Hamas Wanted to Torpedo Israel-Saudi Deal With Oct. 7 Attacks, Documents Reveal

Militant leader Yahya Sinwar feared progress on peace would doom the Palestinian cause

- Marcus Walker & Summer Said

Top leaders of Palestinian Islamist group Hamas launched their Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel aiming to torpedo peace negotiations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, according to minutes of a high-level meeting in Gaza that Israel's military said it discovered in a tunnel beneath the enclave.

Days before the assault that left nearly 1,200 dead, Yahya Sinwar, Hamas's Gaza chief, told fellow militants that an "extraordinary act" was required to derail the normalization talks that he said risked marginalizing the Palestinian cause, the document, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, said.

The plan worked—at a terrible price. Iran-backed Hamas's onslaught of killing and kidnapping sparked an Israeli military campaign to destroy the militants that has killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities, and left the territory in ruins. That has fueled anger across the Arab world and beyond, halting progress toward normalization, at least for now.

President Trump, visiting Riyadh on Tuesday, acknowledged as much, calling on Saudi Arabia to establish relations with Israel but saying, "You'll do it in your own time."

The meeting minutes—from an Oct. 2, 2023, gathering of Hamas's political bureau in Gaza—cite Sinwar as saying, "There is no doubt that the Saudi-Zionist normalization agreement is progressing significantly." He warned a deal would "open the door for the majority of Arab and Islamic countries to follow the same path."

For Sinwar and Hamas, who have called for total destruction of Israel and the creation of a Palestinian state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, this was unacceptable. Sinwar said it was time to unleash an attack that had been in the planning stages for two years.