Posted on 04/26/25
| News Source: JPost
Hamas’s leadership saw Operation Guardian of the Walls as a victory, newly uncovered internal correspondences have revealed by an N12 report on Saturday.
The correspondences revealed that Yahya Sinwar, then Hamas’s military chief, used the 2021 truce to lure Israel into complacency while planning the October 7 attacks.
The report describes the documents as revealing a “calculated strategy designed to exploit the internal weaknesses of Israeli society and bring about its collapse from within.”
Sinwar reportedly saw the temporary ceasefire as a strategic victory that was a win-win scenario for Hamas and a lose-lose scenario for Israel.
“It is likely that this move, which would be acceptable to most countries in the world, would not be acceptable to the occupation [Israel] and would therefore increase their isolation and disconnection from [the world]. If the occupation decides to go in this direction, it will tear it apart from within and lead to an internal rift and civil war,” Sinwar wrote to then Hamas’ political chief, Ismail Haniyeh.
At the time, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, then-defense minister Benny Gantz, and then-chief of staff Lt.-Gen (res.) Avi Kochavi all presented the operation as a strategic success and a crushing victory. It was exactly this sense of confidence and victory that gave Hamas the conviction to launch the October 7 attacks.
The documents also revealed that despite the IDF’s claims that its operations against the Gaza Tunnel System (metro) were hugely successful, Hamas claimed that the metro was largely undamaged by the operation.
“The ‘metro’ was not damaged at all, and only the network of attack tunnels was slightly damaged and will be repaired soon,” senior Hamas officials told former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and IRGC Commander Esmail Qaani.
The report highlights that these “vast conceptual gaps” between the Israeli assessment and the reality on the ground allowed Hamas to continue expanding its operations while Israel maintained a false sense of security.