The minutes of 10 meetings among Hamas’s top leaders showed that the Palestinian armed group had avoided escalation several times since 2021 as it sought Iran’s support to launch a large assault on Israel, The New York Times reported on Saturday.
A report by Ronen Bergman, Adam Rasgon and Patrick Kingsley, said that for more than two years, Hamas leader Yahya al-Sinwar huddled with his top commanders and plotted what they hoped would be the most devastating and destabilizing attack on Israel in the group’s four-decade history.
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 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.
The documents, which were verified by The New York Times, lay out the main strategies and assessments of the leadership group.
Hamas initially planned to carry out the attack, which it code-named “the big project,” in the fall of 2022. But it delayed executing the plan as it tried to persuade Iran and Hezbollah to participate.
Also, as they prepared arguments aimed at Hezbollah, the Hamas leaders said that Israel’s “internal situation” — an apparent reference to turmoil over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s contentious plans to overhaul the judiciary — was among the reasons they were “compelled to move toward a strategic battle.”
In July 2023, Hamas dispatched a top official to Lebanon, where he met with a senior Iranian commander and requested help with striking sensitive sites at the start of the assault.
The senior Iranian commander told Hamas that Tehran and Hezbollah were supportive in principle, but needed more time to prepare; the minutes do not say how detailed a plan was presented by Hamas to its allies.
The documents also say that Hamas planned to discuss the attack in more detail at a subsequent meeting with Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader at the time, but do not clarify whether the discussion happened.
Hamas felt assured of its allies’ general support, but concluded it might need to go ahead without their full involvement — in part to stop Israel from deploying an advanced new air-defense system before the assault took place.
