The Wall Street Journal obtained exclusive documents from within Gaza, which were verified by several Arab intelligence and diplomatic sources, about Hamas’s real intention behind the October 7 attacks. The Islamist group was primarily concerned with sabotaging the prospect of Saudi-Israeli normalization, which it felt would be a significant setback to itself and the Palestinian issue, despite promises by Saudi Arabia that Palestinian statehood would be a precondition of normalization, Hamas’s Sinwar and senior leadership did not trust Saudi promises and decided to activate attack plans that had been in the works for years.
Before using Gaza, Hamas wanted to escalate violence in the West Bank and Jerusalem to torpedo Saudi-Israeli normalization. But when that failed, the Gaza Strip became the fulcrum of the terror organizations’ hopes that it could undo what at the time seemed like an inevitability. Interestingly, the documents also revealed that Hamas advertised a job position or possible positions to include grassroots organizing against normalization with Israel and to employ tactics of boycott of entities that were in support of normalizing with Israel.
This is a massive and significant revelation that proves an incredibly disturbing fact and reality: October 7 was not about breaking the blockade, breaking out of the Gaza prison or “concentration camp,” responding to injustices in the West Bank or Jerusalem, or seeking to promote Palestinian rights and statehood. It was a very specific and nefarious political action by a deadly terror organization to derail a political development that it felt was not advantageous to its objectives.
This proves all Hamas’s critics right, that Gaza did not need to be destroyed on October 7 for the terrorist group to make a point. As many others and I have repeatedly stated, Gaza was a beautiful place that meant so much for its people, and Hamas could have made different choices to prevent the territory’s annihilation by the most far-right government in Israel’s history.
To all who incessantly excuse the terrorist organization: the evidence is before you to realize that your beloved “resistance” organization is a fraud and that justifications for October 7 that got 60,000 Palestinians killed are nothing but a web of lies by an ISIS-like Jihadi organization which is largely rejected by Palestinians in Gaza.