How Hamas Built a Deception Campaign Ahead of the October 7 Attack

Documents seized from Hamas during the war and disclosed by the Amit Terrorism and Intelligence Research Institute describe a sophisticated strategic deception campaign intended to mislead Israel and its security and intelligence services. According to the report, Hamas wanted Israel to believe the movement was deterred, uninterested in confrontation, and focused on governing and caring for Gaza’s population, a view that had already become common in internal Israeli security discussions.

The material says Hamas’s leadership, under Yahya Sinwar and military chief Muhammad Deif, treated Hamas’s May 2021 operation, “Guardian of the Walls,” as an unprecedented strategic success and began shaping a decisive campaign against Israel. By September 2022, Hamas military intelligence was calling for a multi-layered deception plan, political, military, economic, and media-based, to set the stage for a surprise attack that would produce far greater gains.

The deception reportedly included controlled escalation, with Hamas avoiding direct war with Israel while tolerating tactical incidents and preventing local events or sensitive parades from triggering wider fighting. Internal meetings showed leaders were pleased that Israel had been persuaded Hamas did not want confrontation. Hamas also used the Joint Operations Room to restrain Palestinian Islamic Jihad, so its actions would not derail what Sinwar called Hamas’s “big project,” and in May 2023 he said Hamas would not join PIJ-only fighting so as not to turn a tactical round into a strategic one.

The report says Hamas exploited Qatari cash transfers, portraying itself as absorbed in improving Gaza’s economy and living conditions while using the money to buy time for military preparations. It also shifted protests toward the border with Israel and focused public attention on the West Bank, Al-Aqsa Mosque, and Palestinian prisoners, while presenting Gaza as relatively calm. Hamas leaders, including Saleh al-Arouri, publicly described the West Bank as the main arena of resistance, even as Qatari funding was said to support 100,000 poor families and thousands of jobs in Gaza.

The final layer was overt military theater, including joint exercises rehearsing infiltrations into Israel, seizure of outposts and towns, and kidnappings of soldiers, all shown publicly as routine drills or reactions to hypothetical Israeli attacks. In the days before October 7, Hamas even held a large exercise near Nativ HaAsara and sent open messages to the Israeli government ahead of the holidays about a possible new arrangement in Gaza. The documents conclude that Hamas believed this strategy would leave Israel convinced it was deterred and incapable of launching an initiative, clearing the way for the attack.