Hamas envisioned deeper attacks, aiming to provoke an Israeli war
Hamas envisioned deeper attacks, aiming to provoke an Israeli war
Evidence gleaned since Oct. 7 shows Hamas terrorists prepared for a “second phase” of assaults amid hopes of inspiring violence in the West Bank and beyond.
"Hamas’s broader plan [was] one that analysts say was intended not just to kill and capture Israelis, but to spark a conflagration that would sweep the region and lead to a wider conflict."
This is just analyst opinions. The New Yorker actually interviewed a Hamas leader and got them on the record. He claimed that Israel left them no choice; non violent protests had failed and asking the UN for help failed, and moderate voices were ignored by Israel, meaning only violence was left.
this explanation for the motive and the intentions described in the article are not mutually exclusive things
No choice but to build a future with billions of dollars of yearly aid.
In a country with one of the highest population per square kilometer, that is under a full embargo, can't govern themselves, can't import concrete, wood and other essential materials, which had a 50% unemployed rate.
Gaza wasn't a paradise sitting on aid money, it wasn't a developing country that needed some help, it was an open air prison.
So the only option left was to slaughter unarmed civilians. Eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. The better option was to hit military targets but who cares I guess, tit for tat is all we get
Obligatory fuck IDF and Bibi
Thanks for pointing that out, I linked and quoted it below.
“It’s the first time I can remember that Hamas has become so prominent on a global scale,” Katz said. “So many people have already forgotten Oct. 7 because Hamas immediately changed the discussion. It put the focus on Israel, not themselves. And that’s exactly what they wanted.”
LOL Hamas didn't change the discussion, Israel did. I came into the news on Oct 07 with "Fucking Hamas" vibes, but that very quickly changed to, "Wow OK, Israel isn't fucking around." then "Woah Israel OK, maybe use a little more care there, I get that you were attacked but -- WOAH ISRAEL WTF ARE YOU DOING?"
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/what-was-hamas-thinking
As recently as 2020, Hamas committed to participate in Palestinian national elections; this plan fell apart not because of Hamas but because of the Western-backed Palestinian Authority, whose leaders denounced Israel’s refusal to allow elections in East Jerusalem.
Had these apparent gestures of compromise all been part of a ruse to buy time while Hamas prepared a brutal assault? Abu Marzouk insisted that these efforts at negotiation and coexistence had been genuine. He blamed Israel and the Western powers for thwarting Hamas’s overtures. He told us, “We rolled down all of the pathways to get some of our rights—not all of them. We knocked on the door of reconciliation and we weren’t allowed in. We knocked on the door of elections and we were deprived of them. We knocked on the door of a political document for the whole world—we said, ‘We want peace, but give us some of our rights’—but they didn’t let us in.” He added, “We tried every path. We didn’t find one political path to take us out of this morass and free us from occupation.”
There is some evidence to support Abu Marzouk’s narrative. In recent years, Hamas had appeared willing to coexist with the Jewish state. But, as Abu Marzouk acknowledged to us, Hamas also never abandoned core demands such as full Palestinian independence and the right of all Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland. Nor did the group relinquish its weapons. “But we didn’t mislead anyone,” he told us. “We never hid these slogans.”
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In Beeri, a kibbutz town overrun by Hamas on Oct. 7, one dead fighter had a notebook with hand-scrawled Quranic verses and orders that read, simply, “Kill as many people and take as many hostages as possible.” Others were equipped with gas canisters, handcuffs and thermobaric grenades designed to instantly turn houses into infernos.
The evidence, described by more than a dozen current and former intelligence and security officials from four Western and Middle Eastern countries, reveals an intention by Hamas planners to strike a blow of historic proportions, in the expectation that the group’s actions would compel an overwhelming Israeli response.
Some militants carried enough food, ammunition and equipment to last several days, officials said, and bore instructions to continue deeper into Israel if the first wave of attacks succeeded, potentially striking larger Israeli cities.
Hamas was willing to accept such sacrifices as the price for kick-starting a new wave of violent Palestinian resistance in the region and scuttling efforts at normalizing relations between Israel and Arab states, according to current and former intelligence officials and counterterrorism experts.
To obtain detailed intelligence, Hamas deployed cheap surveillance drones to generate maps of the Israeli towns and military installations within a few miles of the $1 billion barrier system that Israel built to wall off Gaza.
Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden expected a furious American response after the attacks on New York and Washington, Katz said, and he welcomed what he believed would be a violent, global confrontation between the Muslim world and the West, with Islam ultimately prevailing.
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