Political leader of Hamas says they were unaware of timing of planned attack on Israel

Mousa Abu Marzouk, a senior political leader of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, awoke Saturday morning to news of a bloodbath, Report informs via The New Yorker.

Hamas’s military commanders, who are based in Gaza, had been so determined to keep secret their plan for a pre-dawn invasion of Israel that they’d hidden the details and the timing of the offensive even from the organization’s political leaders—including Abu Marzouk, who lives in exile in Doha, Qatar.

He’d gone to sleep anticipating nothing, he told the New Yorker, in a phone interview.

"All of Hamas's leaders who are not military ones received the news early Saturday morning," Abu Marzouk said.

The claim was plausible: given the penetration of Israeli intelligence services and the surveillance typically surrounding exiled Hamas leaders, it would have been unwise to give Abu Marzouk foreknowledge of the assault.

"We were surprised by the date but not by the actions," Abu Marzouk said.