JERUSALEM (VINnews) — The British-based Guardian newspaper claimed Tuesday that Hamas had equipped its terrorists with detailed maps that are thought to have been compiled using covert inside information on IDF bases. The maps were captured on Hamas terrorists and displayed to journalists by the IDF.
Join our WhatsApp groupSubscribe to our Daily Roundup Email
According to the report, the maps were found on a terrorist who entered Israeli territory during the October 7th invasion and included precise lists of bases and outposts that appear to have been compiled based on evidence from spies.
Among the documents recovered was a thorough map of an Israeli military base, arguably more detailed than would have been required by the IDF itself. Compiling such a map could only have been done using “inside knowledge” – almost certainly from a Hamas spy – an Israeli intelligence source told the Guardian.
Laptops and handwritten notebooks refer to Hamas plans to target military locations and key points in central Israel, suggesting that the group or some elements of it had aspirations to penetrate dozens of miles inside the country once its fighters were ordered to breach the wall surrounding the strip.
The detail and sheer scale of the information found led Israeli investigators to conclude that Hamas had engaged in “years of planning” – an effort that the IDF and other Israeli intelligence agencies simply failed to take seriously as a threat.
The report also notes that Hamas terrorists carried with them specific instructions how to take hostages and a Hebrew-Arabic phrase book to help them communicate with the hostages.
The information was based, among other things, on analysis of mobile phones, computers, and documents seized in Gaza by the IDF over the course of the war. The IDF is working to analyze the data in order to understand the entire plan behind the October 7th massacre.
Among other things, the proportions of the plan are becoming clear: The Hamas’s Nukhba force was ordered to proceed from Israel’s southern district to its central district and to attempt to paralyze military targets from which the IDF could dispatch larger fighting forces and so impair Israel’s response to the attack in all the areas Hamas planned to reach.
On 7 October, Hamas fighters even carried mobile phones with Israeli sim cards and walkie-talkies so they had more than one means of communication. Among the items recovered was a radio transmitter with solar battery to maintain contact, it is understood, for an extended period of time in Israel.