WASHINGTON POST EXCLUSIVE: Captured documents reveal Hamas’s broader ambition to wreak havoc on Israel
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Palestinians celebrate the capture of an Israeli Merkava battle tank on Oct. 7, 2023. (AFP)- Electronic records and papers that Israeli officials say were recovered from Hamas command centers show advanced planning for attacks using trains, boats and even horse-drawn chariots — though several plans were ill-formed and highly impractical, terrorism experts said.
- The plans anticipate drawing in allied militant groups for a combined assault against Israel from the north, south and east.
The trove of documents includes an annotated, illustrated presentation detailing possible options for an assault as well as letters from Hamas to Iran’s top leaders in 2021 requesting hundreds of millions of dollars in funding and training for 12,000 additional Hamas fighters.
It is unclear whether Iran knew of the planning document or responded to the letters, but Israeli officials view the requests as part of a larger effort by Hamas to draw its Iranian allies into the kind of direct confrontation with Israel that Tehran has traditionally sought to avoid.
The 59 pages of letters and planning documents in Arabic obtained by The Washington Post represent a fraction of the thousands of records that Israel Defense Forces say they have seized since Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza began Oct. 27.
The decision to release the documents comes at a time when Israeli leaders are weighing a possible retaliatory strike after Iran launched more than 180 ballistic missiles against Israel on Oct. 1, in response to Israel’s Sept. 27 killing of Hasan Nasrallah, the Shiite cleric and leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group.
“Hamas is so determined to wipe Israel and the Jewish people off the map that it managed to drag Iran into direct conflict — under conditions that Iran wasn’t prepared for,” said an Israeli security official who has reviewed the letters and planning documents.
The official, like others interviewed, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive documents seized by Israeli forces in Gaza.
Translation:Strategy to build an appropriate plan to Liberate Palestine• What are the appropriate fronts for liberation, and where will each front move?• If other forces intervened and participated with us, what would the battle and coordination look like?• What are the targets that we should occupy, neutralize, or destroy?— Translation of title page and bullets 4-6 from documents obtained by The Washington Post, shown above.
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