World
Hamas documents show Oct. 7 attack aimed at thwarting Israel-Saudi normalization
The Hamas terror group carried out its October 7, 2023, attack on Israel partly in order to thwart the Jewish state’s rapprochement with Saudi Arabia, according to seized documents.
The internal Hamas materials were published by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, a government-controlled think tank, and then aired by the Kan public broadcaster on Sunday.
In the years and months leading up to the attack, it was widely reported that the oil-rich kingdom was considering normalization with Israel, along the lines of the US-brokered Abraham Accords with other Arab states.
A Times of Israel report last year confirmed that, on the eve of the October 7 attack, Washington and Riyadh had already reached understandings regarding concessions Israel would have to make vis-à-vis the Palestinians for Riyadh to normalize relations with Jerusalem.
In a meeting held by Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip in February 2022, the Iran-backed terror group, which had long functioned as the enclave’s de facto government, decided to establish a new office, tasked with overseeing efforts to thwart normalization between Israel and its erstwhile enemies.
Hamas decided to heat up the conflict in Gaza as well as the West Bank and East Jerusalem, “in order to thwart the Saudi kingdom’s process of normalization,” according to the minutes of the meeting.
The terror group noted, as precedent for its campaign, that the Second Intifada – a deadly, years-long campaign of suicide bombings and other terror attacks in the early 2000s – was “one of the chief factors leading to the blow-up of the normalization process presented through the Arab Peace Initiative.”
In 2023, the group decided that its renewed attempt to stir disorder in the region was not bearing enough fruit. In late September, the group’s leadership held another meeting, chaired by Gaza chief – and October 7 mastermind – Yahya Sinwar.
At the meeting, Sinwar presented a memo titled “Dealing with the normalization process between Saudi Arabia and Israel.”
“Hamas is not a negligible party; our resistance can thwart the plans, just as we played a role in the failure of Oslo,” he said, referring to the US-brokered peace process decades ago in which Israel sought to withdraw from the West Bank and allow for the creation of a demilitarized Palestinian state.
“We’ll play a role in causing the Zionist enemy pain and sending a message to those participating in normalization… that the Israeli occupation is not an oasis of security and stability,” Sinwar resolved.
“We may not succeed in stopping the process, but we will disrupt it and deprive it of legitimacy,” he determined, according to the Kan report.
On October 2, 2023, Sinwar told assembled leadership that, in light of the threat posed by normalization with Saudi Arabia, there was no way around what he described as “an exceptional action” by Hamas and its partners in the “Axis of Resistance,” referring to Iran and its regional proxies.
At this meeting, the Hamas leadership decided to move forward with the surprise attack on Israel.
Five days later, on the morning of the Simchat Torah holiday, thousands of Hamas-led terrorists burst through the Gaza-Israel border under cover of incessant rocket fire, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 hostages, amid acts of brutality and sexual assault.
The attack triggered the subsequent multi-front war, drawing support from the Hezbollah terror group in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and Iran-backed groups in Iraq and Syria, as well as Iran itself. Despite efforts to keep the vision afloat, normalization with Saudi Arabia does not appear imminent, with Israeli and Saudi leaders both signaling it is not currently on the table.
