Where Is Hamas Getting Its Weapons? Increasingly, From Israel

Investment Analysis Clubs Macro Economic Trends and Risks
1

Israeli military and intelligence officials have concluded that a significant number of weapons used by Hamas in the Oct. 7 attacks and in the war in Gaza came from an unlikely source: the Israeli military itself.

For years, analysts have pointed to underground smuggling routes to explain how Hamas stayed so heavily armed despite an Israeli military blockade of the Gaza Strip. But recent intelligence has shown the extent to which Hamas has been able to build many of its rockets and anti-tank weaponry out of the thousands of munitions that failed to detonate when Israel lobbed them into Gaza, according to weapons experts and Israeli and Western intelligence officials. Hamas is also arming its fighters with weapons stolen from Israeli military bases.

Intelligence gathered during months of fighting revealed that, just as the Israeli authorities misjudged Hamas’s intentions before Oct. 7, they also underestimated its ability to obtain arms.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/28/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-weapons-rockets.html?searchResultPosition=1

3 Likes
2

OK, but I see no indications of tanks or artillery at Hamas. They have what is easily smuggled. Light weight. Or homemade from various sources such as unexploded ordinance. IEDs have always been made that way. And rockets seem to be made from smuggled parts or improvised equipment.

3 Likes
3

Yes you are correct. It really seems like David against Goliath in reverse. Hamas has only light weight weapons and home made missiles, but no jets or tanks. Israel has the world’s best weapons: jets, tanks, missiles, and nuclear weapons.

2 Likes
4

Sounds like Vietnam all over again. Fighting against guerrilla warfare takes a different approach. If militaries didn’t learn that from the 1960s and 1970s, they’re doomed to repeat the lesson.

Perhaps Israel needs to destroy the Gaza strip to save it? :grimacing:

–Peter

3 Likes
5

News that 10% of UN employees in Gaza participated in the Hamas attack on Oct 7 is devastating.

Hamas seems deeply ingrained in Palestinian culture. May be difficult to remove. And jihad–displacing non-Muslims from Muslim lands–seems a long term problem for Israel.

Sorting the Gaza population to identify Hamas participants has to be difficult. No different that finding Viet Cong in Viet Nam. Not easy. Not magic. Brutal.

3 Likes
6

If Vietnam lasted 3 or 4 years Americans would have been okay with it.

More to get rid of it.

For years I did not support that outcome but Hamas won’t work for anything else. Religious nuts.

1 Like
7

Let’s at least get the number right. It’s about 10 employees. I’ve seen numbers between 8 and 12. The UN has already fired most (or all) of the employees, with one being confirmed dead.

According to CBS, the UNRWA has about 13,000 workers in Gaza, so it’s no where near 10%. And they’re at a count of 12 workers, so roughly 0.1% of their workers.

Yes, this looks bad and is justifiably causing some backlash. But you’re not going to hire 13,000 workers in Gaza without some of them being sympathetic to Hamas.

What is really needed is for the UN or some slightly more independent group (independence is something sorely lacking in this area, so plenty of folks on both side are not going to be fully satisfied), and get back to the job of providing humanitarian aid to the residents of Gaza.

–Peter

4 Likes
8

Funny according to one person here nothing is happening for Gazans. No food, no water, no aid, no medicine…everyone is falling over dead as a result.

9

Not funny at all. Israel is digging it own grave of shame.

10

The haters going to hate.

Israel is used to it.

If there were another 50 Jewish states no one would care.

11

If those are their words, they are a bit of hyperbole - although that was quite true for a while. The no food, water, aid, medicine part anyway. For some time after Israel started their attack, the borders into Gaza were sealed. Only the tunnels were available for the smuggling of food and other supplies into Gaza.

A report I read or saw somewhere in the last day or two mentioned that about 100 truckloads of various goods per day have been getting into Gaza recently. But before October 7, something like 5 times that number crossed the borders daily. So yes, there is some food and water and medicines getting into Gaza. But no where near enough.

If that number does not increase soon, people will quite literally start dying of starvation. And that will put a chunk of weight on the side of the scales labeled “genocide.”

—Peter

1 Like
12

Not enough because the funders are not interested.

South Africa is probably a complete no-show.
Russia? Forget it.

The US and EU are funding Gaza. The US just cut off funds until the hostages are freed. That includes a ceasefire for a couple of months.

Hamas is too completely messed up in their heads to understand that much.

13

Famine in Gaza is being made ‘inevitable’, says UN rapporteur | Gaza | The Guardian.

The Gaza Strip is facing “inevitable famine” because of the decision by western countries to pause funding for the UN’s agency for Palestinian affairs after Israeli accusations that 12 of the group’s employees took part in the Hamas attack on 7 October last year.

Michael Fakhri, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, said on Sunday “famine was imminent” and now “inevitable”, in a comment following the news that the US and nine other countries were suspending additional funding to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA).

“This collectively punishes over 2.2 million Palestinians,” he said.

According to the UN secretary-general,AntĂłnio Guterres, 12 UNRWA staff members were identified by Israel, nine of which had been fired, one killed and the identities of two more were being checked. A UN investigation has been launched.

1 Like
14

Excuses the aid was cut as a stick to get a ceasefire and hostage deal.

1 Like