Hamas Hezbollah Operation
Evidence has emerged that Hamas’s October 7, 2023 onslaught was envisioned not as an isolated surprise, but as part of a broader multi-front war plan involving Hezbollah and possibly Iran. Documents and intelligence captured after the fact show that Hamas had actively sought to coordinate a simultaneous attack from both Gaza (in the south) and Lebanon (in the north).
According to minutes of Hamas meetings obtained by the Israel Defense Forces, Hamas originally intended to launch a major attack as early as Fall 2022 but delayed the operation to enlist support from Iran and Hezbollah. In July 2023, senior Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya met with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officials and explicitly requested that Hezbollah and Iran join the offensive by striking sensitive Israeli targets as the Gaza attack began. Iran and Hezbollah were supportive “in principle” of a two-front war but told Hamas they needed more time to “prepare the environment,” indicating such a coordinated assault would require lengthy preparations.
This coordination effort is further corroborated by captured Hamas documents. An Israeli investigation revealed a Hamas planning dossier code-named “Jericho Wall,” dating from 2022, which outlined almost exactly the kind of large-scale invasion that occurred on October 7. The document – about 40 pages long – “meticulously described the attack method, mirroring the actual events” of the October 7 massacre, including breaching the Gaza border with massed fighters, a barrage of rockets, drone strikes to disable communications, and raids on Israeli towns and bases.
Israeli intelligence had obtained this plan well in advance but reportedly dismissed it as too ambitious or hypothetical. The New York Times reported that Israeli officials possessed the “Jericho Wall” document more than a year before the attack. Despite its eerie accuracy, the plan was not acted upon – a lapse that would later fuel controversy over what Israel knew and when.
Notably, Hamas’s grand strategy anticipated drawing in allied forces on multiple fronts. Letters from Hamas to Tehran in 2021 (later seized by Israel) pressed Iran for funding and training to support a combined assault from “the north, south and east” – implying attacks from Lebanon (by Hezbollah in the north), Gaza (south), and possibly other fronts like the West Bank or Syria (east). In other words, Hamas envisioned a two-pronged or even three-pronged war, hoping that a simultaneous onslaught by Gaza-based militants and Hezbollah fighters would overwhelm Israel.
Yahya Sinwar – the Hamas leader who allegedly masterminded the October 7 attack – was reportedly committed to this expansive vision. Indeed, Hamas deliberately conserved its rockets and avoided major clashes for two years prior, lulling Israel into complacency as it prepared for a colossal strike.
Whether Hezbollah intended to launch its own full-scale invasion concurrently remains debated. Hamas did not give Hezbollah advance notice of the exact timing on October 7, according to a senior Hamas representative in Lebanon. As a result, Hezbollah was not overtly mobilized when Hamas struck. However, immediately after the Gaza attack, Hezbollah began what it called a “support front” – daily skirmishes and rocket fire along Israel’s northern border, calibrated to pressure Israel without triggering an all-out war. Israeli officials later claimed Hezbollah had been planning a massive incursion into northern Israel – code-named “Operation Conquer the Galilee” – akin to Hamas’s onslaught, but that this plan was thwarted or never executed.
The IDF’s chief spokesperson asserted that “Hezbollah planned to invade Israel, attack Israeli communities and massacre innocent men, women and children” in a coordinated attack from Lebanon. However, independent analysis casts doubt on this claim. Throughout October 2023, Hezbollah’s actions remained limited to contained cross-border exchanges, suggesting it was hesitant to cross the threshold into full war.
U.S. deterrence may have played a role – American forces were positioned in the region as a warning – and Hezbollah’s leadership may not have been ready to gamble on a major invasion. It’s possible that Hamas’s early strike on October 7 caught Hezbollah off-guard or found it unprepared to move in tandem. In sum, there is credible evidence of Hamas-Hezbollah coordination in principle, and even joint planning for a two-front assault, but the northern prong of the attack either fizzled by design or was derailed by the timing of Hamas’s sudden onslaught.
Yahya Sinwar ‘Manchurian Candidate’ Theory
The role of Yahya Sinwar – Hamas’s Gaza leader and the reputed architect of the October 7 massacre – has drawn intense scrutiny, not only for his operational leadership but also for his personal history. Sinwar spent 22 years in Israeli prisons (1989–2011), and some have speculated whether his incarceration and release were in some way manipulated to produce the extremist leader he became. Sinwar’s background indeed presents eerie ironies. In 2008, while serving multiple life sentences in an Israeli prison, Sinwar was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumor; Israeli prison authorities arranged a complex, life-saving neurosurgery for him at a top hospital.
The prisoner who would later orchestrate mass slaughter was literally saved by Israel – at Israeli taxpayer expense – from a potentially terminal illness. According to the former head of Israel’s Prison Service intelligence branch, “in one of the infuriatingly bitter ironies” of this conflict, Israeli doctors operated on Sinwar and saved his life, as Israel’s laws and ethics required even for its bitterest enemies. Sinwar reportedly broke down in tears after the surgery, asking if he would survive, and an Israeli officer reassured him he would live. Live he did – only to be freed a few years later as part of the 2011 Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange, eventually rising to lead Hamas in Gaza.
Sinwar’s release in that 2011 prisoner swap has itself become a point of controversy. At the time, Israeli negotiators did not consider him the most dangerous prisoner because his prior murders were mostly of Palestinians (suspected collaborators), not Israelis. One Israeli official involved recalled that “the Shin Bet knew that he was bad,” yet no victims’ families in Israel lodged formal objections to his release since he hadn’t killed Israelis.
In hindsight, this was a grave miscalculation: Sinwar, nicknamed “the Butcher of Khan Younis” for his brutality even against his own people, would go on to mastermind Hamas’s worst atrocities. Israeli intelligence was fully aware of Sinwar’s violent tendencies – his file was known to be “sadistic” – but freeing him was the price to retrieve a single Israeli captive. Some observers now ask whether elements within Israel’s security establishment knowingly took that risk, perhaps even expecting that a radical like Sinwar might one day provoke a confrontation that Israel could decisively exploit.
This conjecture feeds into the “Manchurian Candidate” theory – the provocative idea that Sinwar’s extremist trajectory was useful (if not actively engineered) from an Israeli strategic perspective.
While hard evidence of direct psychological manipulation is scant, Sinwar’s prison years unquestionably shaped him into a more formidable adversary. Fellow inmates and Israeli interrogators describe him as highly intelligent and utterly uncompromising, a man who “spent his 22 years in jail closely studying his enemy”. In prison, Sinwar learned fluent Hebrew and immersed himself in books on Israeli politics and society. An Israeli official noted that “Sinwar knows … all of our triggers and references” – he educated himself on Israeli history, the traumas of the Holocaust, and the psyche of the Jewish public. Such knowledge may have informed the grotesque tactics of October 7, which seemed calculated not just to kill but to terrorize Israelis at a deep psychological level. Indeed, Sinwar’s attack plan reveled in barbarity – mass murder, kidnappings, desecration – acts seemingly choreographed to traumatize Israeli society. Israeli analysts argue that this was intentional: “Sinwar wanted to take the Jews back 76 years… to make us feel weak again”, reawakening historical fears.
Given these facts, the conspiracy theory arises: Was Sinwar in some sense a “Frankenstein’s monster” partly of Israel’s making? His long imprisonment under Israeli control, life-saving treatment, and eventual release created the conditions for an ultra-radical leader to emerge. It is known that in the late 1980s Israel tacitly encouraged the rise of Islamists as a counterweight to the secular PLO; even Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once bluntly stated “anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas.” Critics note that Netanyahu’s government for years allowed Qatari funds to flow into Gaza (propping up Hamas’s rule) and treated Hamas as a convenient foil to the Palestinian Authority.
In that light, empowering someone like Sinwar could be seen as consistent with a cynical strategy of “divide and rule.” However, there is no concrete evidence that Sinwar was brainwashed or intentionally programmed by Israeli handlers. The “Manchurian Candidate” notion remains speculative. What can be said is that Sinwar was hardened by decades in prison and savvy in leveraging what he learned about Israel’s weaknesses. His rise to power was likely an unintended consequence of the Shalit deal – albeit one that Israeli hawks may have later found “useful” in justifying harsh measures. In summary, while Sinwar was not an Israeli agent in any literal sense, his case underscores how Israeli policies (from prisoner exchanges to tolerating Hamas) inadvertently cultivated the very threat used to rally Israel for war.
Missed Signals or Deliberate Blind Eye?
One of the most perplexing aspects of October 7 is how Israel’s famed intelligence apparatus failed to prevent such a brazen, complex attack. In retrospect, numerous warnings and indicators were either overlooked or misinterpreted in the lead-up to the Hamas onslaught. This has opened a fierce debate: was it sheer incompetence, or might elements in the Israeli government have allowed the attack to unfold (or a bit of both)?
Multiple strands of intelligence pointed to an impending escalation, yet they did not prompt effective action. Internally, Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate (Aman) and the Shin Bet (domestic security) had been growing concerned for months. In fact, Aman reportedly issued no fewer than four warnings to Prime Minister Netanyahu between March and July 2023 about rising danger on the Palestinian front.
In July, Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar took the extraordinary step of warning Netanyahu that “war is coming,” explicitly citing a possible coordinated move by Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas who perceived Israel as weak and divided domestically. This strategic warning was driven by intelligence assessments that the so-called “Axis of Resistance” (Iran and its proxies) might seize the opportunity of Israeli internal turmoil (such as the contentious judicial reform crisis) to strike.
Despite these alarms at the highest level, Netanyahu’s circle later insisted he was never given a concrete warning specifically about Gaza or the timing of an attack. The picture is one of warnings given, but perhaps not heeded – or at least not acted upon with urgency.
External intelligence partners also sounded alarms. Notably, Egyptian intelligence claims it warned Israel “something big” was brewing in Gaza in the days immediately before October 7. According to an Egyptian official (as reported by the Associated Press and BBC), Cairo sent repeated warnings that “an explosion of the situation is coming, and very soon, and it would be big,” but the Israelis “underestimated such warnings”.
In fact, a senior U.S. Congressional figure, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, confirmed that Egypt had warned Israel around October 4 of potential violence from Gaza. The Israeli government officially denied receiving specific warnings from Egypt, calling the reports “absolutely false”. However, this denial has not erased suspicion. The notion that both internal intelligence and a neighboring country’s intel all flagged imminent danger – yet Israel’s defenses remained lax – is difficult to fathom without at least considering the possibility of a willful failure.
In the weeks and months before the attack, ground-level observations also pointed to Hamas’s preparations, but these too were brushed aside. Israeli border surveillance units testified that they observed unusual and alarming Hamas activity throughout the summer of 2023, only to have their reports ignored by higher-ups. At one Gaza border outpost, observers noted Hamas militants conducting daily drone flights near the fence – sometimes several times a day – and even building a mock Israeli watchtower to practice attacking it. One soldier recounted that “a month and a half before the war, we saw [Hamas] had built an exact, scaled model of an observation post… They started training there with drones to hit the machine-gun turret”. Hamas fighters were also seen rehearsing assaults on replicas of Israeli armored vehicles and planting explosives along the border fence.
These vivid warning signs were reported up the chain. Shockingly, the young female analysts were told to stop being so alarmist. Their persistent warnings “did not fit into the narrative” held by senior commanders – namely, the received wisdom that Hamas was deterred and had no interest in a war. This institutional bias – the belief that Hamas wouldn’t dare launch a full-scale attack – led to blatant dismissal of real intelligence. Tragically, when Hamas did attack, those same lookout positions were among the first targets; at Nahal Oz, 20 of the female surveillance soldiers were killed or kidnapped on Oct. 7, a bitter testament to the cost of ignoring their warnings.
Additionally, hard intelligence was available that something big was coming, though it was never operationalized. Beyond the “Jericho Wall” blueprint discussed earlier, Israeli agencies had pieces of the puzzle that, in hindsight, form a damning trail. The Shin Bet has acknowledged that it obtained Hamas’s battle plans in advance – not once but twice: in 2018 and again in 2022.
These plans, presumably earlier iterations of Hamas’s invasion strategy, were not adequately translated into action. Moreover, in the days and hours immediately before the attack, electronic intercepts offered last-minute clues. Around 1:00 a.m. on October 7, Israeli intel noted Hamas was making “emergency preparations,” but analysts paradoxically also saw signs Hamas was avoiding escalation and thus downplayed the preparations. Even more telling, at 3:03 a.m. – just a few hours before the assault – Shin Bet detected that several Hamas brigades were activating their networks of secret communication SIM cards all at once, an activity they explicitly noted “could point to Hamas offensive activity.”
Yet agents dismissed this red flag because a similar SIM-card activation had occurred exactly one year prior without incident. By 4:30 a.m., with more worrying signs accumulating, the Shin Bet chief did deploy a small team southward, but it was too little, too late to prevent the onslaught.
All these unbelievable failures have spurred questions about whether Israeli authorities merely blundered, or if a more cynical calculus was at play. The official stance from Israel is that Oct 7 was a colossal intelligence failure, not a deliberate plot. Top leaders, including Netanyahu, have admitted to failures (while often deflecting blame to subordinates) and have promised inquiries after the war. Nonetheless, the suspicious timing and utility of the attack for certain political goals have led to “false flag” allegations from various corners. Some conspiracy theorists argue that Israeli hardliners knew an attack was coming and chose not to prevent it, expecting that the massacre, horrendous as it was, would provide Israel with an international mandate to destroy Hamas and perhaps reshape the region.
A commentary in the World Socialist Web Site, for example, bluntly accused Israeli officials of “knowing full well where and how Hamas would strike” and yet “ma[king] a deliberate decision to stand down in order to facilitate the attack,” with the goal of creating a pretext for a long-planned military campaign in Gaza.
It even suggests Israeli and possibly U.S. intelligence allowed the slaughter of Israeli civilians as part of a dark strategy. These claims are extremely grave and remain unproven. No direct evidence has surfaced that Israeli commanders were ordered to “let it happen.” In fact, the unprecedented death toll and the political earthquake unleashed in Israel (where Netanyahu faces public fury and calls to resign) make a deliberate stand-down hard to imagine as policy. Israeli officials have vehemently dismissed such theories as baseless smear campaigns, emphasizing that the surprise attack resulted from failure, not willful negligence.
That said, it is undeniable that Israeli policy over years did enable Hamas’s build-up, even if unintentionally. The Gaza division was under-resourced (many units were diverted to the West Bank), and leaders were fixated on other threats, leaving a critical blind spot. In the aftermath, one can see how the attack has benefited certain agendas: a unity government was formed; a massive military operation in Gaza commenced with broad public backing; and focus shifted away from Israel’s internal divisions. These outcomes feed the cynical narrative that October 7 was exploited by Israeli leadership – whether or not it was deliberately engineered – to reset the strategic landscape.
In summary, the record shows Israeli intelligence had ample warnings and even detailed plans of the coming Hamas attack, yet a mix of hubris, misjudgment, and perhaps an ulterior motive led to a catastrophic unpreparedness. The “false flag” question cannot be definitively answered with available evidence, but the sheer accumulation of ignored signals is extremely disturbing.
Beep Beep!
A final piece of this puzzle is the so-called Hezbollah “pager” incident, which sheds light on Israel’s anticipation of a northern front in the conflict. In mid-September 2024, nearly a year after the Hamas attack, Israel carried out a covert high-tech attack on Hezbollah that had long been in the making. Israeli intelligence had managed to infiltrate Hezbollah’s communication networks so deeply that it planted hidden explosives in Hezbollah’s own communication devices – specifically, pagers and walkie-talkies used by the group’s operatives. On September 16–17, 2024, Israel activated this capability: thousands of Hezbollah’s pagers suddenly exploded simultaneously, followed the next day by the detonation of thousands of Hezbollah walkie-talkies. The blasts killed dozens of Hezbollah personnel and instantly disrupted the organization’s command-and-control capabilities.
What is crucial about this extraordinary operation is why Israel had developed it. According to defense analysts, these remote “pager and walkie-talkie attacks” were originally designed to be the opening salvo of a coordinated, all-out Israeli attack against Hezbollah. In other words, Israel had prepared to cripple Hezbollah’s communications at the very onset of any major war in the north, as a means to blind and paralyze the group. The plan envisioned that once Hezbollah’s comms were knocked out, Israel would hit hard with drones, missile strikes, and possibly a ground incursion simultaneously – effectively decapitating Hezbollah’s ability to respond. This reveals that Israel’s military establishment was actively contemplating a full-scale conflict with Hezbollah and had even preemptively positioned assets to execute a first strike when the moment arrived.
Originally, Israeli leadership hoped to save this “ace” for an optimal moment – likely at the outbreak of a new war in Lebanon. However, in September 2024 they used it in isolation, allegedly because intelligence indicated Hezbollah was close to discovering the infiltrations (a “use it or lose it” scenario). The very existence of the pager-walkie sabotage plan indicates that Israel had been expecting a two-front war scenario at least since 2023, if not earlier.
It’s reasonable to infer that when Hamas launched its attack on October 7, 2023, Israeli defense planners were on high alert for Hezbollah to open a second front in the north, and they had the means ready to severely impair Hezbollah if that happened. Indeed, on October 7 itself, as Hamas struck in the south, Israel quickly moved troops and assets north, preparing for the worst. Within days, Israeli artillery and air units were engaging in skirmishes with Hezbollah, though all-out war did not materialize at that time.
The “pager incident” thus supports the notion that Israel was not only aware of the potential for a coordinated Hamas-Hezbollah war, but was technologically and strategically prepared for it. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant later described the 2024 pager/walkie-talkie attacks as heralding a “new phase” of conflict, shifting Israel’s focus “from south to north”. The fact that such an esoteric capability was operational points to significant prior intelligence penetration of Hezbollah – a task that would likely have taken months or years. It aligns with reports that Hezbollah, for its part, had “prepared to undertake such an attack if necessary”, considering ground incursions into Israel as part of the broader October 7 war plan, even if they ultimately held back.
In the context of false-flag theories, the pager episode can be read two ways. On one hand, it might indicate that Israel fully expected a northern attack and was keen to neutralize it – undermining the idea that Israel wanted a multi-front war. After all, Israel chose to activate the pager bomb early, in 2024, rather than wait for Hezbollah to strike – suggesting Israel preferred to prevent a Hezbollah attack, not invite one.
On the other hand, the very readiness of this tactic underscores how Israel’s military brass were effectively primed for a broader war around the time of Hamas’s attack. They had gamed it out and were ready to respond in kind. It suggests that if Hamas’s assault was part of a grander scheme, Israel was not blindsided in the northern dimension – they were expecting it. The early neutralization of Hezbollah’s capabilities in 2024 could even hint that Israeli leaders, after the Gaza war was underway, decided to proactively finish off a threat they knew was coming sooner or later. In sum, the Hezbollah pager incident demonstrates the depth of Israel’s anticipation of a two-front conflict and provides circumstantial support to the idea that October 7 was viewed by Israel through the lens of a wider war – one they were willing to wage if provoked.
Fini
The foregoing examination reveals a picture of the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack that is far more complex than a simple “bolt from the blue.” Hamas’s operation was part of a larger strategic vision, one that explicitly sought to involve Hezbollah and Iran in a two-front assault on Israel. That broader offensive did not fully materialize – possibly because Hamas struck earlier than Hezbollah was ready, or because deterrence and uncertainty kept Hezbollah at bay. Yet the intent and planning for a coordinated war were clearly there on Hamas’s side, and known to Israel in broad outline. Meanwhile, Israeli intelligence and military leaders, despite their public surprise, had in their hands considerable foreknowledge of Hamas’s plans and had even prepared for the worst-case scenario of a multi-front war.
The tragedy of October 7 seems born of a toxic mix of underestimation, intelligence missteps, and strategic gambits that in hindsight looks almost inexplicable. Israeli decision-makers were warned – by allies, by their own analysts, by signals and sightings on the ground – yet they failed to act decisively. Whether this was due to bureaucratic hubris, cognitive dissonance, or something more sinister remains an open question.
The notion of the attack being “partially engineered or allowed to happen” by Israel as a false-flag operation is a grave accusation – one that demands very strong evidence which is lacking, so far. There is no proof that Israeli officials deliberately sacrificed their citizens to justify war. The horror and scale of the massacre, and the subsequent upheaval in Israel’s leadership, suggest genuine shock and failure rather than staged provocation. However, this research highlights several disquieting facts that keep such conspiracy questions alive: Israeli policies did foster the rise of Hamas hardliners like Sinwar (intentionally or not); Israeli intelligence had the enemy’s playbook yet stood down, echoing the classic pattern of “warnings unheeded” seen in other historical surprises; and Israel was poised for a wider war with Hezbollah, a scenario that the October 7 attack conveniently unlocked in terms of global legitimacy.
The October 7 attacks were both a security failure and a catalyst for various agendas. For Hamas, it aimed to disrupt the status quo and draw Israel into a multi-front conflict. For Israel’s hardline government, the attacks provided a shock-trigger to wage all-out war on Hamas and potentially confront Hezbollah. The ensuing Gaza war and limited northern clashes have followed this path, with Israel’s massive military response that would have been politically unthinkable without the provocation.
The question still lingers: Was the Israeli establishment’s failure to stop the attack merely incompetence, or a form of malice-by-omission? The evidence assembled here cannot conclusively answer that. It does, however, raise serious questions. Why were clear signs of an impending attack ignored? Why did a carefully cultivated asset like Sinwar walk free to plot Israel’s worst massacre? And why did Israel have a plan to neutralize Hezbollah ready to go, if a wider war was never anticipated?
These paradoxes fuel the suspicion – held by a small but vocal minority – that Oct 7 was something more than just Israel’s 9/11, that it may also have been, in part, Israel’s “Reichstag fire” – a devastating crisis that also served to unite and empower the state for battles to come. While such analogies are speculative, the call for a thorough, independent inquiry is very real. Israelis themselves are demanding answers, and only a rigorous investigation will separate fact from fiction in this dark chapter. Until then, the events of October 7, 2023 will remain shrouded in both grief and controversy.