Secret Hamas Documents Reveal Years of Planning for a Multi Front War Against Israel.

Newly published internal Hamas documents reveal that the October 7 attack was preceded by years of coordination with Hezbollah and Iran, including intelligence sharing, strategic planning, and repeated efforts by Hamas to persuade Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah to join a simultaneous invasion of northern Israel. The documents, first revealed by Israel Army Radio correspondent Doron Kadosh and analyzed by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, provide one of the clearest pictures yet of how Hamas viewed its relationship with Hezbollah in the years leading up to the attack.

The documents also help answer one of the biggest unanswered questions of October 7. Why did Hezbollah, despite years of preparations and close coordination with Hamas, stop short of launching the large scale ground assault into the Galilee that Hamas expected?

The relationship began to deepen years before the attack. In 2019, while Hamas was accelerating preparations for what it internally called “The Plan to Defeat the Gaza Division,” Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh sent a letter to Nasrallah seeking closer military coordination. “Your brothers and family in Palestine are confident and secure that you will not disappoint them in their struggle against their enemy,” Haniyeh wrote. “They are confident that you will always find a way to join them in their steadfast stand until victory is achieved.” A similar letter was also delivered to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, reflecting Hamas’s effort to secure support from both Hezbollah and the Islamic regime years before the attack.

The cooperation expanded significantly during the Israel Operation Guardian of the Walls in May 2021. According to an internal Hamas military intelligence report, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards established a joint intelligence operations room in Beirut that remained active throughout the conflict. Hezbollah invited Hamas commanders to submit intelligence requests and provided information on Israeli troop deployments, aerial surveillance, Israeli Air Force operations and other battlefield intelligence.

One of the most striking claims in the documents concerns Israel’s “Metro” deception operation. Hamas says Hezbollah warned it roughly 2 hours before the operation that Israel’s reported ground invasion was in fact a deception intended to draw Hamas fighters into underground tunnel networks before launching massive airstrikes. A senior Israeli security official who participated in the operation told Army Radio that Hezbollah indeed played a significant role in exposing the deception, although Hamas noted Hezbollah did not fully understand the scale of the operation itself.

The documents also describe another instance of intelligence cooperation. According to Hamas, Hezbollah detected an unusual concentration of Israeli intelligence assets over Jabalia and warned Hamas that northern Gaza commander Ahmed al Ghandour was about to be targeted. Ghandour survived that operation but was later killed by Israel during the current war.

Despite the intelligence assistance, Hamas viewed Hezbollah’s military involvement in the 2021 fighting as insufficient. Internal correspondence shows Hamas leaders pushing for greater intervention from Lebanon. In one exchange, a senior Hamas official complained to Nasrallah’s senior aide, Hajj Khalil Harb, that Hezbollah’s actions were too limited and urged the group to increase attacks in order to tie down Israeli forces in the north. Harb replied that he had not been aware Hamas wanted greater escalation and described the request as legitimate, promising to discuss it directly with Nasrallah.

The following year the discussions became far more ambitious. In May 2022, Hamas leaders Saleh al Arouri and Khalil al Hayya met Nasrallah in Beirut together with senior Revolutionary Guard commander Mohammad Reza Izadi. Hamas argued that regional conditions favored a broad confrontation with Israel. The movement pointed to increasing terrorist activity in Judea and Samaria, political instability inside Israel, international attention focused on the wars involving Russia and Ukraine, and the growing normalization between Israel and Arab states, which Hamas said needed to be disrupted.

Nasrallah did not immediately embrace the proposal. According to the documents, he responded by questioning Hamas’s strategic objectives rather than rejecting the idea outright. “The idea is good, logical and worthy of discussion,” Nasrallah reportedly said. “But there is no escaping defining the goals we want, since the goals will determine the scope of the required action.” He then challenged Hamas to explain exactly what victory would look like. “Are we expecting this confrontation to bring about the complete flight of the occupation?” he asked. “Are we interested in preventing the Jews from entering Al Aqsa Mosque? That is a modest goal that does not require war.” Hamas acknowledged that it had not yet fully defined its objectives and relayed Nasrallah’s reservations back to Yahya Sinwar in Gaza. Sinwar responded with a detailed strategic proposal describing several possible scenarios for a future conflict. His preferred option was called “The Second Promise Campaign,” a large surprise attack launched simultaneously from multiple fronts with the stated objective of bringing about Israel’s destruction. According to the document, Sinwar wrote that the operation should take place during one of the Jewish holidays and that “Passover is undoubtedly the most suitable.” The correspondence indicates that October 7 was not Hamas’s original preferred date for launching the attack.

Sinwar’s proposal envisioned coordinated attacks from Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. Several of the scenarios relied heavily on infiltrations across the Jordanian border, alongside attacks from Hezbollah in Lebanon and Palestinian factions operating from Syria. Nasrallah reportedly described the proposal as “a realistic scenario that can be realized” and said he would raise the matter with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The documents indicate Hamas did not expect Iran itself to fight directly but instead envisioned Hezbollah and other Iranian backed organizations opening additional fronts while the Islamic regime remained in the background.

By mid 2023, Sinwar believed those efforts had succeeded. During a June meeting with Hamas’s political bureau in Gaza, he told senior officials that Hezbollah and the Islamic regime had moved beyond the caution that followed the 2006 Lebanon war. “The Iranians and Hezbollah have a high readiness to form an alliance with Hamas to fight the enemy in a future campaign,” Sinwar said, adding that Hamas could see the change through ongoing discussions with both organizations.

His confidence only grew. Speaking before Hamas’s Shura Council in August 2023, less than 2 months before the attack, Sinwar declared, “We are certain that if the great strategic battle breaks out, many fronts will open against this enemy.” Not everyone inside Hamas shared that assessment. Internal military intelligence documents from the same period warned that Hezbollah still faced what was described as a “psychological barrier” and continued to show hesitation about entering a full scale war with Israel.

Those doubts proved well founded. At 6:29 a.m. on October 7, immediately after launching the attack, Sinwar sent an urgent message to Nasrallah apologizing for not informing him in advance. He appealed for immediate intervention, writing, “We request support and assistance. You must hurry and take part in a concentrated bombardment using rockets and the launch of a major ground offensive.” That ground offensive never came.

Hezbollah eventually opened a northern front with rocket, missile and drone attacks, but it did not deploy its Radwan Force across the border into the Galilee as Hamas had hoped. The newly released correspondence suggests that years of planning, intelligence cooperation and strategic discussions stopped short at the final moment. Hamas believed it had secured Hezbollah’s participation in a multi front war. On October 7, that assumption proved wrong. According to the documents, the absence of the planned northern invasion fundamentally altered the scale of the conflict and prevented what could have become an even larger simultaneous assault on northern Israel.