Based on seized Hamas documents and an analysis of shifting regional politics, a new study argues that the October 7 attack was not a spontaneous act driven by anger or desperation. Instead, researchers say it was a carefully planned attempt to spark a wider regional war against Israel on multiple fronts. The study describes how Hamas used deception and coordinated with Iran-backed militant groups across the region to exploit Israel’s internal political divisions and what researchers describe as a major failure by Israeli intelligence to anticipate such a large-scale attack.

For years, Israeli intelligence viewed Hamas as a rational, "war-averse" actor primarily concerned with governing the Gaza Strip and securing economic concessions. But a new study published in Studies in Conflict & Terrorism reveals a far more predatory reality: Hamas had spent years meticulously preparing to "detonate" a regional infrastructure to bring about the total military collapse of the State of Israel.

The research, authored by Dr. Daniel Sobelman of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, draws on a trove of top-secret Hamas documents seized by Israeli forces during the ongoing war. The study paints a chilling portrait of a leadership that grew so emboldened by its perceived "deterrence" over Israel that it began viewing the country's destruction not as a distant religious dream, but as a "realistic objective" achievable within a near-term window.

“October 7 was not only a catastrophic intelligence failure,” said Dr. Sobelman. “It was the result of a long-term strategic shift in which Hamas came to believe that Israel’s collapse was no longer a fantasy, but an achievable military objective.”
The study identifies the years leading up to the 2023 attack as a period of profound strategic shift. Hamas moved from a defensive posture to an offensive one, increasingly tethering its fate to the "Axis of Resistance", a regional alliance led by Iran and anchored by Hezbollah.

Central to this was the concept of "the unity of the arenas". Hamas documents show the group believed it had successfully established "rules of the game" that constrained Israel's military response. By 2021, following the "Guardian of the Walls" conflict, Hamas leaders were privately describing the fighting as a "dress rehearsal" for the "full liberation of Palestine".

"We are not a defensive resistance but an offensive one," Khalil al-Hayyah, a member of Hamas’s Political Bureau, remarked following the 2021 clashes.

The documents reveal that Hamas’s October 7 offensive, codenamed Al-Aqsa Flood, was intended to be the "zero hour" for a multi-front regional conflagration. Internal letters show Yahya al-Sinwar, Hamas’s leader in Gaza, proposing scenarios where Hezbollah and other Axis partners would join a surprise strike with such force that Israel’s domestic front would "quickly collapse".

One of the study’s most striking findings is that Hamas leaders did not merely hope for symbolic victory. In internal communications, they discussed scenarios in which a surprise attack, combined with Hezbollah’s intervention and unrest in the West Bank, Jerusalem and inside Israel, could overwhelm Israel so quickly that its military and domestic front would “quickly collapse.”

Dr. Sobelman’s research highlights a critical miscalculation in Hamas’s gambit: while the group’s partners in Tehran and Beirut shared their ideology, they did not necessarily share their sense of urgency. Evidence suggests that while Iran and Hezbollah were "deeply surprised" by the timing and scale of the October 7 attack, Hamas had effectively hoped to "trap" its allies into an existential war by creating a fait accompli.

Hamas also kept a close eye on Israel’s internal politics. The study notes that the rise of Israel’s most nationalist government in late 2022 and the subsequent domestic crisis over judicial reform were viewed by Hamas as a "nuclear explosion" of opportunity.

Al-Sinwar reportedly told colleagues that the internal strife was melting "the glue that keeps together the pillars of the [Israeli] entity". He believed this vulnerability made Israel "weaker than a spider's web," a perception that likely accelerated the timeline for the invasion.

Ultimately, the study suggests that Israel’s greatest vulnerability was a "failure of imagination". By labeling Hamas merely as a "terrorist organization," Israeli officials failed to grasp its evolution into a highly organized "army" capable of a strategically motivated military invasion.

"Hamas did not act emotionally or thoughtlessly," senior leader Osama Hamdan stated after the attack. "It acted strategically and methodically".

The findings offer a sobering lesson for intelligence agencies worldwide: the perceived "rationality" of an adversary can often be a mask for a much more radical, long-term strategic design.