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.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
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.
By either count, years of sporadic bombing and the recent bombardment of Gaza have littered the area with thousands of tons of unexploded ordnance just waiting to be reused.
But other weapons, like anti-tank explosives, RPG warheads, thermobaric grenades and improvised devices were repurposed Israeli arms, according to Hamas videos and remnants uncovered by Israel.
Qassam’s media arm has released videos in recent years showing exactly what they were doing: sawing into warheads, scooping out explosive material — usually a powder — and melting it down to reuse.
In 2019, Qassam commandos discovered hundreds of munitions on two World War I-era British military vessels that had sunk off the coast of Gaza a century earlier.
“The most essential way for Hamas to obtain weaponry is through domestic manufacture,” said Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Middle East policy analyst who grew up in Gaza.
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