By: Fern Sidman- Jewish Voice News

A sobering new intelligence assessment — first publicized in The Daily Mirror and echoed across analyses circulating within Britain’s security establishment — suggests that Hamas has firmly expanded its operational footprint far beyond the confines of Gaza, embedding operatives, weapons caches, and logistical networks across Europe. According to multiple counterterrorism officials cited by The Algemeiner in a report on Tuesday, the United Kingdom now faces an elevated and evolving threat emanating from a terrorist organization historically perceived as regionally confined.

The revelations mark a dramatic shift in the West’s understanding of Hamas’s long-term strategy. While the organization has traditionally directed its military and political activity toward Israel and the Palestinian territories, the newly surfaced documents indicate that the group has been quietly cultivating the capacity for foreign operations for years — an effort now accelerating as Hamas’s command structure absorbs the shock of catastrophic losses in Gaza.

The internal intelligence report, as summarized by The Algemeiner, traces a direct line between the October 7, 2023 massacre in southern Israel and Hamas’s heightened appetite for international operations. The unprecedented brutality of the attack — which left 1,200 people dead and over 250 kidnapped — precipitated what the report calls a “fundamental alteration” in both Israel’s threat perceptions and Hamas’s long-term calculations.

The report asserts: “Following catastrophic damage to its infrastructure in Gaza and significant leadership attrition, the group’s remaining command nodes — particularly those in Lebanon — began activating contingency plans long under development.”

These “contingency plans,” according to intelligence officials who spoke with The Algemeiner, involve a deliberate pivot outward: foreign attacks designed to demonstrate resilience, deter further Israeli military pressure, and maintain Hamas’s relevance within the broader constellation of Iranian-backed terrorist movements.

This shift is especially pronounced within Hamas’s external headquarters in Lebanon, where operatives have reportedly been coordinating with Hezbollah, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and sympathetic criminal networks across Eastern Europe.

The intelligence report makes clear that Hamas’s activities in Europe are not haphazard. Instead, they reflect a structured and geographically dispersed network of operatives, some embedded for years within legitimate charities, nongovernmental organizations, and diaspora associations.

According to findings highlighted in The Algemeiner report, Hamas has stockpiled weapons, including AK-47 assault rifles, ammunition, explosives, and tactical equipment, in covert depots across the continent. They have also partnered with Eastern European criminal gangs, using their smuggling routes to acquire weapons and components for drone warfare and leveraged charitable and civil society fronts, primarily in Western Europe, to move personnel, conceal finances, and evade scrutiny. Hamas has also built clandestine safe houses and “logistical nodes” in countries such as Germany, Denmark, Poland, and Bulgaria.

Israeli diplomatic missions, Jewish cultural centers, and businesses with Israeli ownership or clientele remain top targets for these clandestine networks, according to the assessment.

A senior European counterterrorism official told The Algemeiner that Hamas has been “investing in infrastructure far more sophisticated than what the public understands,” adding that these efforts are designed to “ensure operational continuity even in the event of leadership decapitation.”

In the United Kingdom, where Jewish communities have already experienced a historic surge in antisemitic incidents since October 2023, the implications of the report are especially alarming. MI5 and the Joint Terrorism Analysis Center (JTAC) currently assess the UK terror threat level as “substantial,” meaning an attack is likely.

British intelligence agencies have long monitored Hamas’s fundraising arms and propaganda networks, but the new report — cited by The Algemeiner — indicates the threat has metastasized. Authorities now believe that arms caches may already be in place within the UK or in neighboring countries accessible to UK-based operatives. Hamas cells could be activated to carry out retaliatory attacks should the organization face deeper strategic setbacks in Gaza or Lebanon. The group may attempt to coordinate with UK-based extremist factions who share anti-Israel or Islamist ideological currents.

A retired MI5 counterterrorism chief, speaking anonymously to The Algemeiner, characterized Hamas’s European expansion as “potentially the most significant reorientation of the group’s external posture since the early 2000s,” adding that the UK “cannot afford to assume that Hamas’s operational ambitions stop at Israel’s borders.”

Though much of Hamas’s European architecture lies hidden beneath layers of criminal intermediaries and charitable front groups, several foiled plots offer a glimpse into the scale of the network.

One of the most troubling cases occurred in Germany in late 2023, when authorities arrested four Hamas members accused of planning coordinated attacks and attempting to retrieve weapons stored across various European countries. As The Algemeiner reported, these individuals were allegedly acting under orders from the Qassam Brigades leadership in Lebanon.

Investigators uncovered evidence that one of the defendants had traveled to Lebanon to receive direct instructions to establish an arms depot in Bulgaria — part of a larger plan to build a continent-wide arsenal capable of supporting targeted attacks on high-value Israeli or Jewish targets.

Digital evidence recovered from the suspects’ USB devices revealed reconnaissance documents referencing the Israeli embassy in Berlin, as well as Jewish communal institutions in other European capitals.

Similar Hamas-linked weapons caches, according to The Algemeiner report, have been discovered or monitored in Denmark, Poland, and other Eastern European states, all positioned to support future cross-border attacks.

The report emphasizes that Hamas’s increased global reach is not driven solely by internal desperation or ideological fervor. It is also powered by state-level support, particularly from Iran, Qatar, and Turkey — each of which has provided financial, logistical, or political cover for Hamas’s leadership abroad.

Iran, long Hamas’s chief military patron, has accelerated its support for Hamas drone capabilities, enabling the group to experiment with new technologies in both Gaza and Lebanon. The Algemeiner report noted that Tehran’s influence is visible in the group’s shift toward drone warfare — a “tactical evolution made possible through a supply chain stretching deep into Europe’s black markets.”

Qatar and Turkey, meanwhile, continue to host elements of Hamas’s political leadership, shielding the group’s senior figures from international pressure.

European intelligence services now fear that Hamas’s relationships with these states — as well as with sympathetic diaspora networks — could enable the group to replenish its capabilities even after major battlefield losses.

The intelligence report concludes with a stark warning: “Over the next six months, there is a high likelihood of continued attempts at external operations, particularly in Europe, as Hamas seeks to demonstrate resilience.”

In other words, as the war in Gaza continues and Israel targets Hamas’s senior commanders across multiple countries, Hamas may turn to international terrorism as both a propaganda tool and a survival mechanism.

Several European governments, including the UK, now fear that Hamas may attempt to emulate aspects of Hezbollah’s past strategy: embedding long-term sleeper cells capable of activating years after being planted.

Jewish organizations throughout Europe — including synagogues, schools, community centers, and charity offices — have strengthened their security protocols following the report. In the UK, the Community Security Trust (CST) has maintained round-the-clock surveillance and coordinated closely with the Police Counter Terrorism Command.

Analysts interviewed by The Algemeiner warn that Jewish communities are “almost certainly” among the primary targets if Hamas were to attempt a symbolic attack on European soil.

The intelligence report paints a troubling portrait of a group in transition — one that has lost much of its territorial infrastructure in Gaza but not its will to wage war against Israel and Jewish targets globally.

For the UK, the challenge will be twofold: dismantling clandestine Hamas networks that may have operated quietly for years, and preventing new operatives from exploiting gaps in Europe’s security architecture.

As one senior British intelligence official told The Algemeiner, “Hamas is no longer a regional threat contained by geography. It is a networked threat. And networked threats don’t stay in one place.”