Hamas began building a terrorist infrastructure across Europe as early as 2019, including weapons caches, operatives and logistical networks intended to be activated when the organization gave the order.
Oded Eilam, a former senior Mossad official and researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Foreign Affairs and Security, said preparations were accelerated several months before the October 7 massacre.
Hamas operatives were reportedly instructed to retrieve weapons from concealed storage sites and prepare the networks for possible attacks.
According to Eilam, Israeli intelligence identified the infrastructure in real time and passed the information to European security services. That cooperation led to arrests and the disruption of parts of the planned network.