Sinwar personally sent clandestine message to Israel weeks before Oct. 7 – TV report
Hamas head’s cryptic warning said ‘a flare-up is expected in the prisons and on the issue of the captives’; the few top Israelis who saw it didn’t know what to make of it, still don’t
Hamas’s Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar personally sent a clandestine message to Israel a few weeks before he launched the terror group’s October 7 slaughter in southern Israel, warning it ambiguously to expect a flare-up tied to Palestinians in Israeli prisons and on the issue of captives, according to an Israeli television report Sunday.
Stressing that it was not reporting the text word for word, Channel 12 news said that the message from Sinwar approximately stated: “A flare-up is expected in the prisons and on the issue of the captives.”
The network noted its report was approved for publication by the Israeli military censor.
It said the message was received by Israel, and that Sinwar knew it had been delivered. The unsourced report did not specify to whom Sinwar conveyed the message or how it was conveyed.
Channel 12 said the message did not constitute a specific warning regarding the then-imminent October 7 invasion and slaughter, but its report asserted nonetheless that the text “shines a dramatic light on the events of October 7” and contains details that “in our estimation are likely to prove nothing less than historic in hindsight.”
In Israel, the report said, Sinwar’s message was immediately understood by its recipients to be referring not to violence and disturbances among Palestinian security prisoners held by Israel, but to potential developments regarding Israelis held captive and/or missing. It was under that interpretation that the message was reportedly defined and cataloged.
Prior to October 7, when Hamas seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom are still held captive, the terror group was holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014. Furthermore, in March 2023, a Russian-Israeli researcher named Elizabeth Tsurkov was kidnapped in Baghdad and is being held by an Iranian-backed Iraqi militia.
Sinwar’s message was regarded as “highly sensitive” and was circulated in only a very limited way in the political and security echelons. It was given “the highest possible security classification… and very few people” were given access to it, the TV report said.
The Mossad, the Shin Bet, and the Israel Defense Forces all held several discussions regarding the message. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant “were updated about these discussions,” the report noted, and were likely involved in some of them.
The conclusion of these discussions was that Sinwar was indeed referring to Israeli captives and missing.
Israel “did not interpret the message as a warning ahead of an attack,” Channel 12 said, even though, as has been widely reported in the months since October 7, Israel intelligence had in its hands material relating to Hamas’s attack plans.
Rather, Israel understood from the message that Hamas intended to “take charge of matters” regarding kidnapped researcher Tsurkov, and to demand the release of a large number of Palestinian security prisoners in return for her freedom.
Sinwar’s message was not circulated even to all high-ranking IDF and military intelligence branch officials and was also not shown to lower ranks. Those left out of the loop, therefore, were not able to connect his message to other indications they might have raised.
The report said that “nobody” has been able to explain definitively why Sinwar would have wanted to convey the message. Intelligence materials accumulated since October 7 also provide no definite explanation. It made no sense, the report noted, for Sinwar to have contacted Israel and potentially turned a spotlight onto Gaza just weeks before the invasion.
However, there are some who speculate that Sinwar may have been dealing with two simultaneous issues, the report went on to say: planning October 7, while also attempting to maximize ongoing negotiations and contacts that it said were advancing at the time regarding the four Israelis in Gaza — the slain soldiers Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul, and the living civilians Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed.
Others in the system speculate — and the TV report noted how “ridiculous” it may sound — that Sinwar conveyed his clandestine message “because of differences of opinion between him and [Hamas’s military chief] Muhammad Deif regarding the timing of the [October 7] attack.” According to that thesis, Sinwar may have wanted to prompt Israel into taking actions that would delay the attack that Hamas was planning to a later date — possibly to gain time and enable greater coordination with Hezbollah.” Sinwar “might have been interested” in that kind of delay, while Deif might have wanted the October 7 date.
Speculation aside, the bottom line, assessed by Channel 12, was that Sinwar’s message “was not correctly interpreted.” It should, the report concluded, have turned the spotlight onto Gaza.
On October 7 Hamas led a devastating cross-border attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians. The 3,000 terrorists who burst through the boundary seized 251 people who were taken as hostages to Gaza. Some of those have been released or rescued — not all of them alive — during Israel’s military campaign that it launched in response to the Hamas attack.
In the wake of the attack, Hebrew media reports have pointed to security officials repeatedly failing to identify the threat of the Hamas attack.
Earlier this month the IDF carried out a strike in Gaza aimed at killing Deif. While Israel has been unable to confirm he died in the attack, there is growing confidence that he was killed.
Sinwar is believed hiding underground in Gaza in the massive network of tunnels Hamas dug under the enclave.
