Although the Mossad has denied responsibility for the Gaza arena, a recent Channel 12 report revealed that the Mossad carried out several operations against Hamas in Gaza in the years leading up to the October 7 massacre.

The Mossad had maintained that Gaza fell under the Shin Bet’s responsibility and that the Shin Bet prevented it from operating there. Indeed, several years before the massacre, the Mossad decided to stop operating in the Strip.

However, according to the report, shortly before that decision was made, the Mossad carried out a number of intelligence operations aimed at penetrating Hamas’ infrastructure in Gaza. Those operations ultimately failed after they were exposed and compromised.

The report emphasized that these were not peripheral activities, such as providing assistance to another agency, but rather Mossad-directed operations in which enormous resources were invested in an effort to penetrate Hamas’ infrastructure in Gaza.

The report follows previous reports about the Mossad’s role in events and assessments leading up to October 7. Among other things, it was previously reported that the Mossad was involved in mediating the Qatari money transfers — which later turned out to have helped fund Hamas — as well as failures in intercepting communications between Hamas abroad and Hezbollah and Iran.

In addition, it was previously published that about two weeks before the massacre, the Mossad drafted a document assessing that Hamas was deterred and interested in a deal.

Channel 12 noted that all details in the report were cleared for publication by Israel’s military censor.

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)