Hamas spent 7 years gathering intel, footage to prepare for October 7th massacre

The terror group used surveillance camera footage of kibbutzim and sensitive documents to collect information before the attacks.

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

A Channel 12 report reveals that Hamas was monitoring Israeli border communities and collecting intel for seven years before the massacre on October 7th, 2023.

The terror group used surveillance camera footage of kibbutzim and sensitive documents to collect information before the attacks.

In a document from November 2020, Hamas collected IP addresses and serial numbers for all security cameras within the Sha’ar Hanegev Regional Council and Ashkelon beach areas, including Kibbutz Kfar Azza.

Another document included a list of security guards in the kibbutzim, including their personal information and phone numbers.

Also discovered was a six-page document detailing attack plans for each community.

Documents dating back to 2016 show information about areas that were hit particularly hard on October 7th, including the health clinic and kindergarten in Kibbutz Be’eri and the police stations in Ofakim and Sderot.

“We are seeing exact and detailed intelligence from what is essentially an army — the Hamas military wing in the Gaza Strip — which is gathering information on targets for attack and preparing intelligence files on those targets,” Shalom Ben Hanan, a former senior Shin Bet official, told Channel 12.

“The level of resolution, the precise details, and the extensive deployment of numerous intelligence assets make this so surprising,” he added.

Hamas was also tracking local leaders and security officials in southern Israel before the attack, some of whom were killed during the invasion.

Since 2014, Hamas leaders trained terrorist troops without providing any information on what kind of mission they were training for, according to Arab sources.

The London-based Arabic-language newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat cited sources close to Hamas’s military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigade, as saying that the purpose of the training was known only to 70 members of its elite Nukhba unit.

However, the precise date of October 7th was kept a secret from everyone but the three terror masterminds behind the massacre–Yahya Sinwar, his brother Mohammed as well as Mohammed Deif and two other Hamas senior officials.

The five “partners in secrecy” decided that Saturday morning was the best time for the attack after reports from surveillance showed “absolute quiet on the border.”