Hamas had planned to conduct a 9/11-style attack on Israel that was intended to be far deadlier than the October 7 massacre that took place in 2023, according to a Washington Post exclusive report allegedly based on records found by Israeli officials.
The plans reportedly dated many years before the October 7 attacks and involved knocking down a Tel Aviv skyscraper, along with the use of trains, boats, and chariots, to conduct a devastating attack against Israel.
According to the report, electronic records and papers were recovered by Israeli officials from Hamas command centers and showed the advanced planning that was done. Several of the plans made by the terror group appeared to be "ill-formed and highly impractical," terrorism experts noted to the Post.
Additionally, letters from the terror group to Iranian leaders were also found, and they showed that Hamas had requested their help initiating the attacks, the report said.
Furthermore, the Post said a letter written by Hamas Head Yahya Sinwar in 2021 was found within the documents that appealed to several senior Iranian officials, asking for financial and military support while promising that, with Iran's help, the terror group would be able to destroy Israel within two years.
“We promise you that we will not waste a minute or a penny unless it takes us toward achieving this sacred goal,” a June 2021 letter allegedly signed by Sinwar and other Hamas officials said, according to the Post.
While the report noted that the documents' authenticity could "not be definitively established," it also stated that the content appeared to be consistent with US and allied intelligence assessments following October 7 regarding Hamas's plans and relations with Iran.
The Post also spoke to Israeli officials who were not involved in collecting the comments and said they "independently assessed that they were genuine."
Satellite images of Israel
The reported findings of the Israeli officials also "included more than 17,000 photographs — from satellite images to photos of Israeli cities and landscapes taken by drone cameras or gleaned from social media postings," the Post said.
Photos were reportedly found of Israeli air base diagrams and images depicting the flight patterns of commercial aircraft that had used the Ben-Gurion Airport outside Tel Aviv.
A document was found with a plan to destroy three skyscrapers in Tel Aviv: the 70-story Moshe Aviv Tower and the Azrieli Mall complex, which are near a large shopping complex and train station.
Along with the pictures of the plan, the text said, "If this tower is destroyed in one way or another, an unprecedented crisis will occur for the enemy, similar to the crisis of the World Trade Center towers in New York." The text was written in Arabic, according to the Post.
Yet, according to the report, the document noted that the plan to attack the Tel Aviv skyscrapers was not fully formed, and Hamas remained unsure of how to conduct such a strike.
Additional Hamas attack plans
In additional plans found in the documents, Hamas also allegedly aimed to target Israel's railway system and came up with variations of transporting terrorists who held explosives.
"The railway line is designated for transporting fuel, which is a weak point in the event of a train explosion after moving inside one of the cities [a moving bomb],” a document reportedly stated.
The plans also showed a particularly unconventional form of attack that involved using a three-man chariot drawn by horses to conduct attacks on Israel, the Post noted.