Hamas’s October 7 massacre was aimed at torpedoing the normalization efforts between Israel and Saudi Arabia, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing Hamas meeting transcripts found by the IDF.

The WSJ reported that then-Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar, was concerned that US-brokered normalization efforts between Saudi Arabia and Israel would take attention away from advancing the notion of a Palestinian statehood.

According to the documents, Sinwar said that there was “no doubt that the Saudi-Zionist normalization agreement is progressing significantly,” and that such an agreement would “open the door for the majority of Arab and Islamic countries to follow the same path.”

In the months leading up to Hamas’s 2023 attack on southern Israel, the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia had all suggested that differences were narrowing between Riyadh and Jerusalem.

Sinwar reportedly planned the attack “to bring about a major move or a strategic shift in... the region concerning the Palestinian cause,” the documents cited by the WSJ demonstrate.

DEMONSTRATORS HOLD posters of (from left) former Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh alongside former Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah and of Nasrallah next to former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, at a protest in Tunis. Israel is now regionally stronger, but internal divisions are deeper, the writer argues. (credit: Jihed Abidellaoui/Reuters)
DEMONSTRATORS HOLD posters of (from left) former Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh alongside former Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah and of Nasrallah next to former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, at a protest in Tunis. Israel is now regionally stronger, but internal divisions are deeper, the writer argues. (credit: Jihed Abidellaoui/Reuters)

The WSJ reports that October 7 in the works for months 

The WSJ said that Hamas’s invasion plan had been in the works for months.

It added that Sinwar planned to get aid from other Iranian-backed forces. The WSJ had previously reported that Iran approved the attack at a October 2 meeting with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and Hezbollah and Hamas officials.

Some senior Hamas and Hezbollah members disputed this report, saying that the details of the massacre were kept under wraps by the terrorist groups alone.

The WSJ noted that it had sent the Hamas documents to Arab intelligence officials, who said that the documents were credible and appeared to be genuine.

The IRGC and Hamas and Hezbollah officials have reportedly been planning an attack on Israel since 2021. Iran gave Hamas financial backing and combat training in the weeks leading up to the massacre, the report said, citing intelligence documents from several countries.

However, both Hezbollah and Iran told Hamas that they did not want the attack to lead to an all-out war with Israel.

Since the attack, Israel has killed several senior Hamas and Hezbollah officials responsible for the attack and the subsequent multifront war on Israel, including Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh, Marwan Issa [who was present at the October 2 meeting], and Hassan Nasrallah.

The IDF targeted Yahya Sinwar’s brother, Mohammed, in an assassination attempt on Tuesday. Though Arab media reported that his body was found in a tunnel in Gaza, the military has not confirmed that he was killed.

Further, among the documents seized by the IDF in Gaza was a 2023 Hamas report that recommended escalating violence in the West Bank to further complicate normalization efforts, the WSJ reported.

“It has become the duty of the movement to reposition itself to... preserve the survival of the Palestinian cause in the face of the broad wave of normalization by Arab countries, which aims primarily to liquidate the Palestinian cause,” reads a 2022 internal Hamas briefing marked “secret.”

After over 500 days of war, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said that he would not sign a normalization agreement with Israel unless the war in Gaza ends and an agreed-upon diplomatic process for Palestinian statehood begins.