Hamas has shifted from a Gaza-bound insurgency to a roaming international network, embedding operatives in Europe, building weapons caches, partnering with crime gangs, and eyeing Israeli and Jewish targets abroad as it hunts for leverage after October 7.
For years the shorthand on Hamas was simple, a militant organization contained by geography, locked in the cycle of confrontation in Gaza, sporadic violence in the West Bank, and ideological war with Israel. That convenient framing no longer fits. Evidence collected by European intelligence services and law enforcement, supported by Israeli threat assessments, shows a methodical expansion of Hamas operations beyond its borders. The organization has combined tactical patience, long term residency by trusted operatives, and relationships with organized crime to move from theoretical ambition to active preparation. The result is an external footprint that places weapons, logistics, and intent across several European states, with Jewish and Israeli targets named explicitly. This is not a rhetorical escalation, it is a structural one, and it is reshaping counterterrorism calculations from Berlin to Copenhagen, from Warsaw to Stockholm.
The inflection point was October 7, 2023, the Nukhba-led assault that breached the Gaza fence, attacked civilian communities and military sites, killed more than a thousand people, and dragged hundreds into captivity. The attack achieved tactical shock, then yielded strategic costs. Israel’s response degraded Hamas command nodes, tunnel infrastructure, and internal movement inside Gaza. The organization could no longer project strength only from its traditional base. In that vacuum Hamas leadership revisited an older aspiration, external operations, and accelerated a plan already seeded by years of preparatory work. The logic was brutal and clear. If Gaza becomes an attrition trap, shift pressure points abroad. If local networks are disrupted, activate assets with European documents and legal residency. If finance is constrained, route cash and kit through charities and criminal intermediaries. The group’s external posture became a hedge against losses at home and a lever to influence diplomacy abroad.
Germany and Denmark provided early windows into the shift. In Germany, suspects tied to Hamas were arrested with access to firearms traced to Scandinavian sources, their tasking explicit, acquire weapons and prepare for targeted violence against Israeli or Jewish institutions. The instruction chain ran to Hamas leaders in Lebanon, a detail that matters because it shows central guidance rather than freelance posturing. German prosecutors emphasized that these were not fringe sympathizers, they were foreign operators working under supervision, part of a network that had already scouted embassies, airports, and communal sites. Sweden surfaced repeatedly in the intelligence picture, both as a location for plots and as a waypoint in the weapons supply path. Poland and Bulgaria appeared as burial grounds for caches, an unglamorous but vital component of any campaign that aspires to act quickly inside Europe without telegraphing procurement in the open.
The Ibrahim Elrassatti case illustrates the operating model. Beginning in 2019, he traveled from Germany to Lebanon to receive instructions from the Qassam Brigades, then to Bulgaria to establish caches, then to Denmark to pull from prepositioned stashes. He photographed burial sites, transmitted coordinates, and maintained contact with handlers. His supervising officer, Khalil al Kharraz, served as a deputy commander for the Qassam Brigades in Lebanon, and when al Kharraz was killed in 2023, the network did not fold. Surviving commanders redirected communications and the searches for caches continued. That persistence reveals a deeper truth about Hamas external work, it is designed for continuity under attrition, leadership losses are assumed, replacements are ready, and logistics are dispersed enough to ride out arrests and airstrikes.
Denmark’s arrests in December 2023 added another feature, crime partnerships. Among those detained was a Danish national linked to Loyal to Familia, a gang with a reputation for trafficking and violence. The allegation was not a casual one, authorities said the conspirators sought drones for use in attacks in Denmark and possibly Sweden. Terror networks and crime gangs overlap for cold reasons, access to weapons, false documents, cash, and the ability to move people and goods without leaving tidy audit trails. For Hamas, which studies Iran’s Quds Force methods, cooperation with criminal intermediaries offers deniability, reach, and speed. For Europe’s police, it creates a moving target, because counterterrorism and anti gang tasking compete for resources and legal toolkits that do not always align.
Residency status is another lever. Several operatives identified by German and Dutch authorities held legal permits or citizenship. That confers mobility, reduces scrutiny, and supports the long term planning that external operations require. The cover can be legitimate employment, charity work, or study. The Al Israa charity in the Netherlands, designated by the United States as a Hamas front, represents how an ostensibly benevolent vehicle can blend community activity with illicit financing and facilitation. The pattern is familiar to analysts who track Hezbollah and Iran aligned entities in Europe, but its expansion in the Hamas context marks a qualitative change. The organization is no longer only smuggling rockets and mortars across borders in the Middle East, it is patiently wiring a European ecosystem of logistics, housing, transport, and finance that can be switched to operational mode when timing demands.
Timing is not random. Investigators described plots keyed to dates that maximize psychological effect, Jewish holidays, anniversaries of past wars, moments when security posture can be predicted. The Israeli National Security Council, anticipating those cycles, warned before the High Holidays that Hamas and Iranian networks were both active in planning attacks against Jewish and Israeli targets abroad. The wording was blunt, the group had expanded its activities beyond the war in Gaza to build infrastructure for attacks outside the region. Within days, German authorities moved on suspects preparing for targeted assassinations. In intelligence terms the sequence was textbook, warning, detection, interdiction, exploitation, but the broader signal was sobering, the number of thwarted plots suggested momentum, not isolated opportunism.
Lebanon sits at the center of command and control for this external arm. Names recur, Salah al Arouri before his death, Khalil al Kharraz, Azzam al Aqra, Samir Fandi, and a constellation of facilitators who bridge Hamas to Hezbollah and Iran’s Unit 3900. The mechanics are pragmatic. Lebanon offers proximity to Gaza and Israel for communications, contact with Iranian advisers, and liaison with Hezbollah’s logistics. The network coordinates caches, assigns targets, and manages couriers who can cross Europe without attracting the attention that a sudden arrival from the Middle East might draw. That is why caches were laid down in 2019 and revisited in 2023, continuity across calendars and crises is the whole point.
Why make this pivot now. Diminished capabilities in Gaza are one driver. Another is symbolic signaling, external plots advertise survival, create pressure on Israel’s diplomatic space, and generate narratives that Hamas can sell to supporters who crave proof that the movement can strike back. There is also the bargaining chip logic. If international operations can raise the costs for Israel and its allies, they become leverage in any indirect negotiation over truces or prisoner exchanges. Add the publicity value of an operation that lands in a European capital and the incentive structure is obvious, a single incident can dominate news cycles, impact diaspora communities, and force security reallocations that ripple across borders.
For European governments, the challenge is layered. There is the preventive piece, identifying the thin threads that connect a charity accountant in Rotterdam to a handler in Beirut, or the travel pattern that turns a student in Berlin into a courier in Warsaw. There is the legal piece, using available tools to preempt, because waiting for overt acts risks lives. There is the communal piece, protecting Jewish institutions that face renewed threat while also avoiding the stigmatization of Muslim communities who are not party to the plots and are often targets of the backlash. There is the alliance piece, synchronizing intelligence with Israel and the United States without importing the politics of the conflict into European streets. And there is the crime piece, where gang liaison commands sit beside terrorism units and try to map flows of guns and money that move faster than paperwork.
The keywords that now fill briefings are blunt, Hamas external operations, weapons caches in Europe, partnerships with organized crime, Hezbollah coordination, Iran facilitation, Unit 3900 logistics, drone procurement, assassination targeting, embassy surveillance, synagogue security, holiday threat windows, and long term residency exploitation. This is the vocabulary of a network that intends to stay. It is also the glossary of the counter network that must adapt, because the enemy inside is not the wartime image of masked men in tunnels, it is the quiet neighbor with a delivery job and a second phone, the charity treasurer who balances the books and pads a ledger, the traveler who takes buses instead of planes and photographs a tree line that hides a buried box.
History offers context. Hamas leaders have floated global threats before. Fathi Hammad in 2019 spoke to diaspora communities about striking Jews worldwide. Abdelaziz al Rantisi made similar noises in 2003. Jamal Akal’s arrest in Canada the same year showed training and intent. Yet the organization largely stayed local, firing rockets, digging tunnels, fighting street by street in Gaza. The post October 7 environment is different. The movement’s internal networks have been ruptured, external networks cultivated for years have matured, and allies in Iran and Hezbollah have an interest in widening the battlespace without inviting direct state attribution. The blend of crime partnerships and diaspora legal status adds a European texture that was missing in earlier eras. It is not the old model of clandestine cells that never leave safe houses. It is an everyday pattern of residency, employment, and travel that resists easy profiling.
Decision making inside Hamas remains opaque. Some analysts argue that the expansion reflects a strategic decision by the leadership cluster in Lebanon. Others suggest that the disruption of central command in Gaza has created semi autonomous commanders who act to maintain relevance and avenge losses. Israeli intelligence warns that decentralization increases unpredictability, a local commander with his own contacts in Scandinavia may push a plot even if senior leaders prefer to wait. That possibility complicates deterrence, because killing a senior official may not stop an operation already green lighted by a mid level planner with access to caches and a small team of legal residents.
Countermeasures are evolving. European services are mapping residency anomalies, re vetting charity registrations, and focusing attention on cross border road travel that skirts airport screening. Police are training with Jewish community security groups to harden schools and synagogues during holidays. Prosecutors are testing legal theories that treat coordination with foreign terrorist organizations as a prosecutable offense even before weapons are moved. Financial intelligence units are tracing small transfers that aggregate through front entities, knowing that a thousand euros wired twenty times can buy a pistol and a drone part without setting off alarms designed for larger sums. Aviation and base security have received targeted warnings given the appearance of sites like Berlin’s Tempelhof and the U.S. Ramstein air base in target lists. The work is tedious, the wins are rarely public, but the stakes are obvious.
Public understanding lags behind the operational reality. Many still read Hamas through the Gaza frame, as if geography confines ambition. That misread carries costs. It underestimates the resilience of a network that has learned to survive decapitations and demolitions. It overlooks the role of Iran and Hezbollah in offering mentorship, money, and communications support that shorten learning curves. It ignores the practical truth that Europe’s open societies and legal norms, which are strengths, also provide seams that disciplined adversaries can exploit. A more accurate public narrative uses grounded terms, Hamas external operations, European weapons caches, organized crime cooperation, Hezbollah liaison, and Iranian support, then backs them with examples and arrests rather than slogans.
For Israel, the external threat changes the security portfolio but not the core lesson. Defending at home now requires defending abroad, because deterrence must hold not only across the fence but across a continent. That means intelligence sharing that is fast and specific, not generic admonitions. It means recognizing that an arrest in Poznań can be as relevant to an Israeli school in Berlin as a checkpoint in Sderot is to a kibbutz. It means aligning cyber and physical surveillance so that a burner phone in Malmö can trigger attention in Tel Aviv before a plan matures. It means acknowledging diaspora vulnerability not as a footnote but as a central component of threat planning.
The humanitarian tragedy in Gaza exists alongside this security story. That dual reality will continue to animate politics in Europe and shape the information environment in which law enforcement operates. Extremists of all stripes will use anger and grief to recruit, and state aligned propagandists will try to muddy the facts around plots and arrests. The antidote is not rhetorical escalation, it is transparent public communication, timely community protection, and meticulous legal process. The goal is simple to say and hard to execute, prevent attacks, preserve liberties, and deny Hamas the narrative victory that comes from chaos.
The blunt conclusion is that Hamas has crossed a threshold in intent and preparation for international operations. The organization has invested in long term planning, in operatives with European residency and citizenship, in cooperation with organized crime, and in coordination with Hezbollah and Iran. It has prepositioned weapons in Poland and Bulgaria, probed targets in Germany and Sweden, and used Denmark as a procurement node. It has synchronized plans with symbolic dates to maximize impact. It has adjusted to leadership losses and continued to function. This is not posture, it is practice. The risk is not hypothetical, it is ongoing.
Keywords and key phrases belong in every paragraph of any serious analysis of this problem, Hamas global operations, Hamas in Europe, weapons caches in Poland and Bulgaria, Hamas and organized crime, Loyal to Familia link, Al Israa charity network, Hezbollah coordination, Iran Unit 3900 logistics, Nukhba forces October 7, Israeli embassy Berlin threat, Ramstein air base mention, Berlin Tempelhof appearance, Jewish holiday security, diaspora community protection, German police arrests, Danish drone procurement, Swedish plot reports, Polish searches for caches, command and control in Lebanon, leadership losses and continuity, decentralization risks, counterterrorism policy in the EU, charity regulation and terrorism finance, Schengen travel and road corridors, intelligence fusion with Israel, and synagogue hardening during high risk periods. These are not buzzwords to garnish a headline, they are the building blocks of an accurate picture of the challenge.
The strategic question now facing policymakers is whether Hamas external operations will become a permanent feature of its doctrine or a temporary expedient while Gaza burns. The weight of evidence points toward durability. The value of external pressure, the relative ease of embedding legal residents, the availability of crime partners, and the mentorship of Iran and Hezbollah all argue that the capability will not be abandoned casually. Even a negotiated pause would not erase caches or relationships. The prudent assumption for planners is continuity. Prepare for a world in which Hamas maintains a European toolkit, where prevention is the metric of success, and where the absence of attacks owes little to luck and much to patient, often invisible work.
There is nothing inevitable about success for Hamas. Plots are fragile things. They depend on logistics that can be interrupted, on communications that can be exposed, on couriers who make mistakes, on money trails that can be traced, on human egos that can be turned. European services have scored wins by exploiting each of those seams. Future wins will demand the same unglamorous pace. The point is not to dramatize an unstoppable foe. It is to describe a determined one, adaptive, coached by experienced allies, and seeking relevance abroad as it absorbs losses at home. Meeting that determination with equal steadiness is the task.
The lesson is straightforward. Hamas’ battlefield is no longer bounded by Gaza. Its operators have learned to live in Europe in plain sight, to store weapons in soil far from the strip, to call in favors from gangs when drones and guns are needed, to take cues from handlers in Lebanon, and to align violence with calendars that mean something to targeted communities. The organization’s leaders believe that such pressure buys them leverage at the bargaining table and prestige in the propaganda war. Whether that calculation pays off depends in part on how quickly and precisely Europe can adapt and how consistently allies share the load. What is certain is that the era of treating Hamas as a local problem is over. The network has already moved. Policy, policing, and public understanding must move with it.
