Hamas aimed to torpedo normalization efforts between Israel and Saudi Arabia with the October 7 massacre, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing Hamas meeting transcripts found by the IDF.
The WSJ reported that Hamas's former chief, Yahya Sinwar, was concerned that US-brokered normalization efforts between Saudi Arabia and Israel would take attention away from pushes for Palestinian statehood.
According to the documents, Sinwar said that there was “no doubt that the Saudi-Zionist normalization agreement is progressing significantly," and that such an agreement would “open the door for the majority of Arab and Islamic countries to follow the same path.”
In the months leading up to Hamas's 2023 attack on southern Israel, the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia had all noted that differences were narrowing between Riyadh and Jerusalem.
Sinwar reportedly planned the attack "to bring about a major move or a strategic shift in the paths and balances of the region with regard to the Palestinian cause," the documents cited by the WSJ show.
The WSJ reports that October 7 in the works for months
The report stated that Sinwar planned to get aid from other Iranian-backed forces. This comes after previous reporting that the WSJ has done that Iran approved the attack at a October 2 meeting with IRGC, Hezbollah, and Hamas officials.
Some Hamas and Hezbollah senior members disputed the report, saying that the details of the massacre were kept tightly under wraps by the terror groups.
The WSJ noted that it had sent the Hamas documents to Arab intelligence officials, who said that the documents were credible and appeared to be genuine.
IRGC, Hamas, and Hezbollah officials have reportedly been planning an attack on Israel since 2021. Iran gave Hamas financial backing and combat training in the weeks leading up to the massacre, the report said, citing intelligence documents from several countries.
However, both Hezbollah and Iran told Hamas that they did not want the attack to lead to an all-out war with Israel.
Since the attack, Israel has killed several senior Hamas and Hezbollah officials responsible for the attack and the subsequent multi-front war on Israel, including Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh, Marwan Issa [who was present at the October 2 meeting], and Hassan Nasrallah.
The IDF targeted Yahya Sinwar's brother, Mohammed, in an assassination attempt on Tuesday. Though Arab media reported that his body was found in a tunnel in Gaza, the military has not confirmed if he is dead.
Among the documents seized by the IDF in Gaza was a 2023 Hamas report that recommended escalating violence in the West Bank to further complicate normalization efforts, the WSJ said.
The 2023 report said that Saudi Arabia had taken “weak and limited steps to neutralize” Hamas and noted deep mistrust of Riyadh's pledges to uphold Hamas's interests.
“It has become the duty of the movement to reposition itself to … preserve the survival of the Palestinian cause in the face of the broad wave of normalization by Arab countries, which aims primarily to liquidate the Palestinian cause," reads a 2022 internal Hamas briefing marked secret.
After over 500 days of war, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman noted that he will not sign a normalization agreement with Israel unless the war in Gaza ends, and a diplomatic process for Palestinian statehood is agreed upon.