Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar delivered a message to Israel a few weeks before the October 7 massacre, Channel 12 News reported on Sunday.

According to the report, Sinwar’s message was that a flare-up was expected in the Israel prisons. The assessment in Israel was that the message was not intended to warn against riots in the prisons, but was a hint about the issue of the captives and the missing.

The message was defined as "sensitive", and was distributed in a limited way at the political and security level. It was estimated, according to the report by Yaron Avraham, that Sinwar was indeed trying to signal a development related to the prisoners and missing persons, but not of an attack.

According to the report, the explanation was that the Hamas leader meant that he would take control of the issue of Elizabeth Tsurkov, the Israeli researcher who was kidnapped in Iraq, and would demand that Israel free many terrorists in exchange for her release.

Why did Sinwar choose to deliver the message? One of the possibilities put forward by other sources is that Sinwar delivered the secret message to Israel following disagreements between him and Hamas military leader Mohammed Deif on the timing of the attack.