The Palestinian group Hamas attacked Israel on May 7, 2023, to disrupt peace talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
This is evidenced by documents found in a tunnel under the Gaza Strip, writes The Wall Street Journal.
Days before the attack, then-Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip Yahya Sinwar told his fighters that talks on normalizing relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia could marginalize the Palestinian cause. And the plan to prevent that worked.
The minutes of a Hamas political bureau meeting in Gaza on October 2, 2023, quoted Sinwar as saying: “There is no doubt that the agreement to normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and the Zionists is making significant progress”. He stressed that the agreement “will open the door for most Arab and Islamic countries to follow the same path”.
Sinwar then declared that the time had come to launch the attack, which had been planned for two years, expecting help from other Iranian-backed forces in the so-called axis of resistance to Israel.
On the same day, October 2, 2023, another meeting was held in Beirut between Hamas and Iranian security officials. According to sources in The Wall Street Journal, Iran approved Hamasʼs plan to attack Israel.
Intelligence from several countries confirms that senior Iranian and Hezbollah officials have been discussing an attack on Israel since the summer of 2021. Iran has been providing Hamas with weapons, money, and training fighters for an extended period, including several weeks of combat training before October 7.
Many of those involved in planning the attack on Israel have now been killed by the Israeli military, including Yahya Sinwar and one of the most influential figures in Hamas Ismail Haniyeh.
Among other internal Hamas documents found by IDF and seen by the newspaper was a report from September 2023 recommending escalating the conflict in the West Bank and Jerusalem to make it more difficult to normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel.
The report emphasizes distrust of Saudi Arabiaʼs promises to protect Palestinian interests, calling them "weak and limited steps to neutralize" Hamas.
The normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel could be the biggest diplomatic shift for Israel in the Middle East since the peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt. In 2020, Israel also established formal diplomatic ties with the UAE and Bahrain as part of the Abraham Accords.
The agreement with Saudi Arabia is now a major goal for Washington, which wants to create a regional alliance to deter Iran, and a strategic priority for Israel.
But now Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman says that normalization is possible only on two conditions: an end to the war in Gaza and the resumption of a diplomatic process that should lead to the creation of a Palestinian state. However, the latter is not supported in Israel.
What preceded
Active hostilities between Israel and Hamas have continued since October 7, 2023, when militants of the Islamist group launched a massive rocket attack on southern and central Israel, invaded the countryʼs territory, killed hundreds of civilians, and took hostages.
In mid-January 2025, Israel and Hamas reached an agreement on a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages. In the first phase of the agreement, Hamas pledged to release 33 Israeli hostages, while Israel pledged to release more than 1 900 Palestinian prisoners and begin withdrawing troops from the Gaza Strip. On March 2, Israel agreed to temporarily extend the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, a transitional period after the end of the first phase, as the parties have not yet been able to agree on how to proceed.
On the night of March 18, Israel resumed hostilities in the Gaza Strip after a two-month ceasefire. The strikes killed the de facto prime minister of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip Isaam Daalis and four other senior Hamas officials.
Israel has placed responsibility for the resumption of hostilities on Hamas — the militants allegedly rejected all proposals to extend the ceasefire. Therefore, any further negotiations with Hamas, if they are to be held, will only be "under fire" — that is, Israel refuses a ceasefire as a condition for starting new negotiations.
In early May, Netanyahu said that the plan to seize the entire Gaza Strip and hold it would be “intensive”. Tens of thousands of reservists were called up in the country to expand the military operation. Already on May 18, the Israel Defense Forces began “large-scale” ground operations in the Gaza Strip.
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