TOI staff
Times of Israel, Dec. 29, 2024
“According to the Hezbollah source, Arouri “oversold” Hamas’s leaders on the support they could expect from Hezbollah and others.”
Hamas alerted the leader of fellow terror group Hezbollah just minutes before launching its October 7 assault, according to a report this week, detailing rifts between various Iran-backed groups and within Hamas in the wake of the unprecedented assault.
According to the report in French daily Le Figaro, members of Iran’s so-called axis of resistance, including Lebanese terror group Hezbollah and other alleged proxies around the Middle East, have offered only middling support for Hamas as it faces off against Israel, along with alleged evidence of souring ties between Hamas’s Gaza leadership and the group’s Qatar-based politburo.
The report, largely based on sources with ties to various terror groups, including one said to be close to Hamas’s Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar, describes Hamas’s exhaustive preparations for the attacks and expected reprisal, from appointing dummy commanders to take the brunt of Israel’s response, to sending members on secret training missions, all while keeping the timing of the assault and other details from all but a handful of people, a decision that may have wound up leaving the group largely isolated.
The shock attack on the morning of October 7 came as a complete surprise to Israel, whose security apparatus had largely dismissed various indications of Hamas’s aims over previous months as empty boasting. Early that Saturday, a Jewish holiday, thousands of Hamas-led terrorists streamed out of Gaza into southern Israel, overrunning military positions and infiltrating over a dozen communities and towns, as well as an outdoor rave festival, under cover of heavy rocket fire on southern and central Israel.
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