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Israeli army and intelligence officers have concluded {that a} important variety of weapons utilized by Hamas within the Oct. 7 assaults and within the battle in Gaza got here from an unlikely supply: the Israeli army itself.
For years, analysts have pointed to underground smuggling routes to clarify how Hamas stayed so closely armed regardless of an Israeli army blockade of the Gaza Strip. However latest intelligence has proven the extent to which Hamas has been in a position to construct a lot of its rockets and anti-tank weaponry out of the hundreds of munitions that didn’t detonate when Israel lobbed them into Gaza, based on weapons consultants and Israeli and Western intelligence officers. Hamas can be arming its fighters with weapons stolen from Israeli army bases.
Intelligence gathered throughout months of preventing revealed that, simply because the Israeli authorities misjudged Hamas’s intentions earlier than Oct. 7, additionally they underestimated its skill to acquire arms.
What is obvious now’s that the very weapons that Israeli forces have used to implement a blockade of Gaza over the previous 17 years at the moment are getting used in opposition to them. Israeli and American army explosives have enabled Hamas to bathe Israel with rockets and, for the primary time, penetrate Israeli cities from Gaza.
“Unexploded ordnance is a predominant supply of explosives for Hamas,” stated Michael Cardash, the previous deputy head of the Israeli Nationwide Police Bomb Disposal Division and an Israeli police advisor. “They’re chopping open bombs from Israel, artillery bombs from Israel, and lots of them are getting used, after all, and repurposed for his or her explosives and rockets.”
Weapons consultants say that roughly 10 % of munitions usually fail to detonate, however in Israel’s case, the determine may very well be increased. Israel’s arsenal contains Vietnam-era missiles, lengthy discontinued by america and different army powers. The failure price on a few of these missiles may very well be as excessive as 15 %, stated one Israeli intelligence officer who, like others interviewed for this text, spoke on the situation of anonymity to debate intelligence issues.
By both depend, years of sporadic bombing and the latest bombardment of Gaza have littered the world with hundreds of tons of unexploded ordnance simply ready to be reused. One 750-pound bomb that fails to detonate can turn into a whole lot of missiles or rockets.
Hamas didn’t reply to messages looking for remark. The Israeli army stated in a press release that it was dedicated to dismantling Hamas however didn’t reply particular questions in regards to the group’s weapons.
Israeli officers knew earlier than the October assaults that Hamas may salvage some Israeli-made weapons, however the scope has startled weapons consultants and diplomats alike.
Israeli authorities additionally knew that their armories had been weak to theft. A army report from early final yr famous that hundreds of bullets and a whole lot of weapons and grenades had been stolen from poorly guarded bases.
From there, the report stated, some made their approach to the West Financial institution, and others to Gaza by the use of Sinai. However the report targeted on army safety. The implications had been handled nearly as an afterthought: “We’re fueling our enemies with our personal weapons,” learn one line of the report, which was seen by The New York Instances.
The implications turned obvious on Oct. 7. Hours after Hamas breached the border, 4 Israeli troopers found the physique of a Hamas gunman who was killed exterior the Re’im army base. Hebrew writing was seen on a grenade on his belt, stated one of many troopers, who acknowledged it as a bulletproof Israeli grenade, a latest mannequin. Different Hamas fighters overran the bottom, and Israeli army officers say some weapons had been looted and returned to Gaza.
A number of miles away, members of an Israeli forensic crew collected one of many 5,000 rockets fired by Hamas that day. Inspecting the rocket, they found that its military-grade explosives had most probably come from an unexploded Israeli missile fired into Gaza throughout a earlier battle, based on an Israeli intelligence officer.
The Oct. 7 assaults showcased the patchwork arsenal that Hamas had stitched collectively. It included Iranian-made assault drones and North Korean-made rocket launchers, the sorts of weapons that Hamas is thought to smuggle into Gaza by way of tunnels. Iran stays a serious supply of Hamas’s cash and weapons.
However different weapons, like anti-tank explosives, RPG warheads, thermobaric grenades and improvised units had been repurposed Israeli arms, based on Hamas movies and remnants uncovered by Israel.
Rockets and missiles require enormous portions of explosive materials, which officers say is essentially the most tough merchandise to smuggle into Gaza.
But Hamas fired so many rockets and missiles on Oct. 7 that Israel’s Iron Dome air-defense system couldn’t sustain. Rockets struck cities, cities and army bases, giving cowl to the militants who stormed into Israel. One rocket hit a army base believed to accommodate a part of Israel’s nuclear missile program.
Hamas as soon as relied on materials like fertilizer and powdered sugar — which, pound for pound, usually are not as highly effective as military-grade explosives — to construct rockets. However since 2007, Israel has enforced a strict blockade, limiting the import of products, together with electronics and pc tools, that may very well be used to make weapons.
That blockade and a crackdown on smuggling tunnels main into and out of Gaza compelled Hamas to get inventive.
Its manufacturing skills at the moment are refined sufficient to noticed into the warheads of bombs weighing as much as 2,000 kilos, to reap the explosives and to repurpose them.
“They’ve a army business in Gaza. A few of it’s above floor, a few of it’s under floor, and they can manufacture lots of what they want,” stated Eyal Hulata, who served as Israel’s nationwide safety adviser and head of its Nationwide Safety Council earlier than stepping down early final yr.
One Western army official stated that many of the explosives that Hamas is utilizing in its battle with Israel seem to have been manufactured utilizing unexploded Israeli-launched munitions. One instance, the official stated, was an explosive booby entice that killed 10 Israeli troopers in December.
The army wing of Hamas, the Qassam Brigades, has flaunted its manufacturing skills for years. After a battle in 2014 with Israel, it established engineering groups to gather unexploded munitions like howitzer rounds and American-made MK-84 bombs.
These groups work with the police’s explosive ordnance-disposal models, permitting individuals to soundly return to their properties. In addition they assist Hamas gear up for the following battle.
“Our technique aimed to repurpose these items, turning this disaster into a chance,” a Qassam Brigades commander informed Al Jazeera in 2020.
Qassam’s media arm has launched movies lately displaying precisely what they had been doing: sawing into warheads, scooping out explosive materials — often a powder — and melting it all the way down to reuse.
In 2019, Qassam commandos found a whole lot of munitions on two World Warfare I-era British army vessels that had sunk off the coast of Gaza a century earlier. The invention, Qassam boasted, allowed it to make a whole lot of latest rockets.
Early within the present battle, a Qassam video confirmed militants assembling Yassin 105 rockets in a sunless manufacturing facility.
“Probably the most important method for Hamas to acquire weaponry is thru home manufacture,” stated Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Center East coverage analyst who grew up in Gaza. “It’s only a tweak of chemistry and you can also make just about no matter you need.”
Israel restricts the mass importation of building supplies that can be utilized to construct rockets and different weapons. However every new spherical of preventing leaves behind neighborhoods of rubble from which militants can pluck pipes, concrete and different beneficial materials, Mr. Alkhatib stated.
Hamas can’t manufacture all the things. Some issues are simpler to purchase from the black market and smuggle into Gaza. Sinai, the largely uninhabited desert area between Israel, Egypt and the Gaza Strip, stays a hub for arms smuggling. Weapons from conflicts in Libya, Eritrea and Afghanistan have been found in Sinai, based on Israeli intelligence assessments.
In response to two Israeli intelligence officers, a minimum of a dozen small tunnels had been nonetheless operating between Gaza and Egypt earlier than Oct. 7. A spokesman for the Egyptian authorities stated its army had accomplished its half to close down tunnels on its facet of the border. “Most of the weapons presently contained in the Gaza Strip are the results of smuggling from inside Israel,” the spokesman stated in an electronic mail.
However the besieged streets of Gaza itself are more and more a supply of weapons.
Israel estimates that it has performed a minimum of 22,000 strikes on Gaza since Oct. 7. Every usually entails a number of rounds, that means tens of hundreds of munitions have seemingly been dropped or fired — and hundreds didn’t detonate.
“Artillery, hand grenades, different munitions — tens of hundreds of unexploded ordnance will likely be left after this battle,” stated Charles Birch, the pinnacle of the U.N. Mine Motion Service in Gaza. These “are like a free present to Hamas.”
Vivian Yee contributed reporting from Cairo, and Zakaria Zakaria from Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
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