Secret documents revealed: why did Hamas launch the October 7 attack on Israel?

Top leaders of the Palestinian group Hamas launched their attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, in an attempt to disrupt peace negotiations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. This fact has been made public by the well-known American media outlet, the Wall Street Journal, which has revealed the minutes of a high-level meeting in Gaza that the Israeli military said it discovered in a tunnel beneath the enclave.

Days before the attack that left nearly 1,200 dead, Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas in Gaza, told fellow militants that an “extraordinary act” was needed to disrupt normalization talks, which he said risked marginalizing the Palestinian cause, according to a document reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The plan worked, but at a terrible price.

The Iranian-backed Hamas's rampage of killings and kidnappings triggered an Israeli military campaign to crush the militants that has killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities, and left the territory in ruins. It has sparked outrage across the Arab world and beyond, halting progress toward normalization, at least for now.

President Trump, during a visit to Riyadh on Tuesday, acknowledged this, calling on Saudi Arabia to establish relations with Israel, but saying: “You will do it when you want.” The minutes of the meeting – from an October 2, 2023 meeting of the Hamas political bureau in Gaza – quote Sinwar as saying: “There is no doubt that the Saudi-Zionist normalization agreement is progressing significantly.” He warned that a deal would “open the door for most Arab and Islamic countries to follow the same path.”

For Sinwar and Hamas, who have called for the total destruction of Israel and the creation of a Palestinian state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, this was unacceptable. Sinwar said it was time to launch an attack that had been in the planning stages for two years. The goal, he said, is to “bring about a major shift or a strategic change in the paths and balances of the region with regard to the Palestinian cause.” He expected to receive assistance from other Iranian-backed forces of the so-called axis of resistance to Israel.

Hamas did not respond to a request for comment on the authenticity of the document or its contents. Arab intelligence officials familiar with Hamas and its data said the document appeared genuine, as did others the Israeli military says it has found in Gaza.

Also among the documents the Israeli military said it found is a Hamas job posting from October 2022, seeking a person to lead diplomatic efforts to thwart the normalization of Israeli-Saudi relations. It is not clear where the posting was posted — or how much the person was paid for such a job.

The vacancy in Hamas's Department of Arab and Islamic Cooperation required a university graduate with skills in negotiations and communications. Part of the job description stated: "Marketing the movement's programs to confront normalization," including urging grassroots organizations in the Arab world to boycott entities that supported normal relations with Israel./a2cnn