INVESTIGATION – In Beirut, Amman and Doha, Le Figaro met with leaders and people close to the Islamist movement to understand the genesis of the terrorist attack and its objectives.
- Special Envoy for Beirut, Amman and Doha
When Marwan learned of the Hamas terrorist attack in Israel on the morning of October 7th, this well-known Palestinian from Gaza initially couldn't believe his eyes. Then he quickly remembered the words that the mastermind of this unprecedented operation in the history of the conflict had said to him two years earlier. More than 1,500 Hamas commandos stormed several towns in the south of the Jewish state, killing around 1,140 Israelis, most of them civilians. In response, the IDF launched a military operation against the Gaza Strip that has so far killed more than 20,000 people, mostly civilians.
“In 2021, Marwan recalls, Yahya Sinwar (the leader of Hamas in Gaza, editor's note), whom I saw every six months, told me that the next war would be with the Israelis and that Hamas would have 5,000 members of their armed wing.” -Majdal (Askhelon, the city 30 km north of the Gaza Strip from which Sinwar was expelled in 1948 when the Jewish state was founded). I replied, “But you want…”
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