Hamas’s Long-Term War Plan: Classified Documents Reveal Years of Iran-Backed Strategy to Destroy Israel

By:  Fern Sidman

In a chilling exposé grounded in intelligence recovered from Gaza, The Times of Israel reported two weeks ago on classified documents that detail Hamas’s long-term, methodically crafted plan to annihilate the State of Israel. These internal records, published by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, reveal not only the depth of Hamas’s operational sophistication but also the breadth of its alliances—with Hezbollah and, critically, with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The documents outline how, for years, Hamas worked in tandem with Iran and Hezbollah to prepare for the unprecedented, multifront invasion of Israel carried out on October 7, 2023. This coordinated assault by land, sea, and air took Israeli intelligence and security services by surprise, despite the visible military buildup and increasing aggression from the Gaza Strip in preceding years.

According to the information provided in The Times of Israel report, the attack was not an isolated or impulsive act of terror—it was the culmination of a sweeping strategy driven by Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s late top leader in Gaza, and heavily bankrolled by Iran. The plan’s objectives were nothing less than the systemic collapse of the Jewish state. Sinwar is reported to have believed that a concentrated military onslaught from multiple fronts could bring Israel to its knees.

In the years before 2019, Hamas’s approach was largely defensive, according to an internal document titled “The Movement’s Strategy 2013–2017.” The document emphasized strengthening infrastructure and developing resilience in Gaza in anticipation of future Israeli military responses. It framed military actions as reactive and primarily focused on Gaza’s internal defense.

However, as The Times of Israel reported, the group’s posture began to shift significantly by 2019. Hamas leaders, emboldened by their strengthening ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force and Hezbollah, adopted a more explicitly offensive stance. A critical document attributed to Sinwar’s office speaks of a “joint defense agreement” with Iran and Hezbollah—language that in practice meant coordinated offensive planning against Israel from multiple theaters of operation.

By 2021, Hamas’s strategic outlook had fully transformed. Operation Guardian of the Walls served as a turning point. During that conflict, Hamas tested some of its emerging ideas about how a broader war might unfold, according to former IDF Intelligence Research Division chief Itai Brun, who was quoted by The Times of Israel. This moment served as both a trial run and a galvanizing force for Hamas’s full-throttle preparation for a war of destruction.

The documents analyzed by the Meir Amit Center and reported on by The Times of Israel leave no doubt about Iran’s pivotal role. Tehran emerged as the primary financier of Hamas’s military development, enabling not only the expansion of rocket capabilities but also the training of elite Hamas operatives in Iran and Lebanon.

Hamas’s operational plans increasingly mirrored Iranian military doctrine—emphasizing asymmetric warfare, deep psychological impact, and disruption of Israel’s civilian and security infrastructure. This triadic alliance—Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran—crafted a sophisticated vision of regional war that included scenarios ranging from mass infiltration and hostage-taking to cyberattacks and global public relations warfare.

The Times of Israel reported that the classified documents reveal Hamas’s consideration of three potential avenues of large-scale attack, each designed to destabilize Israel through simultaneous pressure points. These included a southern front blitz originating in Gaza, designed to break through border defenses and overrun nearby communities, northern aggression from Hezbollah forces in Lebanon, timed to coincide with the Gaza invasion and internal uprisings sparked through targeted provocations in the Judea and Samaria region of Israel and among Israeli Arabs, aimed at sowing chaos domestically.

Each component of the strategy sought to overwhelm Israel’s ability to respond, creating a scenario in which national collapse might seem imminent.

Beyond military considerations, the internal Hamas documentation—again, as reported by The Times of Israel—revealed an ideological commitment to jihad and the destruction of Israel that permeates every strategic decision. Even in the earlier 2013–2017 strategy, the group advocated “implementing popular resistance in Palestine,” launching an intifada in the so-called West Bank, and “pursuing Jews and military personnel in international forums.”

By 2021, however, this rhetoric had hardened into a full-throated declaration of total war, with “liberating al-Quds [Jerusalem]” framed as the inevitable culmination of military victory.

Perhaps most troubling in The Times of Israel’s report is the evident disconnect between Hamas’s growing operational capability and Israeli intelligence assessments. Despite mounting evidence of Hamas’s escalating preparation and expanding alliances, Israel’s security apparatus did not foresee the magnitude or speed of the October 7 assault.

This intelligence failure has already sparked internal reviews and widespread public criticism, but the documents show that Hamas’s commitment to long-term war planning went undetected—or was underestimated—for far too long.

As The Times of Israel reported, this failure left Israeli forces dangerously unprepared, even as the enemy executed one of the most complex and lethal attacks in its history.

Visual evidence circulated by Hamas on platforms such as Telegram, including footage of the attack on the IDF’s Nahal Oz base, confirmed the execution of a long-planned military doctrine, vastly different from the reactive posture Hamas had historically maintained.

According to the information contained in The Times of Israel report, Hamas’s strategic thinking between 2013 and 2017 was primarily defensive. A key internal document, titled “The Movement’s Strategy 2013–2017”, emphasized fortifying Gaza’s infrastructure to withstand Israeli military responses. The document also alluded to broader political and ideological goals, including initiating an intifada in the so-called West Bank and “mobilizing… forces… to carry out jihad.” It even advocated pursuing Israeli and Jewish military personnel in international legal arenas, demonstrating a multi-pronged approach to resistance.

However, this phase of strategic caution began to erode in 2019. Internal discourse within Hamas, as revealed by additional classified documents cited by The Times of Israel, shifted dramatically toward a bolder, more aggressive vision. That year, Hamas’s leadership initiated formal coordination with Iran’s Quds Force and Hezbollah under what they described as a “joint defense agreement”—language that cloaked a far more ambitious offensive alliance.

The 2021 conflict between Israel and Hamas, known as Operation Guardian of the Walls, marked a pivotal transformation in Hamas’s operational philosophy. According to Itai Brun, this operation revealed Hamas’s growing confidence in its military capabilities and its intent to move from resistance to regional warfare. While Israel sought to neutralize Hamas’s infrastructure in Gaza, the conflict provided Hamas with a field test for larger ambitions.

It was in the wake of this confrontation that Hamas’s senior figures—Yahya Sinwar, military commander Mohammed Deif, and his deputy Marwan Issa—made their intentions unmistakably clear. As The Times of Israel reported, just a month after the operation, the trio penned a letter to Esmail Qaani, commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), formally requesting $500 million over two years to fund a war of eradication against Israel. “We are confident,” they wrote, “that by the end of these two years or during them, if Allah wills, we will uproot [Israel], and together we will change the face of the region.”

This was not hyperbole. By 2022, Hamas had fully committed to the plan. Sinwar, now the group’s central strategist, shared detailed blueprints for a multifront war in a private letter to political leader Ismail Haniyeh. The communication outlined three distinct scenarios through which Hamas could initiate total war against Israel.

Though specific operational details of the three scenarios have not been publicly released, The Times of Israel report confirmed that they all pointed toward the same ultimate objective: Israel’s collapse under the pressure of synchronized, multi-directional attacks.

These tactics were designed not only to stretch Israel’s military response thin but to induce systemic breakdown—socially, politically, and militarily.

While Sinwar masterminded much of Hamas’s shift to aggressive war planning, he, like several of his top lieutenants, would not live to see the full aftermath. As confirmed by The Times of Israel, Sinwar was killed in Rafah in October 2023 by an Israeli tank shell. His military partners, Deif and Issa, were also eliminated in IDF airstrikes in Gaza in the same year. Political leader Ismail Haniyeh was reportedly assassinated in Tehran in July 2023.

Despite their deaths, the legacy of their plans remains central to understanding both the October 7 attacks and Hamas’s current ideological posture. The documents unearthed in Gaza, as reported by The Times of Israel, show that this was not merely a spontaneous uprising—it was the result of years of international coordination, foreign funding, and radicalized ambition.

As reported by The Times of Israel, Hamas envisioned and evaluated three distinct operational scenarios—each grounded in regional coordination and designed to overwhelm Israel through simultaneous attacks on multiple fronts.

These strategic plans were not aspirational rhetoric, but the result of high-level consultations between Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran’s proxy network of “Axis of Resistance” actors, including forces in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. The documents confirm that the preferred scenario—the most ambitious and devastating—was ultimately approved by Hamas’s primary backers, including Hezbollah and Iran.

Referred to internally as the “preferred scenario,” this option called for an all-out military offensive involving the full power of the Axis of Resistance—excluding Iran’s direct participation but relying heavily on its regional proxies.

As described in The Times of Israel report, the plan envisioned a sudden, synchronized assault “from all fronts,” with strategic timing to coincide with one of the major Jewish holidays. Specifically, Passover was identified as the optimal moment for launching the attack, exploiting national focus on family gatherings and religious observance to maximize psychological and tactical impact.

The scenario projected the involvement of Hezbollah’s full military capacity deployed from Lebanon, supportive action from Yemen, Iraq, and Syria, providing what the documents call “reasonable participation” and guerrilla operations launched from territories beyond Jordan’s eastern border, creating a new and unpredictable pressure point for Israel’s eastern flank.

This was not merely a conceptual military exercise—it was backed by real planning and logistical considerations. According to The Times of Israel report, the documents even entertained the establishment of a permanent Hamas combat unit in Lebanon, comprising at least 250 fighters. This unit would be embedded within Hezbollah’s operational network, allowing for coordinated raids into Israeli territory.

The second option, described in the documents as an “intermediate scenario,” retained a high level of intensity but limited the scale of Hezbollah’s involvement. Under this plan, Hamas would take the lead in conducting a major offensive, while Hezbollah would commit only “a quarter or a third” of its forces.

The logic behind this scaled involvement was twofold: preserving Hezbollah’s strategic reserves for a later phase of conflict and retaining a credible deterrent posture in the event of full-scale Israeli retaliation. Simultaneously, this scenario assumed that other Axis actors—particularly those in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen—would initiate complementary attacks to create the appearance of a wider front.

The Times of Israel report noted that this scenario still envisaged a broad-based confrontation but kept escalation below the threshold of all-out regional war.

In this most conservative option, the operational burden fell almost entirely on Hamas. Hezbollah’s role would be indirect, mainly limited to enabling Hamas fighters to operate more efficiently from Lebanese territory. This minimalist scenario was considered viable only under constrained circumstances, where broader Axis participation could not be guaranteed.

Nevertheless, the plan remained aggressive. It anticipated launching guerrilla-style attacks across northern borders, supported by strategic disruptions intended to trigger panic and destabilize the Israeli defense posture.

Perhaps the most consequential revelation reported by The Times of Israel involves Iran’s and Hezbollah’s endorsement of the first—and most extreme—scenario. In a 2022 letter, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar detailed the three attack models and made a case for adopting the full-scale, coordinated confrontation.

In response, Ismail Haniyeh—the group’s then-political chief—confirmed that the preferred scenario had gained consensus among allies. “[The first scenario] was approved in the discussion we held with our allies,” Haniyeh wrote, noting that final preparations awaited follow-up meetings with Iranian officials. He affirmed Hamas’s commitment to initiating the necessary steps for a multifront war.

This approval marked a strategic turning point. The coordination between Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran’s network of proxies was no longer theoretical—it was actionable.

By April 2023, mere months before the October 7 onslaught, the language within Hamas’s leadership had become markedly more aggressive. As The Times of Israel reported, Sinwar privately told Hamas’ political bureau member Muhammad Nasser that Israel’s response during Operation Guardian of the Walls in 2021 had been “a walk in the park” compared to what was being planned.

“The next attack,” Sinwar declared, “will be so powerful that it will shatter the enemy into fragments.”

That comment now reads as a chilling prophecy. The October 7 massacre—unprecedented in scale,

In September 2021, two years before the October 7 attacks, Hamas and other Palestinian terror factions convened in Gaza under a chilling banner: “Promise of the Hereafter – Post-Liberation Palestine.” As The Times of Israel reported, the conference laid out, in stark detail, a roadmap for what Hamas envisions once Israel is defeated—control over the entire territory “from the river to the sea.”

The language of the closing statement was unambiguous. It called not only for the establishment of a new Palestinian state over the entirety of what is currently Israel but also discussed how to manage Jewish populations after conquest. The information provided in The Times of Israel report indicated that the provisions included the “weeding out of informants” and the “purging of Palestine and the Arab and Islamic homeland of the hypocrite scum that spread corruption in the land.” The genocidal overtones of this declaration did not escape regional observers, and Israeli intelligence did not treat these pronouncements with the gravity they merited.

In May 2023, only five months before Hamas’s unprecedented assault, Hezbollah’s then-leader Hassan Nasrallah delivered a speech to mark the anniversary of the Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon. His message echoed the same vision laid out by Hamas: the total “liberation of Palestine from the sea to the river” and prayer in Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque as a symbol of victory.

He declared Israel’s home front to be “weak, fragile, anxious, always ready to pack up and leave.” While many in the Israeli security establishment historically interpreted such rhetoric as psychological warfare, The Times of Israel report suggested that it was a miscalculation not to take Nasrallah’s words at face value. Nasrallah himself was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Hezbollah’s Beirut headquarters in September 2023, months after the war began.

The convergence of internal planning documents and public declarations has led to sobering reflections within Israel’s intelligence community. As The Times of Israel reported, the Meir Amit Center’s analysis acknowledged that Israeli defense institutions may have underestimated Hamas’s intentions, dismissing them as exaggerated ideological statements rather than credible military planning.

This warning from the Meir Amit Center coincided with the end of a fragile two-month ceasefire in Gaza.  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered a new wave of airstrikes, citing Hamas’s failure to uphold agreements on the release of Israeli hostages. Fighting resumed across the Strip, highlighting the enduring volatility of the conflict.

According to The Times of Israel report, Israeli security sources are now increasingly concerned that Hamas may be regrouping. National Unity Party MK Gadi Eisenkot, a member of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, revealed that intelligence assessments show Hamas still commands over 25,000 armed operatives, while Palestinian Islamic Jihad maintains an additional 5,000 fighters. These figures raise urgent questions about the group’s ability to once again prepare for major offensives.

The war that erupted on October 7 was not an aberration. As documented by The Times of Israel, it was the coordinated implementation of a vision that had been publicly stated, ideologically supported, and militarily planned for years. The promise to destroy Israel and “liberate” the land from “the river to the sea” has long been the cornerstone of Hamas’s worldview. The difference now is that their rhetoric has been matched by terrifying action.

If Hamas is allowed to rebuild its infrastructure, rearm its operatives, and retain regional alliances, the Meir Amit Center warned that another campaign of annihilation may be only a matter of time.