How Hamas Exploited Israel’s Political Crisis and IDF Reservist Refusals to Launch the Al-Aqsa Flood, Turning Internal Division into the Decisive Opportunity for the Deadliest Terror Attack in Israel’s History
An intelligence report from Hamas’s Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades—analyzed by Lt. Col. (res.) Yehonatan Daḥoḥ HaLevi of the Jerusalem Center for Foreign Relations and Security—shows the terror group was watching Israel’s internal divisions long before October 7, identifying them as a rare window to strike.
As early as July 2023, Hamas concluded:
“The crisis in Israel constitutes a decisive factor in impairing the IDF’s operational readiness.”
In an Arutz Sheva interview, Daḥoḥ HaLevi explained that Hamas leadership had been tracking the deepening unrest:
“Hamas’s leadership was closely tracking Israel’s political turmoil, civil protests, and the wave of IDF reserve refusals. Their analysis of public statements by senior Israeli officials led them to believe that Israel was experiencing a historic low in foreign relations, especially with the U.S. and the West, and internally the escalating protests, breakdown in cohesion, and military dissent suggested the country was heading toward civil conflict.”
Years in the Making
Daḥoḥ HaLevi’s research makes clear the October 7 massacre—what Hamas called Operation Al-Aqsa Flood—was not conceived overnight. The group began planning a large-scale assault in 2014, originally centered on cross-border tunnel infiltration. That approach was altered after Israel’s underground barrier along the Gaza border was completed in late 2021. Hamas then shifted toward a rapid, multi-pronged ground invasion.
On September 30, 2021, in a Gaza conference chaired by Yahya Sinwar, Hamas approved the revamped strategy, which envisioned a massive breach into Israeli territory, mass killings, and hostage-taking. The plan integrated land assaults with the use of drones, paragliders, and heavy rocket fire.
Political Upheaval as Catalyst
By early 2022, during the Bennett-Lapid government, Hamas had finalized operational concepts and initially considered executing them during the Jewish High Holidays while Yair Lapid was prime minister. The formation of a right-wing government in December 2022 added a dual calculation: the potential for tougher Israeli policy, but also a belief that Israel’s global standing would decline under such a coalition.
Hamas intelligence assessed that the unprecedented refusal of thousands of IDF reservists to report for duty, amid escalating anti-government protests, had degraded Israel’s military readiness. On July 25, 2023, Hamas intelligence formally advised Sinwar to hold off until the crisis deepened further.
“There’s no information on how Sinwar reacted,” Daḥoḥ HaLevi noted. “But in the two and a half months leading up to October 7, Hamas observed continued escalation, including media coverage about ‘no army’ in September.”
This referred to protest leader Shikma Bressler’s August 2023 warning:
“Netanyahu, you won’t have an army by September.”
Timing the Strike
Daḥoḥ HaLevi concludes that the July–September wave of reservist refusals, widely amplified through Hamas media channels, was a “decisive factor” in choosing the date of the Al-Aqsa Flood attack. Hamas deliberately picked a holiday period to exploit reduced readiness, while using tensions over the Temple Mount and al-Aqsa Mosque as rallying cries to ignite violence in Judea and Samaria, as well as among Israeli Arabs.
Sinwar viewed the 2021 Shield of Jerusalem (Nuseif al-Quds) campaign merely as a dress rehearsal for a far larger offensive. By autumn 2023, with the IDF’s preparedness weakened and internal fractures widening, he judged the conditions optimal for the largest terrorist onslaught in Israel’s history.
Israeli Intelligence Oversights
Subsequent Israeli investigations have laid bare a chain of missed warnings:
- Intelligence officers had obtained detailed Hamas battle plans more than a year before the attack, but senior officials dismissed them as unrealistic.
- In July 2023, a signals intelligence soldier warned superiors of an imminent Hamas assault, telling them, “I utterly refute that the scenario is imaginary.” Her alerts were ignored.
- Intercepted Hamas communications showing unusual mobilization were misread as routine activity.
A military review also found that dissenting assessments within the intelligence community were suppressed, and the IDF’s focus remained on preventing small-scale attacks rather than confronting the possibility of a coordinated invasion.
The Scope of the Assault
On the morning of October 7, Hamas launched Al-Aqsa Flood with a level of planning and coordination that reflected years of preparation. Fighters stormed Israeli communities, army bases, and police stations. More than 3,000 rockets were fired within hours, and heavily armed squads carried out massacres while abducting over 240 people into Gaza.
Captured Hamas documents revealed that targets had been studied for years—including guard rotations, camera placements, and even the layout of kindergartens in border communities. The aim was to overwhelm Israel’s rapid-response units before they could mobilize.
Conclusion: Exploiting Weakness to Maximum Effect
The Al-Aqsa Flood attack was the culmination of nearly a decade of preparation, sharpened by Hamas’s reading of Israel’s political and military crisis in 2023. The terror group’s July assessment—that internal division and reservist refusals had compromised the IDF—proved central to the decision to strike.
By synchronizing military strategy with political opportunity, and taking advantage of Israel’s intelligence blind spots, Hamas was able to carry out the deadliest assault in the country’s history, reshaping the security landscape and forcing a fundamental reassessment of national resilience.
The first and second temples were destroyed because of internal discord that allowed invaders to overwhelm our ancestors. I was in Israel twice in 2023, and it seemed obvious that the scenario described in this piece not only made the country look weak, it weakened the country to the point that October 7th could happen. My second trip in August, 2023, gave me an ominous feeling that something bad would happen – and two months later, it did.