Ever wonder, what's on a journalist smack everything to deliver breaking news, every twenty four hours, Male to reach out to sources will offer perspective notes to play out. The hard hitting questions voice memos to capture, quotes and then pages to write stories that get to you every day, delivering breaking news on mac. From a new times I like about this is the daily today. too much of the outside world come on This decision to murder hundreds of israelis and trigger a war that has since killed many thousands of its own people looks like? A historic miscalculation? One could soon was in the dish, russian of Hamas itself

My colleague, then hovered has been reporting on that decision. And the deliberate calculations that went into it. It's tuesday, Fourteen then, since october, seven, since Hamas breached Israel's border and killed twelve hundred people according to Israel, the vast majority of them civilians, I think, are really important. Question has largely gone unanswered, which is why why undertake such a horrifying tear attack that entailed the mass murder of non combatants.

and why do that when Hamas had to understand and some level that it would trigger an overwhelming reprisal from Israel, Would end the lives of so many palestinian civilians, which is exactly what happened. This was a highly plan and highly organized attack that clearly had a strategy behind. If so, what was it that's what I set out to understand after the attack. I think everybody was asking the question of I would Hamas, which sweden ruling in gaza, has this control, and you know why would they suddenly do something like this that was actually described by one, colleagues as a suicide attack on itself. He basically was the movement trying to destroy itself

and so we want to support a figure out. You know how did Hamas get to the point in terms of capabilities where it could launch this, which was a much much more sophisticated and complicated attack than we had ever seen them carry out before, despite the decades in decades that they ve been fighting Israel? also why they? How did they get to the point where they made the decision, that of the kinds of attacks that they could do for whatever it is that they wanted to achieve why? This is not a very easy thing, answer right. It's completely unrealistic that we would be able to call up the leaders of Hamas in Gaza who plotted in carried out this attack, I'm insane by the time that we were asking this question. They were hiding away, and bunkers somewhere getting ready to fight Israel, which was making a very clear, was gonna. Do a ground incursion. So my dear sir, no way to talk to these people, but

Hamas has leaders and other places. You have the people in Gaza whose or run the show there, and then they have people from their more political operations who are based in other parts of them at least there a number of them who were in Beirut, there's number of them who, in qatar, So I packed my bags and left assemble and first went to beirut with the understanding that you could meet with him. I think it would surprise people to think that you can just meet with the scene leaders of Hamas in their sort of like political people, any other political party they have offices and they have aids and you call them up and you'd take an appointment and you figure out where you're going to meet them and you you know, go to the office, and so we got in touch with them, four them and they said said he come in and and have a chat and they told us to meet them at this restaurant. That's kind of well known in the suburbs of Beirut and we actually got in their car and they drove us to the sort of compound where we went in with the four big metal gate that opens when you go in, and we will end that we just basically

sat in a room with some couches and are we talk and then, a few days later I went to Doha. Capital of qatar spread on the other, of the middle east and the persian gulf. Again we get in touch with you know the hamas officials that we know are there and the first person that we talk to is was actually in a two it's my own honey who is the the head of Hamas and he says well, let's meet at the sheraton, the hotel sort of on the waterfront and so me. No, I go there and we meet and have a longshot with him asking can basically all about what the attack and before the attack and why the attacking and then we actually get in his car, and he drives us to the Hamas office. It's in sort of a nice in an affluent neighbourhood kind of on the outskirts of the city, has a big wall around it. No sign no indication to anybody coming by sort of who is there who works there, and we meet one of the members of sort of the senior leadership body the politic

oh hello, higher and again we're sitting in a large room with Juno couches, and somebody brings us tea and coffee and we start talking in half You have all these conversations with these leaders of Hamas. What did they tell you about this question of? Why this that you have come here to try to stand the logic of this attack. If we can apply that word to what happened, the basic idea that they all kept coming back to is they felt that the palestinian cause was basically fading away, that there were aspects of this conflict that were approaching a point of no return and, if they as for the past that point, then it was all over and also this fear and that nobody really cared. Nobody was really paying attention or doing anything about it, including the israelis that the israelis just didn't even seem to be thinking about the palestinian cause any more, so they felt that they needed to do so.

thing big. They need to do something dramatic to blow up the status quo. They I wanted to completely overthrow the situation in the region, and individual leaders said that they hoped that this led to a big regional war, that that was like the ideal outcome and hope that some new option would emerge from what came after so they're telling you is they needed in their minds to light a fire and not a small fire? They wanted to light a conflagration, and I'm wondering if that means for them that any death toll on both sides was therefore warfare. While I asked them about that, everybody that I talk to you, and they give on pretty much all counts. Incredibly unsatisfying answers. When you ask about the civilian israelis who were killed in their communities, they basically deny it and say either it's not true. This is really probably

or they say that if any civilians were killed, they were killed in the crossfire between our fighters and israeli security services and the military and theirs we'll evidence that show that that's just not true there is but in some testimony from israeli survivors of the attacks? There is dash cam footage from cars that were parked in places where the attacks took place in their surveillance. Footage cameras that were posted in the communities and there's even helmet cameras that some of the hamas fighters were wearing that were captured by the israelis after the fighters were killed, and so we have that footage as well. As all of this shows that, regardless of what Hamas says, the objectives of the attack were that many of these funds Just move deliberately through these communities and a very studied way, shooting and killing people on site. My colleagues have done work proving that they cornered civilians who had taken shelter inside.

bomb shoulders and through grenades inside I try to kill them while they were stuck in. There and there's other evidence that they just lip people's houses on fire on top of them. So we know that hamas as the miles are just not true and when you are them about, ok well does paypal we're going on. Obviously, we see the death toll in Gaza going up every day. These are supposed to your people. They basically say whatever israel does is not our fault. You know we're out here trying to save the palestinian cause and if Israel decides to come back and kill a bunch of people in Gaza, like that's, not our problem. So when you take a step back look at what they're saying in the context of this broader goal. They just seemed saying that all of these deaths are just the necessary cost of this blowing up of the status quo. Then bottom line to accomplish this objective of a bending the status quo for hamas for its leaders, it seems like almost any amount of

ass would be allowable right. In my conversations with some of the hamas leaders, there really did not seem to be a lot of handwriting. about the number of civilian deaths that have come about because of this attack so help with better understand how that status quo that Hamas is so desperate to shatter, came to be and how Hamas decided that it was willing to go to this length to destroy it. So I found it very useful in trying to understand how Hamas got to this point. Look at the career of one of the people who ended up plotting this attack, and this is the head of Hamas in Gaza, whose name is yes, yes and more? So what should we know about him? Yeah? His then war is from the first generation of Hamas. Hamas was a

palestinian militants movement founded in the late eighties. That was an islamist movement that aim to destroy israel with military means and replace it with a palestinian state. At this time, the israeli military was applying the west bank and Gaza, and Hamas was not interested ending the occupation of these territories. Hamas believed that the entire stew If Israel was an occupation, this sets it apart from other palestinian movements that have negotiated with israel and accept israel's right to exist. Hamas never accepted that and felt that the whole thing was wrong and that the only solution was to completely destroy israel. and replace it with a palestinian state right. So cinnabar is from the very early generation of this movement and from very early on a sort of an internal security guy he's in charge of looking out for

israeli moles inside of the organization- and he punishes these people with such brutality that he's given the nickname, the butcher of han yunis khan yunis is a town in Gaza where he was born, and so he was known as the butcher of han yunis. so he's an enforced within Hamas of violent you're within an already mileage group. Yes, Then in nineteen, eighty eight he gets arrested by the israelis and is thrown in jail for the murder of for palestine. and who were alleged collaborators with Israel, spying inside of the organization and he's in prison for twenty two years, and he does I've slater as being very educational. He learns to speak good hebrew. He read books in hebrew and he describes it is being this crate opportune to really get to know his enemy. To understand israeli society to understand.

How is real, works and how it thinks and clearly. This is because he does expect or hope that someday, he's gonna get out of prison and that this knowledge, gonna come in useful here, being Israel from inside present, so that he might some day or understand. It sounds like their weaknesses, run So, while he's in jail, Hamas bans as a movements- and it becomes basically notorious for using very violent techniques to try to harm Israel in two thousand

seven it gets in a huge fight with other palestinian factions inside of gaza and ends up taking the place over and basically exile in the palestinian authority, and this puts the movement in a really new place. I'm in this was a movement that was founded to do military action against Israel and suddenly find self governing and a territory a minute. It becomes the de facto government right of a territory that now has more than two our palestinians, and so, instead of just in or wanting to launch attacks and figure out ways to deal. Talk the israeli military. Suddenly, they have to think about infrastructure how to provide services for all these people who were tech clean under their rule. But of course, sin war is in prison and cannot be a part of this transformation of hamas into deep governing authority of Gaza, yes to all this is happening on the outside, and war is inside learning he ruined getting to know Israel better and then all of a sudden he gets an opportunity. And basically Hamas gets an opportunity on Sunday

I was standing fighters used a tunnel to attack a border post and kidnap and israeli soldier weigh up into in six? Some hamas fighters pop up from a tunnel on the israeli side of the border creating Israel from Gaza and they take a soldier captive and they drag him back to Gaza and they hold him. The thousand five hundred palestinians held captive than israel now in the spotlight following the militants capture of the israeli soldier, their freedom, the single demand. So far from the corporal captors and their years of negotiations and then in two thousand eleven there's an agreement for a prisoner swap and and Hamas trades this one israeli soldier, sojourning glad, shall eat and they get in return more than a thousand palestinians released from prison,

the first prisoners came across the came across the border and among them is Yahia similar yeah. He yet be asking. Why is the only one of the group's top leaders to be freedom of deal and the reason war is one of the biggest prizes that Hamas gets out and then he returns to Gaza and he received a hero, is welcome. And Does this not just with this new israel education that he's gotten while he was locked up, but also, of course, lesson, which is that Israel will pay dearly to get its captors released. Why one thousand palestinian prisoners, including himself for a single, is elite right by that?

so here returns this leader with twenty two years in israeli rarely prison any comes back and reintegrate into hum ass and begins his further climb up the ranks. The pilot indian group, Hamas is elected commander of its armed wing, is overall leader in Gaza, regarded and in twenty seventeen he actually becomes top Hamas official in Gaza, And in that role he starts to transform that branch of the organization he does things to make the organs- stronger and interestingly here. Certain messages, implying that he's actually interested in a kind of accommodation with Israel ha. I claim that also by by this point, Hamas and Israel have settled into strange kind of violent coexistence there. Obviously, incredibly hostile parties, violence, frequently breaks out and back entire wars break out

There is also a lot of interaction because Israel controls solemn Gaza's borders, except I do no small part controlled by egypt. More the gaza's electricity comes from Israel. Most of Gaza's commercial goods are brought in from Israel and so just for the place to survive. There to be a certain amount of interaction, and so the strange process develops where violence frequently breaks out. and Hamas, will fire rockets into Israel and try to hit israeli towns and military bases and then Israel response. Air strikes, and sometimes with assassinations of hamas leaders inside of Gaza and then he ate or get involved, and while they're trying to work out a cease fire. This integration, that's not really about the larger conflict, but sort of about some of the details of the actual blockade in a Hamas is trying to find ways to loosen up this blockade to allow more goods to enter gaza and overtime somewhere ends up giving

people in the israeli security establishment this impression that that's actually something that's important to him, that he actually does want to try to make life better for the people of Gaza and it's not just all military all the time I didn't twenty one, there's another war between Israel and Hamas and after that, there's a negotiation and again Hamas pushes for a number of things that seem to be geared towards him life for gazans, they negotiate tens of millions of dollars and aid from qatar to come in through Israel to Gaza. To keep the con me functioning in the place they negotiate work permits to try to It's the number of work permits for gazans to leave gaza into Israel to work, because there's really not a lot of jobs in gaza, and so this is a good thing for the economy, and so you know at another point even more recently and that there were clashes started by other militant? actions in gaza and Hamas sets out. They sit on the side, and so together. This creates this impression.

On the israeli side that I think, there's for the two francs to it. One is that the israeli Hence technology is enough to keep Gaza contained. We have this border fence than has cameras, and, motion sensors and has remote control Jeanne guns. We have an under and wall. So there's no tunnels and we have iron dome, which the israeli brockett interception system, and then on top of it they say. While we also have this leader in Gaza, who seems like he doesn't want to get a bunch of his people killed in at another war he like executing sinuous conduct and his messaging is contributing this feeling inside Israel that may be gaza and Hamas can be can This can all be managed, arrive in it It's not that anybody thinks that they manage to sort of solve the long term conflict with Hamas

small that ok well, we ve got the situation under control that with our security measures, to try to keep them contained in that if we can keep enough aid going and to keep their economy going along, so that people are too miserable in a way. This could keep things formerly blowing up part. Meanwhile, its clear to us enhanced at the cinnabar was not at all happy with that status quo and that he was firstly working to try to build up Hamas as military capabilities inside of Gaza warehouse. Well, I'm continues to build its arsenal of rockets. inside of Gaza, the smuggle in the materials that the need to make them and they build them inside of Gaza, their building up this arsenal and on a more strategic level Anwar comes in and he repairs relationship between Hamas and specifically with the Hamas military wing in Gaza and some of older regional allies, the most important

He's is iran, which had been a funder and the states supporter of Hamas since the early days of the movement and also with hezbollah, the lebanese militia, which is also dedicated to this section of Israel and works closely with iran to try to build this sort of network regional militias that are out to harm Israel. We know that in recent years number of hamas fighters. unable to get out of gaza and travel both to iran until lebanon for various kinds of training and looking back at this attack, we realized they were probably Learning new capabilities that really added a whole different kind of sophistication to the kinds of attacks that Hamas was able to carry out. So all these alliances, you're describing sin war deepens there in the search. Of making Hamas a stronger, more capable fighting forest Yes, I'm he clearly knows that the battle is not over and it certainly is clear in hindsight that

His end goal was not to govern gaza and to try to improve the life of gazans, but he was very interested in developing the military capabilities so that he could find a way to hit israel in the new and powerful way. So what exactly set the stage for doing just hitting Israel in a new and powerful way, and for doing it when sin warren hammas decide to do it on october, seventh, twenty twenty three! So when I asked if Hamas leaders about this, this is where they brought up the idea that the palestinian cause was slipping away and they point to a number of things, and these are issues that are not just important to Hamas. These are issues that are important to all palestinians, talk about the most right wing government in israeli history, coming to power and basically not being at all interested in talking about any future for the palestinians. They talk about attacks by settlers in the west bank on palestinian communities. They talk about police raids on the Al Aqsa mosque,

She is one of the holy sites in Islam, which is in jerusalem and has always been sort of a touchstone for the cindy claim to the city. There is also, of course, the israeli blockade of Gaza, which it is in full since two thousand seven, along with egypt and also sort of hanging over this. as these normalization deals that are happening between Israel and other arab countries, and this idea that is you can go around the palestinians and find peace with the arabs without resolving the conflict, and these are the things that they're talking about. When they're saying you know, we we just felt like the cause was slipping away right because, in a sense the cause has been slipping away. Right kind of indisputably arab countries, who would be natural allies of the palestinian cause, are signing deals in which the only previous obstacle had been the fate of the palestinian people, and so in signing those deals, their basically saying they no longer cared about the palestinian cause and

as you just mentioned. There are these kind of daily insults and offences occurring that are, if european city, an extra we upsetting right, and so Hamas basically see

all of this happening and feels like this causes slipping away? And this is where they get this idea that we have to do something and we have to do something big. We cannot let this issue disappear. We have to bring it back to the world's attention and that's what gets us on october. Seventh, audrey back, you done the hard part you quit smoking now. Do the easy part get scammed for lung cancer. Lung cancer is the leading cancer killer of men and women, but it is more curable been detected early if he smoked. Ye may still be at risk, but early detection goods.

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explore new stories every day by downloading the new york times, audio app at n Y times, dot com, slash, audio app you'll need a news subscription to listen. Then what have you learned through this reporting? You have been doing about how under sin war, Hamas planned and thought about the scope of what became the october seventh attack. So we know that basically felt that the old model was not gonna, be good enough that this idea that they would fire rockets try to hit israeli communities in whatever not on this had to be much much bigger and Oh, they wanted to take the fight to the israelis. They wanted to get out of gaza and not just a few of them, but large numbers of them and they wanted it to be an incredibly dramatic attack, and so they went by air.

they went by land, they went by sea, they went inside of israeli military bases, they went inside israeli communities and killed a lot of people and took them. Preserves and they managed to bring a lot of these hostages back to Gaza and sinuous better than anybody how much the taking of one is really captive can change the situation right and no that when they launched this attack they were seeking captives. They wanted to find people and bring them back to Gaza, and we So now that this attack was much much more successful than even its plotters had anticipated, and so now in the fact that Hamas, instead of just one israeli captive has somewhere around two hundred and forty. It just pushes the entire conflict into this uncharted

tori, where nobody really knows what comes next? What, let's talk more about the aftermath of this brutal attack and how been in your reporting, you ve been trying to understand whether Hamas did what it set out to do. Given the original aims, as you have described, in reported them of experts, putting a status quo, I mean how should we think about measuring this idea is complicated idea that this was to use a mosses word. A success. Why I, in the fundamental sense of setting out to shatter the status quo than the others accomplish that Gaza's, never gonna, go back to what it was. I think in terms of the goal of pudding palestinian cause back on the table. I think it was true that not many people are paying attention to it. just over a month ago and now because of Israel's ferocious response to that

mass attacks and the bombing of Gaza, the nursing protests coming out all over the world and differ cities in the. U s talking about palestinian rights in a way that we have not seen before, and there is also this sort of frantic diplomacy that started, and you have you a secretary of date, Anthony blinkin flying around and talking about the two state solution and how to make progress on it. And so the issue is on the table in a way that it was not before this attack and then enter. Of this idea of sparking this bill regional war. That has not happened at least not to the extent that Hamas had hoped. There has been fighting on the lebanese border with hezbollah, there have been attacks in iraq, but we have not seen this sort of huge uprising in the rest of the air

kind of joining the caused, a common and try to help him ass, destroy Israel. Then that feels important to dwell on for just a moment if Hamas is militant allies in the Middle EAST. Hezbollah, for example, don't become more involved in this conflict. Will that be a signal that the palestinian cause not likely to state of mind for very long and then ultimately, one of the main objectives of october seventh will have failed. I mean one of my surprising things. I think, for me about all of this is that iran in it regional militias, including Hamas, had been talking for a long time about how they had built this axis of resistance and how they were much more integrated and they were sharing technology and sharing information and there's this idea That they had put out that if there was a or against Israel. All the pieces would fall in the place and it would be like this big sort of milton

drawn that would come together and fight Israel and that's not what happened. I was quite surprised the reporting that we don't have any indications that Hamas coordinated this attack with anybody or that they let anybody know that it was coming. Hezbollah's response was quite cautious at the very beginning there now clashing with Israel on the border, but they ve done it in sport. controlled way to keep it from escalating into a bigger war. And so it sort of raises this whole question of this idea of this big regional militia network will maybe it's not as coordinated as we thought I mean if Hamas is actually going to be the one to pull the plug on this big war, and these other

I don't actually want to join it in the same way that Hamas is doing it. Then maybe this network is not as tight as we expected. It was so. Yes, Hamas has put the question of the palestinians back on people's minds, whether it's demonstrators or like blinking diplomats, but to what end I mean, ideally from the point of view of Hamas. The end is a palestinian state and the elimination of Israel. It seems like ass is no closer to that now than they were before october. Seven, so in Hamas is mine. What is supposed to be on the other side of the status quo? That's gone other than israeli death and injury suffering and palestinian death and palestinian suffering on an enormous scale. From my talks with the

mass leaders, there was really no sense of a grand plan for what comes next. They definitely wanted hit Israel as hard as they could and they wanted to hit Israel inside of Israel, and they were not particularly sir about what sort of response this would bring and what it would mean to the people of Gaza It was that the attack somehow would be enough and would open up some new way now that were five weeks into this, I think it's also worth pointing out that Israel doesn't appear to have a grand plan either. The stated goal is to destroy Hamas and Israel can probably make a lot of progress on that. They could kill about mass leaders. They can degrade its military capabilities, but then what there's not really any plan for who's gonna run Gaza once this is all over, and so where does all this get us? I mean, I think you know it's difficult to tell the future, but there's there's a few possibilities. One is that

the violence gets so bad and destruction get so great that people get sort of disgusted with it and decide that there have. It'd be some new way forward ass to be a new way to try to figure out how to keep this cycle from continuing but is also sadly possible. There Israel will go in and do whatever. It feels that any to do in gaza and the world can move on, and people could go back to four about the palestinians, and you know we could end up in a kind of status quo like we had before, but one that's even worse. For the people of Gaza Israel, has been trying to destroy him ass for a long time, and this time they may make a lot of progress. They may kill a lot of their it and they made the great their military capabilities, but there's still gonna be too. million palestinians living in Gaza and most of them are children and, after all the trauma,

if living through a war like this is just very hard to imagine that they are going to grow up and feel like they want to live peacefully next or with Israel and its certain. Not hard to imagine that some other innovation could come up and that it's not gonna have a hard time finding recruits right What you're describing is a potential new status quo, replacing this shattered status quo. That is worse for the people in Gaza and, in theory, potentially worse for israel. Yes, I think that's the worst case scenario for This could all end well. Thank you. Then. We appreciate thank you.

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that's so far, is drawing support from Democrats, an opposition from Johnson's fellow far right republicans that raises the possibility that Johnson's first, major piece of legislation, a continuing resolution known as a sea are not only win I, with the support of house democrats, a reality that doomed johnson's predecessor former how speaker Kevin Mccarthy. For now I am please The speaker Johnson seems to be moving in the right direction, but in a speech from the senate floor on Monday, the chamber's democratic leader chuck sure priest Johnson's plant, I've said on multiple occasions that, if we're going to work together to keep the government open speaker, Johnson, we'll have to avoid pushing steep cuts, are poison.

That Democrats can support after a series of embarrassing revelations about undisclosed gifts and real estate, deals by the justices. The? U S, supreme court has, for the first time adopted a formal code of ethics that requires greater transparency to the public, like the lower court judges, the justices of the supreme court, have never been bound to a code of conduct. Given theirs. the shoals status in the u s constitution, but so form its unclear how the ethics code, What actually be enforced to these episodes. was produced by Mary Wilson asked the charter of eighty and robs zip code. It was edited by peach coward with help from devon tale was fact jack by soothingly contained original music by dim pal

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