Hamas Document Proposed Turning Chaos at Gaza Shelters Into Cover for Escape

An internal Hamas document proposed creating chaos among displaced Gazans to help commanders and operatives escape approaching Israeli forces. Explosives around shelter centers would disrupt the advance. Disorder among the people sheltering there would provide another opening.

The April 2024 document, published by the IDF on October 19, bears the headers of Hamas’s Izz al Din al Qassam Brigades and identifies an engineering company within its Northern Brigade.

Its title describes a proposal for “securing shelter centers.” The evacuation provisions explain whose movement the planners were seeking to secure.

The people sheltering and the personnel leaving

The document distinguishes between displaced civilians and the leadership personnel and other members designated for evacuation.

For the latter, it proposes withdrawal routes. For the approaching Israeli forces, obstacles and diversions. The civilians enter the plan through a passage describing how disorder among them could weaken Israeli control of the area and allow designated personnel to leave.

The passage does more than anticipate confusion during an Israeli operation. It proposes deliberately creating it.

Sound grenades or small explosive devices would disrupt the approaching force’s plans while producing disorder among displaced people. That disorder, the text explains, would interfere with control of the area and facilitate evacuation.

The same passage specifies that the diversionary devices should not harm displaced people. That instruction is part of the document and matters to its meaning. Yet the military advantage being sought still depends on unsettling civilians at the place where they have taken refuge.

The people sheltering and the personnel leaving have different roles in the proposal. The movement of one group would be helped by confusion among the other.

Beyond noise and confusion

Other provisions introduce a more direct danger around the shelters.

The document proposes explosive devices around shelter centers to strike approaching Israeli vehicles and disrupt an attack. A separate provision describes explosions intended to distract the force, redirect its attention and create smoke screens.

Those are distinct functions. Some devices would obstruct or attack the advancing force. Others would make it harder to understand what was happening and maintain focus on the objective.

The proposal also reaches beyond the shelter grounds.

Nearby buildings that Israeli troops might occupy or that overlook entrances and exits would be booby trapped. Anticipated routes of Israeli advance toward the centers would contain additional devices intended to provide warning and delay movement.

Taken together, the provisions describe an effort to shape the operation before Israeli forces reached their objective. The surrounding routes, nearby buildings and activity at the shelter would each become part of the response.

The evacuation arrangements address what Hamas personnel would do with the time those measures were intended to buy.

Making a way out

The document discusses preparing routes through the boundaries of shelter centers toward areas designated for withdrawal. Their intended users are identified as the leadership echelon and personnel.

The objective is to provide exits that the approaching force would not already know about.

That detail connects the document’s evacuation provisions to its diversions. Delaying an advance would create time. Distraction would draw attention elsewhere. Disorder among displaced people would complicate control of the scene. Prepared routes would give designated personnel somewhere to go.

The proposal is therefore broader than a list of explosive devices. It links the obstacles facing Israeli troops to the departure of the people those troops might be seeking.

Under the heading of securing shelter centers, the text describes how to protect that departure.

What the shelter center wording reveals

The Arabic term used throughout means “shelter centers.” It can refer to buildings and facilities accommodating displaced people, rather than only tent camps.

That distinction places the references to walls, nearby houses, entrances and exits in context. The document concerns shelter locations and their surroundings, with features that could be used to obstruct an approaching force or facilitate withdrawal.

It also makes the distinction between civilians and personnel especially important.

The document does not describe everyone inside a shelter as a Hamas member. It refers separately to displaced people, the leadership echelon and personnel designated for evacuation. Its proposed use of civilian disorder rests on precisely that separation.

The IDF said the document demonstrated Hamas’s willingness to endanger Gaza civilians to protect its leadership and operatives. The provisions it published describe military preparations around places of refuge, including a diversion whose intended effect involves the displaced people themselves.

The instruction against harming civilians in one passage does not extend into a general assurance that the surrounding measures would be safe. The wider proposal includes explosives, booby trapped buildings and disruption around occupied shelters.

A document from April 2024

The IDF places the document in April 2024. A handwritten notation on one page reads April 29, 2024, although the notation’s precise administrative purpose is not clear.

The pages carry handwritten comments alongside the typed proposals. Their closing instructions ask for discussion with battalion command and refer to brigade approval before the complete concept is supplied.

The released material records the proposed measures; it does not establish whether they were subsequently implemented.

That leaves the document’s significance in what it sets out: an approach to an anticipated Israeli operation in which the shelter area would serve several military purposes at once.

Eitan Fischberger highlighted the disclosure on X, drawing attention to its provisions concerning explosives and deliberate disorder around displaced civilians.

The proposal’s most revealing passage needs no inference about a later operation. It identifies confusion among people seeking refuge as an opportunity and explains who would use that opportunity to escape.