Internal Hamas Documents Confirm October 7 Attack Aimed to Block Israel-Saudi Normalization
Seized internal documents recovered from the Gaza Strip confirm that a primary strategic objective behind Hamas’s October 7, 2023, terrorist onslaught was to forcefully derail the advancing diplomatic normalization talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
The classified materials, analyzed by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center and broadcast by Kan News, reveal that Hamas leadership viewed the potential US-brokered deal as a catastrophic strategic threat to the Palestinian cause.
The records show that Hamas began organizing structural efforts to block the rapprochement as early as February 2022.
During a leadership meeting in Gaza, the group established a dedicated office explicitly tasked with monitoring and disrupting the normalization process.
Minutes from that meeting detail a deliberate directive to “heat up” the security situation across Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, leveraging localized escalations to poison the diplomatic climate and stall Saudi Arabia’s engagement with Jerusalem.
The urgency peaked just days before the attack.
In an October 2, 2023, political bureau meeting, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar told assembled officials that the Saudi-Zionist normalization track was progressing too significantly to ignore.
Sinwar explicitly stated that there was no way around launching an “exceptional action” alongside partners in the Iranian-led “Axis of Resistance” to permanently shatter the peace initiative.
Five days later, Hamas launched the cross-border massacre that ignited the ongoing war, effectively freezing the regional normalization talks.
