Al Jazeera has aired rare archival footage and documents on its program "The Hidden Is Greater" that it says show how Hamas prepared for the October 7, 2023 attack. One document, dated October 5, 2023, is presented as the final operational order, signed by Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif after a six-hour meeting. It reportedly set the start of the assault for 6:30 a.m., the same time the attack began two days later. The footage shows Deif alongside figures such as Yahya Sinwar and Ismail Haniyeh, in Gaza tunnels and operations rooms, going over maps, models of Israeli tanks, and rocket facilities. It is an unusually close look at the planning behind the deadliest attack in Israel's history.

The program also presented material from a February 2023 meeting, which it says points to about eight months of documented preparation by Hamas's senior military wing. Still, the documents and footage are shown as Al Jazeera presented them, and they have not been independently verified. Al Jazeera, a Qatari-owned network, is banned from operating in Israel, where officials accuse it of close ties to Hamas, and Israeli outlets reported that the commanders in the footage have since been killed. That leaves big questions: how the material reached the network, why it is being released now, and what it adds to what is already known about October 7.