Al Jazeera Photo Shows Full Hamas Military Leadership in Last Major Meeting Before Oct. 7
Al Jazeera has released a previously unseen image of what’s described as the last high-ranking meeting of Hamas’s military leadership held years before the October 7 attack on Israel, showing the commander of the Al-Qassam Brigades, his deputy, and all five brigade heads. The picture offers a rare visual map of Hamas’s chain of command before the assault.
A newly published photograph of Hamas’s military wing is casting fresh light on how the group’s leadership was organized in the years leading up to the October 7 attack on Israel.
Al Jazeera has released an image described as showing the last high-ranking meeting of Hamas military officials, held multiple years before the assault. In the photo are the commander of the General Headquarters of the Al-Qassam Brigades, which is Hamas’s military wing, the deputy commander of the General Headquarters, and all five brigade commanders.
Those brigades cover the Northern area, Gaza City, the Central area, Khan Younis, and Rafah. Seeing all of these figures together in one frame gives analysts a clear visual of who held which position and how the senior leadership was structured across Gaza.
The photograph was taken well before October 7, so it doesn’t point to the exact timing or tactics of that day’s attack. It does, however, confirm that Hamas’s armed wing had a defined hierarchy with identifiable commanders responsible for different geographic sectors.
For intelligence and military services that track Hamas, an image like this can help refine assessments of who reports to whom and which individuals are central to planning and operations. Each person visible becomes easier to recognize in later footage and harder to misidentify.
The release also feeds ongoing scrutiny of how much was known, and by whom, about Hamas’s senior command in the years before the attack. If such a complete picture of the leadership existed in archival material, it raises questions about how it was used to judge Hamas’s capabilities and intentions.
The next developments to watch are whether additional information emerges that pinpoints when and where the meeting took place, any official comment from Israel or Hamas on the image, and whether more material surfaces that further clarifies the Al-Qassam Brigades’ leadership structure in the period before October 7.
Sources
- OSINT