Arab and Islamic homeland of the hypocrite scum that spread corruption in the land.”

Similarly, in a May 2023 speech marking the anniversary of the IDF’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon, then-Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah declared, “Today, hope is greater than ever for the liberation of Palestine from the sea to the river, for prayer in Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

He further claimed that “[Israel’s] home front is weak, fragile, anxious, always ready to pack up and leave.”

Nasrallah was eliminated in an IDF airstrike on Hezbollah’s headquarters in Beirut last September.

The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center suggested that Israeli intelligence may have dismissed such statements as mere bravado rather than credible threats.

While Hamas and its allies suffered severe setbacks in the current war that began on October 7, their ambition to destroy Israel has not disappeared.

In the long run, if Hamas recovers, it is not improbable that the movement could once again regard destroying Israel as a practical plan.

The assessment came at the tail end of a ceasefire that paused fighting in Gaza for some two months.

The ceasefire ended early Tuesday morning, as the IDF launched a wave of airstrikes across Gaza under the orders of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who accused Hamas of repeatedly refusing to release Israeli hostages and vowed a forceful response.

The fighting resumed amid reports of the rehabilitation of Hamas in Gaza, As they had been informed that Hamas has over 25,000 and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) has over 5,000 armed terrorists.

 

 

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