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The Times reviewed the minutes of 10 meetings among Hamas’s top leaders. The records show the militant group avoided several escalations since 2021 to falsely imply it had been deterred — while seeking Iranian support for a major attack.

Minutes of Hamas’s secret meetings, seized by the Israeli military and obtained by The New York Times, provide a detailed record of the planning for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack, as well as Mr. Sinwar’s determination to persuade Hamas’s allies, Iran and Hezbollah, to join the assault or at least commit to a broader fight with Israel if Hamas staged a surprise cross-border raid.

The documents, which represent a breakthrough in understanding Hamas, also show extensive efforts to deceive Israel about its intentions as the group laid the groundwork for a bold assault and a regional conflagration that Mr. Sinwar hoped would cause Israel to “collapse.”

The documents consist of minutes from 10 secret planning meetings of a small group of Hamas political and military leaders in the run-up to the attack, on Oct. 7, 2023. The minutes include 30 pages of previously undisclosed details about the way Hamas’s leadership works and the preparations that went into its attack.

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  • IndustryStandard@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    2 days ago

    How very convenient of the Israeli military to find these documents supporting every claim Netanyahu makes. Eerily similar to https://www.972mag.com/jewish-chronicle-elon-perry-netanyahu-intelligence/

    On Sept. 4, Benjamin Netanyahu called a press conference for foreign media in order to explain his stubborn insistence on keeping Israeli forces in Gaza’s Philadelphi Corridor, even at the expense of a hostage deal. To his well-worn claim that the Gaza-Egypt border has historically been “porous” to the smuggling of weapons, the prime minister attached a new argument: if the Israeli army is not in control of the area, Hamas could “easily smuggle hostages out … to the Sinai desert,” and from there to “Iran or … Yemen.” After that, he added, “they’re gone forever.”

    The following day, the Jewish Chronicle, Britain’s oldest Jewish newspaper, published an exclusive report that brought Netanyahu’s hypothetical argument to life. It purported to reveal evidence from Israeli “intelligence sources” proving not only that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar intended to smuggle out the remaining hostages via the Philadelphi Corridor to Iran, but that Hamas’ surviving leaders in Gaza, including Sinwar himself, would be going with them.

    There’s only one problem: the story is totally made up.