A new Israeli study has revealed how Hamas allegedly conducted an elaborate campaign of strategic deception to create a false sense of security within Israel before the 7 October 2023 attack, including the use of double agents to feed misleading information to the Shin Bet internal security agency until the eve of the operation.
According to the study, prepared by reserve Lieutenant Colonel Yonatan Dahouh Halevi and published by the Jerusalem Centre for Security and Foreign Affairs, Israeli intelligence continued receiving information as late as the evening of 6 October indicating that conditions in Gaza remained normal.
These reassuring assessments reportedly helped Hamas conceal its operational plans while simultaneously mobilising its forces for the attack.
The study traces the development of the alleged deception strategy to early 2022, when Hamas sought to convince Israeli authorities that their combination of military threats and economic incentives was successfully containing the movement.
Israel’s approach, commonly described as a “carrot-and-stick” policy, combined threats to assassinate senior Hamas figures with economic concessions intended to ease conditions in the Gaza Strip.
According to the study, Hamas exploited Israeli confidence in this policy to conceal its military preparations.
Double Agents and Misleading Intelligence Reports
One of the study’s central findings concerns Hamas’s alleged use of double agents to influence Israeli intelligence assessments.
Citing testimony from a commander in Hamas’s military wing, the study claimed that the movement uncovered an Israeli espionage network in 2017 and subsequently recruited some of its members to operate as double agents under Hamas’s direction.
These individuals were allegedly used to transmit misleading information to Israeli intelligence while remaining ostensibly connected to Israeli intelligence operations.
An Israeli military investigation into the intelligence and operational failures preceding 7 October acknowledged that warning signs of Hamas preparations for an attack had been received on 6 October.
However, those warnings reportedly arrived alongside other indications suggesting that the situation remained under control.
The military investigation did not specify the nature of those reassuring signals.
A separate Shin Bet investigation found that human intelligence sources had reported that Hamas’s activities were proceeding normally.
The contrast between the warning signs and reassuring intelligence has become a central element of the examination of Israel’s failure to anticipate the attack.
Senior Hamas officials subsequently acknowledged that strategic deception had played a role in the movement’s preparations.
Khaled Meshaal Explains Hamas’s Deception Strategy
In an interview conducted in late 2023, senior Hamas official Khaled Meshaal acknowledged that the movement had employed both strategic and tactical deception before 7 October.
The strategy included conveying reassuring messages intended to reinforce the impression that Hamas was focused on Gaza’s internal affairs rather than preparing for a major military confrontation.
According to Meshaal, the prevailing perception was that Gaza’s leadership was primarily concerned with securing fuel, electricity and humanitarian assistance while attempting to recover from the consequences of the Israeli blockade.
He explained that Hamas’s decision not to respond militarily to Israeli escalations in occupied Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan in 2023 helped strengthen that impression.
Following the 2021 war, expectations had developed that Hamas would respond to Israeli actions in Jerusalem.
When the movement did not intervene during the 2023 escalation, questions emerged among the Palestinian public about the absence of a response from Gaza.
Meshaal suggested that these questions and Hamas’s apparent restraint contributed to Israel’s belief that the movement was preoccupied with conditions inside the territory.
The absence of a military response therefore served a purpose beyond avoiding an immediate confrontation, according to his account. It helped reinforce an assessment within Israel that Hamas was not preparing to initiate another major conflict.
Inspiration from Egypt’s Deception Strategy in the 1973 October War
Meshaal also drew a comparison between Hamas’s preparations and Egypt’s use of strategic deception before the October 1973 war.
During that conflict, Egyptian forces launched an offensive against Israeli positions on a Jewish religious holiday, following preparations intended to conceal their military intentions.
Meshaal recalled that Egypt had allowed military personnel to travel to Mecca for religious observances, among measures that helped create the impression in Israel that war was not imminent.
He explained that effective strategic deception should operate indirectly, preventing the adversary from recognising the true purpose of seemingly ordinary developments.
According to Meshaal, concealing military preparations was an essential part of Hamas’s approach, including making use of underground tunnels to hide aspects of its operational readiness.
The historical comparison presented Hamas’s strategy as an effort to influence Israeli assessments before the attack, rather than relying exclusively on concealing the final stages of military mobilisation.
How Israel’s May 2023 Operation Influenced Hamas’s Thinking
The study also cited comments by Issam Shawer, a political commentator close to Hamas, who suggested that the movement had experienced a comparable Israeli deception operation only months before 7 October.
Shawer referred to Israel’s Operation Shield and Arrow, launched against Palestinian Islamic Jihad in May 2023.
According to his account, Israeli authorities informed Hamas just one day before the operation that they would permit the transfer of a Qatari financial grant intended to cover public-sector salaries in Gaza.
Shawer interpreted the announcement as part of an Israeli effort to create a misleading impression of normality immediately before launching its military operation.
The study also referenced accounts from Palestinian journalists describing two separate elements of Hamas’s deception strategy.
The first allegedly led Israeli authorities to believe that the anticipated attack would be launched through underground tunnels.
In reality, the 7 October operation involved a ground assault that breached Israeli defensive positions.
The second element involved reinforcing Israel’s belief that its policy of military threats combined with economic concessions had successfully contained Hamas.
Together, these accounts suggest that the alleged deception extended to both the expected method of attack and Israel’s broader assessment of Hamas’s strategic intentions.
Were Prisoner Exchange Negotiations Used as a Deception Channel?
Another part of Halevi’s study examines the possibility that negotiations over a prisoner exchange were incorporated into Hamas’s strategic deception.
The study raised questions about the role of Sufian Abu Zaida, a former Palestinian minister for prisoner affairs who served as a communication channel between Hamas and Israeli officials.
Abu Zaida had been involved in efforts to negotiate an agreement for the release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Israelis held by Hamas before 7 October, including the remains of deceased Israelis.
According to the account presented in the study, Abu Zaida met Hamas official Ghazi Hamad in Gaza.
Hamad reportedly informed him that Yahya Sinwar had authorised efforts to pursue an agreement.
After returning to Israel, Abu Zaida contacted a retired Shin Bet officer, who arranged a meeting with agency officials in Ashkelon.
The contacts established a negotiating channel through which messages and proposals could be exchanged between the two sides.
Sinwar’s July 2022 Meeting and the Economic Incentives
In July 2022, Abu Zaida met Sinwar in Gaza, where the Hamas leader outlined his priorities for a potential prisoner exchange agreement.
Halevi argued that the meeting helped strengthen Israel’s interest in pursuing a deal.
According to the study, then-Shin Bet director Ronen Bar personally met Abu Zaida to hear Hamas’s conditions.
Abu Zaida said Bar asked him to convey a message to Sinwar indicating Israel’s willingness to proceed with extensive economic measures in the Gaza Strip.
The negotiations subsequently advanced to discussions about the identities of prisoners who could be released.
Both sides exchanged draft versions of a possible agreement.
The continued exchanges appeared to provide evidence that Hamas was seriously considering a negotiated arrangement involving prisoner releases and broader economic measures.
However, Halevi questioned whether these contacts may also have served another purpose by reinforcing Israeli expectations that Hamas was pursuing negotiations rather than preparing a major military operation.
The September Meeting That Pointed to 8 October
One of the most consequential details identified in the study concerns a meeting between Abu Zaida and Sinwar on 14 September 2023.
The meeting took place just two days after Hamas conducted its major annual military exercise.
According to the study, Sinwar dictated a message for Abu Zaida to deliver to Israeli officials.
The message indicated that Hamas would present documents by the end of September that would create an “earthquake” in the negotiations and that Israel should prepare to empty its prisons.
Abu Zaida was instructed to communicate the message verbatim to the Shin Bet officials with whom he maintained contact.
Another meeting with Sinwar was then scheduled for 8 October 2023.
Abu Zaida travelled to Israel and delivered the message before returning to Gaza on 5 October to prepare for the planned meeting.
Two days after his return, Hamas launched its attack on 7 October.
The scheduled meeting with Sinwar was therefore due to take place one day after the operation.
Halevi suggested that this arrangement may have been part of a broader effort to convince Israeli intelligence that Hamas was genuinely pursuing a prisoner exchange agreement.
Under this interpretation, the negotiations helped reinforce the appearance that the movement was seeking a political arrangement involving prisoner releases, economic concessions and infrastructure development in Gaza.
The decision to schedule the next meeting for 8 October may also have provided an additional layer of reassurance while Hamas continued its secret military preparations.
The study presented this possibility as an assessment rather than an established finding that Abu Zaida knowingly participated in the deception.
Did Sinwar Use the Secret Negotiations to Mislead Israel?
The Israeli newspaper Maariv also questioned whether the secret communication channel maintained by Abu Zaida between Hamas and Israel had formed part of Sinwar’s preparations for 7 October.
The suggestion raises the possibility that the negotiating process, irrespective of whether individual intermediaries understood Hamas’s intentions, helped shape Israeli assumptions about the movement’s priorities.
The study does not establish that Abu Zaida was aware of the planned attack or deliberately participated in deceiving Israeli intelligence.
Rather, Halevi’s analysis focuses on whether the existence and timing of the negotiations may have served Hamas’s broader objective of concealing its operational intentions.
This interpretation places the prisoner exchange discussions alongside the other alleged elements of the deception campaign, including reassuring intelligence reports, apparent military restraint and Israel’s confidence in its economic policy towards Gaza.
Hamas Monitored Israel’s Internal Political Crisis
Halevi’s study also examined the importance of Israel’s internal political divisions in Hamas’s calculations before 7 October.
According to the researcher, documents, statements and publications by Hamas officials indicate that the movement closely monitored Israel’s political crisis and announcements by Israeli military reservists that they would suspend their voluntary service.
Hamas reportedly regarded these developments as factors that could weaken the Israeli military’s operational capabilities and undermine the credibility of Israel’s deterrence.
The movement’s assessment of these internal divisions appears to have influenced its thinking about the timing of a potential confrontation.
According to Maariv, the military intelligence branch of Hamas’s armed wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, recommended in July 2023 that Sinwar postpone a military confrontation until Israel’s internal crisis had deepened further.
However, developments over the following months reportedly strengthened the Hamas leadership’s assessment that Israel was experiencing a period of vulnerability that could be exploited.
The study therefore presents the preparations for 7 October as involving more than concealed military planning.
According to its findings, Hamas combined strategic deception, intelligence manipulation, diplomatic contacts and close monitoring of Israeli domestic developments in an effort to influence how its adversary interpreted the situation in Gaza until the eve of the attack.
