Hamas planned Oct. 7 from before 2014, with final decision made by 5 leaders – report

The Times of Israel reports: “The October 7 onslaught began with 70 terrorists who carried out a surprise assault at several points along the border of the Gaza Strip, according to sources close to the leadership of Hamas’s Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades military wing.

The sources told the Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper in a report published Wednesday that the terrorists involved in the devastating attack were selected from among hundreds of elite commandos from all over Gaza, and underwent training for a number of years, along with continuous testing to gauge their skills.

Some 1,200 people were slaughtered and around 240 others dragged to Gaza as hostages — mainly civilians — when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists burst into Israel on October 7, rampaging through communities and army bases in the south.

The London-based newspaper said that plans for the devastating assault on Israeli towns close to the Gaza border began years earlier — prior to Operation Protective Edge in 2014 — but major efforts to train and prepare were frozen with the outbreak of fighting and stayed on hold for a year at that point.

After another military conflict, Operation Guardian of the Walls, in May 2021, Hamas decided to implement the plan…”

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