“Top secret” documents discovered on the bodies of militants from the Hamas terrorist organization show that the group targeted elementary schools and a youth center in their attacks on Israel.
These documents were exclusively shared with NBC News by Israeli first responders.
According to the outlet, the documents show that Hamas – which gained control over Palestinian territories in a 2006 election – “created detailed plans,” to target the locations full of young civilians in the Israeli kibbutz of Kfar Sa’ad, to “kill as many people as possible,” and seize hostages to bring to the Gaza Strip.
Attack plans labelled “top secret” in Arabic included maps. One page had directions to “contain the new Da’at school,” and to “search the Bnei Akiva youth center.”
Hamas launched a surprise, large-scale attack on Israel last Saturday, and Israel declared war in retaliation. Fighting has continued throughout the week.
In an interview Friday with Audacy’s KNX Radio in Los Angeles, Javed Ali, the former senior director for counterterrorism at the U.S. National Security Council, discussed the situation in the Middle East. He said it is likely that Hamas received support from Iran to coordinate and plan the attack.
“I think that is one element or potentially one element of this multifaceted strategy,” Ali said. “But I also think there were other objectives and even the way the attack was launched in the first place on Saturday. Again, Hamas has never done anything at that scope, level, complexity and impact.”
Although Israelis evacuated from Gaza in 2005, the country technically still occupies the area. Dr. Trita Parsi told Audacy’s KCBS Radio in San Francisco that tensions in the area are complex and go far back.
“And it’s going to get much, much bloodier in the next couple of days as Israel very likely will begin a land invasion,” he said of the war. “What happens is that it becomes all the more difficult to be able to find any reconciliation or peace because people are suffering and losing loved ones on both sides. And it just deepens that enmity and the hatred and which is set back decades and decades and further away from finding some sort of an exit out of this cycle of violence.”
NBC News reported that the detailed plan to attack Kfar Sa’ad is just one part of a trove of documents that Israeli officials are analyzing, citing a source in the Israeli army and another in the government. It also said surveillance videos of Hamas display similar tactics to the ones outlined in the documents.
“The Israeli officials said that the wider group of documents show that Hamas had been systematically gathering intelligence on each kibbutz bordering Gaza and creating specific plans of attack for each village that included the intentional targeting of women and children,” said the report.
Hamas even released a video Friday that showed armed terrorists holding and feeding Israeli children taken hostage. Some were infants.
“I saw murdered babies. I saw murdered children. I saw mothers and children murdered together,” said Yossi Landau, a commander of ZAKA, an Israeli first responder organization, according to NBC.