Hamas planned to exhume the remains of British soldiers and hold them "prisoner," The Telegraph reported.
The plan was explained in detail in a seven-page document shared with The Telegraph by Israeli officials, and referred to British and Commonwealth troops who fought the Ottomans and were buried in Gaza in 1917.
Under the plan, Hamas would exhume the remains of these soldiers and then "blackmail" the British government for their return.
The document shared with the Telegraph was uncovered by the IDF on January 31, in a Khan Yunis compound linked to Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif. It is believed that the document dates from early October 2022, and was written in response to comments made by then-Prime Minister Liz Truss following her statements regarding moving the British Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
The demands to be met in exchange for release of the soldiers' bodies would have included at least one of the following: retraction of the statement on the Embassy move, evacuation of the soldiers' remains to cemeteries outside Gaza, or the retrospective payment of fees for the use of the cemeteries' land, dating back to 1917.
According to the document, if the British government fails to meet these demands, then the Gaza authorities will "act to remove all the corpses from the cemeteries and collect them in a special location by judicial order, declaring that the corpses are considered captive until a solution or deal is found."
"The British government will find itself in an embarrassing position in front of the British people, its political elite and its military if any country desecrates the corpses of its soldiers."
Israeli officials have stressed that the threat remains "real" despite the fact that the document predates Israel's current war with Gaza.
An Israeli official to the Telegraph that, "The tactic depicted in this document is intended to quite literally terrorize the people of the UK as a whole in order to influence political decisions. There is no way to rule out that Hamas will use this strategy or other similar ones to influence external affairs or anything within their agenda in the future."
The document stresses that Hamas would gain influence through "collecting the corpses and not handing them over to Britain until Britain intervenes with the Zionist entity."
However, Hugh Lovatt, a senior policy fellow at the Middle East and North Africa program at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said that he was not convinced the document was an official Hamas document, though he admitted that it was "no obvious forgery."
The Telegraph was not able to verify the document, but has verified that the translation is accurate, the news outlet said.