Yahya Sinwar was the Hamas leader in Gaza before the October 7 attack. In John Kiriakou’s telling, drawing on a 2026 Haaretz investigation, the sequence from Sinwar’s own words to the assault ran through a Fatah intermediary code-named Coal Eyes, and turned on a single Arabic word.
The secret negotiations
In 2023, Israel and Hamas were engaged in secret talks. “Neither side particularly wanted the world to know that they were talking. There’s a downside for your own constituencies if it were to be public information.” The chosen intermediary, Coal Eyes, was “reportedly trusted by both Hamas and by Shin Bet” and came from Fatah, “the more moderate secular Palestinian political party.” His job was to “carry messages back and forth between the two sides, allowing Hamas and Israel to negotiate without officially negotiating.”[1][2]
The proposals under discussion were substantial: easing Gaza restrictions, food and raw-material shipments, cross-border trade zones with Egyptian access, natural gas, freedom of movement, and, the hardest issue, prisoners and hostages. Sinwar had initially demanded hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for two live Israeli civilians and the bodies of two soldiers.[3][4]
The walkout
By the summer of 2023, “the two sides had dramatically narrowed the gap. They were close to an agreement.” But Netanyahu, though he had approved releasing 30 Palestinian prisoners, kept delaying meetings of a hostage committee required by Israeli law to give final approval. The delays overlapped with the mass protests against Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul.[5][6]
Sinwar read the delays as bad faith. In early September 2023 he cut off all contact with the negotiating team. As Kiriakou quotes the Shin Bet official: “Sinwar vanished. Sinwar evaporated.”[7][8]
The word zilzal
One month before October 7, Sinwar arranged a private meeting with Coal Eyes and said: “Tell the Israelis that if they don’t make progress, I’m preparing a huge surprise for them.” Then, “here Sinwar dropped a key word for the first time, one that should have triggered red flags”, he added: “Tell them to expect a zilzal.” The word means earthquake.[8][9]
At a second meeting, told that no warning had been passed, Sinwar “took a deep breath and in a chillingly quiet voice” said: “Convey a message to them that I am preparing the mother of all surprises, a terrifying operation, something extraordinary.” He again “rolled the word zilzal earthquake off of his tongue” and asked that the message be conveyed “word for word.”[10]
The MBZ advisor who took the debrief concluded, per Kiriakou’s paraphrase: “By the end of the meeting, I understood that neither Kholani nor I had erred in understanding the message. Sinwar intended to go to war.”[11]