Hamas delayed its terror attack on southern Israel by a year in an effort to recruit Iran and Hezbollah into the plot, which the group referred to as the “big project,” according to a stunning new report.
Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar planned the deadly Oct. 7 invasion for more than two years, according to documents viewed by The New York Times.
Sinwar and his commanders hoped to invade the Jewish State in fall 2022 but pushed back their plans by 12 months as they tried to get Iran and Hezbollah to join them.
In their discussions with Hezbollah, Hamas leaders cited domestic political unrest in Israel in the wake of the judicial overhaul there as a key reason they were “compelled to move toward a strategic battle,” according to the Times.
The revelations about the prelude to the Oct. 7 massacre comes from the minutes of 10 secret meetings of a small group of Hamas higher-ups which were seized by the Israeli military — then obtained by the Gray Lady.
The documents included 30 pages of previously unknown details about how Hamas’ leadership functions and the preparations for the deadly terror attack.
Hamas purposely avoided any major conflicts with Israel beginning in 2021, to focus on what they called “the big project.”
Hamas used the same language in similar contexts, but Israel intelligence officers did not understand what they were referring to until after the assault, according to two Israeli officials familiar with the situation.
In July 2023, Hamas sent a top official to Lebanon, where he met with a senior Iranian commander and requested help with striking the most sensitive sites at the start of the invasion.
The Iranian official assured Hamas that Tehran and Hezbollah were supportive of the effort, but needed more time to prepare, the New York Times reported.
Hamas ultimately decided to move forward without their allies’ direct involvement, in part because they wanted to stop Israel from deploying its advanced new air-defense system before the attack took place.
The Oct. 7 attack killed around 1,200 Israelis, and prompted Israel’s own offensive in the Gaza Strip, where tens of thousands of Palestinians are believed to have been killed over the past year.
Hamas also took hundreds of hostages, about 97 of which are still in their clutches.
The minutes detailing the planning before the attack were found on a computer in late January by Israel Defense Forces soldiers who were searching an underground Hamas command post in Khan Younis, the New York Times said.
The documents were verified by experts, including Salah al-Din al-Awawdeh, a Hamas member and a former fighter in its military wing who is now an analyst in Istanbul.
The discovery also set off a flurry of questions within Israel’s intelligence agencies, as an internal military review demanded to know how Israel’s spies failed to obtain the information before the Oct. 7 attack or to understand what they described, the Times noted.
While Israel did obtain Hamas’s battle plans before the attack, Israeli commanders repeatedly dismissed the idea that Hamas had the ability or intention to carry them out.
The Iranian Mission to the United Nations denied the allegations made in the minutes.
“All the planning, decision-making and directing were solely executed by Hamas’s military wing based in Gaza, any claim attempting to link it to Iran or Hezbollah — either partially or wholly — is devoid of credence and comes from fabricated documents,” the statement to the New York Times read.
