Hamas aimed Oct. 7 attacks to sabotage Israel-Saudi peace talks, documents show

Hamas aimed Oct. 7 attacks to sabotage Israel-Saudi peace talks, documents show

Newly uncovered documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal reveal that Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, assault on Israel was designed not only as a military operation—but as a calculated political strike to sabotage US-brokered peace talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

According to minutes of a high-level Hamas meeting discovered by Israeli forces in a Gaza tunnel, Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s Gaza chief, warned just days before the attack that normalization between Riyadh and Jerusalem was nearing completion. In the meeting, held on October 2, Sinwar reportedly told top operatives that only an “extraordinary act” could stop it.

Strategic sabotage with regional fallout
The assault killed nearly 1,200 people and plunged Israel into a war that has since devastated Gaza, killing more than 53,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials. The humanitarian toll—and Israel’s sweeping military response—has reignited anger across the Arab world and chilled normalization talks once seen as a diplomatic breakthrough.

“The Saudi-Zionist normalisation agreement is progressing significantly,” Sinwar said, according to the minutes, warning that such a deal would open the door for most Arab and Islamic countries to follow suit. His proposed response: a violent escalation that would “bring about a major move” reshaping the region’s balance of power.

Sinwar was later killed by Israeli forces, along with most top Hamas leaders in Gaza.

Iran’s shadow role and the 'axis of resistance'
Israeli and Arab intelligence suggest Hamas consulted with Iranian officials and Hezbollah in Beirut days before the attack. While Tehran has long backed Hamas with weapons and funding, officials say Iran and Hezbollah were reluctant to trigger full-scale war. Still, Iran approved the plan, according to senior officials cited by The Journal, while Hamas's military wing kept key details tightly held.

The documents confirm what many analysts had suspected: that October 7 was not just a military operation but a regional gambit to derail what would have been a historic Saudi-Israeli alliance.

Normalisation now on hold
Normalisation with Saudi Arabia has long been seen as the crown jewel of Israel’s regional diplomacy, surpassing even the Abraham Accords that brought Israel into full relations with the UAE and Bahrain in 2020.

But in the wake of the Gaza war, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has told foreign envoys he won’t move forward unless Israel ends the conflict and commits to a future Palestinian state—conditions that are politically untenable in today’s Israel, where the Oct. 7 attack hardened public opposition to Palestinian sovereignty.

Evidence of long-term planning
Other Hamas documents found in Gaza indicate the strategy was years in the making. A 2022 military briefing described normalisation as an existential threat to the Palestinian cause and called for realignment with Hezbollah and other militant factions.

A separate September 2023 analysis recommended escalating unrest in the West Bank and Jerusalem to make normalization politically toxic. Hamas also circulated a job posting in October 2022, seeking a diplomatic strategist to “market” anti-normalisation efforts and rally Arab civil society.

‘The movement must reposition itself’
The uncovered records reflect growing internal anxiety among Hamas’s leadership as Arab support for the Palestinian cause waned. The August 2022 internal briefing concluded: “It has become the duty of the movement to reposition itself…to preserve the survival of the Palestinian cause.”

While many of Hamas’s top planners are now dead, the political and regional reverberations of Oct. 7 are still unfolding. For now, peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia remains out of reach—and the Palestinian issue, once sidelined, is again front and centre in Middle East diplomacy.