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Hamas officials told me that for strategic reasons they timed the attacks to coincide with Shemini Atzeret, the final day of the Sukkot thanksgiving holiday, but more broadly to exploit mounting divisions within Israeli society and the deepening unpopularity of Netanyahu within Israel. On a tactical level, they engaged in extensive monitoring of the Israeli military facilities along what is referred to as the “Gaza envelope” and identified vulnerabilities in surveillance systems and perimeter defenses. Throughout the two years leading up to the October 7 attacks, Hamas officials told me, they sent Israel repeated warnings to halt the activity of illegal settlements and annexations in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Hamas also protested Israel’s mounting attacks and provocations on the grounds of Al Aqsa mosque, the holiest Islamic site in Palestine, and demanded that the U.S. and other nations restrain Israel. “We talked to the mediators, especially the United Nations and the Egyptians and the Qataris: ‘Tell Israel to stop this. We will not be able to tolerate more and more,’” said Hamad, a Hebrew speaker with a long history of negotiating with Israeli officials. “They did not listen to us. They thought that Hamas is weak, Hamas is now just looking for some humanitarian aid, some facilities in the Gaza Strip. But at the same time, we were preparing.” “We talked to the mediators, especially the United Nations and the Egyptians and the Qataris: ‘Tell Israel to stop this. We will not be able to tolerate more and more.’” “We were preparing because we are under occupation,” said Hamad. “We think that the West Bank and Gaza is one unit. This is our people under oppression, under killing and massacres. We have to save them. And Israel feels that they are above the law. They can do anything. No one can stop them.” “We have said it before October 7 that the earthquake is coming. And the repercussions of this earthquake will be beyond the borders of Palestine,” Naim said. As Hamas delivered messages through international mediators, it simultaneously held regular secret meetings in Gaza where its leaders brainstormed potential ways to confront Israel. “We had meetings in the political bureau of Hamas in Gaza, and we discussed the situation all the time. What was put on the table was an evaluation of Israel in the West Bank and Al Aqsa mosque,” said Hamad. “Hamas decided to do something in order to make a kind of deterrence to Israel.” They also wanted to send a message to the Palestinian masses: “We are not weak [like] the Palestinian Authority.” Hamad said the discussions focused on actions that would force the world to pay attention to the plight of Palestinians, but also to send a message to Israel. “We are going to show them that we can do something in order to harm you and to hurt you,” he said. “What is the other alternative? Either we, as Palestinians, are waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting for many years for some countries, the international community, to do something in order to save the Palestinians, or we can go in the violent way to make a kind of shock, in order to get the attention of the world.” Naim said Hamas had concluded that Israeli policy could only be altered through violent resistance. “I have to say we are also reading history very well. We [learned] from the history in Vietnam, in Somalia, in South Africa, in Algiers,” he said. “At the end, they are not peaceful NGOs who will come and say, ‘Sorry we have bothered you for some years and now we are leaving and please forgive us.’ They are so brutal and bloody that they will not leave except with the same tools they are using.” Hamad and other Hamas political officials said that while they participated in the strategy meetings in Gaza leading up to the attacks, most of them were not privy to the operational details or timing of the operations. “There is a special group headed by Sinwar, who took the decision for October 7. A very narrow circle,” he said. “We did not know anything about this. We were surprised with October 7.” Gaza City during an Israeli airstrike on October 9, 2023. Photo: Mahmud Hams/AFP via Getty A Surprising Collapse Before October 7, the prospects for a Palestinian state were becoming slimmer and slimmer. The conditions in Gaza were dire and there were no signs of improvement because of the intense Israeli blockade and lack of interest from the world. Residents of the Strip, according to polls, were increasingly apportioning blame for their misery on Hamas—one of the central aims of Israel’s collective punishment strategy. The U.S. was spearheading a series of diplomatic initiatives to normalize relations between Israel and Arab states. The Abraham Accords, launched under President Donald Trump, effectively excised the issue of Palestinian self-determination as a condition for normalization, a major victory for Israel. Israeli provocations and attacks against worshippers at Al Aqsa were becoming a regular occurrence. Israel was aggressively moving forward with its annexation of Palestinian land and armed settlers were conducting deadly paramilitary actions, often with the support or facilitation of the government, against Palestinian farms and homes in the occupied territories. The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank was widely despised for its corruption and collaboration with Israel, including through the brutal actions of its U.S.-backed security forces. The PA, often referred to as a subcontractor of the Israeli occupation, routinely arrests dissidents, union organizers, and journalists, in addition to people Israel has identified as security risks. Hamas wanted to shatter the status quo on Gaza, position itself as the defender of the Palestinian people, and open possibilities for a new alignment of political power to replace what they saw as PA leader Mahmoud Abbas’s Vichy rule. At its highest level, Operation Al Aqsa Flood was to be the opening salvo in what Hamas hoped would be a decisive and historic moment in the war for the liberation of Palestine. On a tactical level, the October 7 operations exceeded Hamas’s projections. “It was very surprising for us how speedy one of the strongest brigades in the Israel Army—the Gaza brigade is one of the strongest, most sophisticated groups of their army—to collapse within hours without any serious resistance, and that even the state as a whole, for hours and maybe days, continued to be paralyzed, were not able to respond in the proper professional way,” said Naim, the Hamas political bureau member. “They were able to create this image of undefeated, undefeatable army, undefeatable soldiers, the long hand of Israel, which can hit everywhere or strike everywhere and come back, relax, to drink at some cafe in Tel Aviv, like what they have done in Iraq, in Syria, Lebanon, everywhere. I think it has shown that [Israel’s self-promoted reputation] was not reflecting the reality.” The attacks, he said, showed Palestinians and their allies that “Israel is defeatable and liberation of Palestine is a good possibility.” “There was absolutely no control of the battle space. There was no control of this area.” Nine months after the attacks, Israel remains in a state of shock and disbelief over the total failure of its vaunted military and intelligence agencies to protect the most vulnerable areas of Israel. “Hamas won the war on October 7. The fact that they were able to conquer parts of Israel and kill so many Israelis,” said Gershon Baskin, an experienced Israeli negotiator in regular touch with elements of Hamas. “They took out Israel's electronic surveillance system with drones that you can buy on Amazon and hand grenades. They took down Israel's internal communication systems in the kibbutzim all around the Gaza Strip. They were so much more sophisticated than Israel.” Hamas “never imagined that there would be no Israeli army when they crossed the border into Israel,” said Baskin. “One of the Hamas leaders told me, ‘If we knew there was going to be no army there, we would have sent 10,000 people and conquered Tel Aviv.’ And they're not mistaken. They had no army there, and when they encountered the [Nova] music festival that they didn't know about, they went on a killing spree.” Khalidi also believes that Hamas was not prepared for its own operational success on October 7. “I don't think they expected the Gaza division to fall apart. I don't think they expected to overrun a dozen or more border settlements. I don't think they expected thousands and thousands of Gazans to come out of this prison that Israel has created and kidnap individual Israelis. I don't think they expected the kind of killing that took place in these border settlements. I don't think all of this was planned, frankly,” he told me. “There was absolutely no control of the battle space. There was no control of this area. The Israeli army took four days to reoccupy every single military position, every single border village. So there were two days, three days, in some cases more, during which there was complete chaos. I'm sure horrific things happened.”