Hamas Official Says Terror Group ‘Would Do Oct. 7 Attack Again’ if Possible to Go Back in Time

Hamas would carry out its brutal Oct. 7 invasion of and massacre across southern Israel again if it could travel back in time, according to the Palestinian terrorist group’s representative in Lebanon.

“We would do it again!” Ahmad Abd Al-Hadi said with a smile in an interview last week with Lebanon’s Annahar newspaper when asked whether Hamas would repeat its onslaught. “If we could go back in time, we would do it again, because the justifications still exist.”

The interview was flagged by the Middle East Media Research Institute, which translated and posted Al-Hadi’s comments.

“Why am I saying that we would do it again? Because what made us do it is very important and strategic,” the Hamas official explained. “It is not something that we could remain silent about … The Palestinian cause was about to be eliminated, by means of normalizing of relations at the expense of the Palestinian rights.”

Al-Hadi appeared to be referring to the idea of Israel and Saudi Arabia normalizing relations.

Before Oct. 7, the prospect of reaching a historic peace deal between the two longtime foes appeared possible. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman said in an interview in September, weeks before the onslaught and ensuing war in Hamas-ruled Gaza, that “every day we get closer” to a normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia. As part of the process, Bin Salman hoped to “ease the life of the Palestinians” and seemed willing to shelve the issue of Palestinian statehood in favor of an agreement with the US on the use of nuclear material and a weapons deal.

While such conversations have reportedly resumed in recent weeks, Saudi officials have said a normalization deal must now include an “irreversible path” to Palestinian statehood, fearing backlash. According to reports, Bin Salman, the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia, fears being branded a “traitor” to the Palestinian cause amid Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, potentially undermining the kingdom’s legitimacy as the leader of the Islamic world.

Many analysts have argued that Iran, which backs Hamas and is its chief international sponsor, intentionally torpedoed the Israel-Saudi normalization process with the Oct. 7 attack on the Jewish state. Leaders of both Iran and Hamas have repeatedly said they seek Israel’s destruction.

Beyond preventing normalization, Al-Hadi also accused Israel of planning a “preemptive” military strike in Gaza without providing evidence.

“They saw the resistance in Gaza, and … they planned to launch a preemptive strike against it, so that it would not interfere with these plans of theirs, and in particular the plan that is connected to Gaza: the Ben Gurion Canal project,” he said.

The Ben Gurion Canal project is an ambitious proposal conceived by some Israelis in the 1960s to construct a canal connecting the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, thereby giving Israel more control over key shipping lanes. There is no evidence that the Israeli government intends to build the canal, especially through Gaza. However, critics of Israel, especially in Arab media, have hurled the accusation at the Jewish state to undermine the Israeli military campaign against Hamas, portraying it as a decision for economic gain rather than security reasons following Oct. 7.

Al-Hadi is not the first member of Hamas to publicly call for more Oct. 7-style attacks on Israel.

Less than three weeks after the atrocities, a Hamas official promised that the Palestinian terrorist group will repeat its massacre of Israelis “again and again” to bring about the Jewish state’s “annihilation.”

Ghazi Hamad, a member of Hamas’ political bureau and a spokesman for the Iran-backed terror organization, told Lebanon’s LBC TV in an Arabic language interview on Oct. 24 that Israel “must be finished.”

“We must teach Israel a lesson, and we will do this again and again,” Hamad said. “[The Oct. 7 massacre] is just the first time and there will be a second, a third, a fourth … the occupation must come to an end.”

Asked if by ending “the occupation” he meant the “annihilation” of Israel, Hamad replied, “Yes, of course.”

On Oct. 7, Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped over 250 others as hostages during their surprise invasion of the Jewish state. It was the biggest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Mounting evidence has revealed that the terrorists perpetrated systematic sexual violence against the Israeli people, including mass rape and torture.