Anti-tank missiles – particularly lethal – but also laser-guided missiles, shoulder-mounted grenade launchers, state-of-the-art sniper rifles, paragliders, rocket launchers, magnetic bombs, attack drones, mini-submarines, landmines, long-range rockets capable of attacking Haifa, to the north, Eilat, to the south, from the Strip: these are the weapons in the arsenal of Hamas which, as an analyst quoted by the Washington Post summarized, “has managed to arm itself to the teeth”. The time of the Intifada, in which Palestinians used stones and Molotov cocktails against Israel, has passed. Many of the weapons at the organization’s disposal were brought to the Strip through tunnels and by sea during the last decade, are remnants of the wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan, and also products from Iran and North Korea.
Other weapons were assembled at increasingly greater capacity within the Strip, in workshops in underground tunnels. Hamas’ military forces, around 30,000 men, are so well armed and well trained that their brigades resemble “regular forces”, as explained by Michael Milshtein, former head of the Palestinian department of the Israeli forces and analyst at the Dayan Center for Tel. Avive.
«There is nothing new or surprising about weapons. The biggest surprise is their quantity”, thus former Israeli intelligence officer, Avi Melamed and founder of the Inside the Middle East Institute, confirms that “the enemy is massively armed. We’re not talking about kids running around armed with a gun.” Anti-tank missiles deployed by Hamas include the North Korean Bulsae-2, a copy of the Soviet Fagot, the Russian-origin Rpg-7, as well as the North Korean version F-7, Russian Kornet and Konkurs missiles, the Iranian Raad, a version of the Soviet Malyutka. «A cocktail of foreign weapons that can complicate life even in the most technological army in an urban combat scenario. And let alone the Israeli forces penetrate Gaza, more anti-tank missiles will be used”, explained Behnam Ben Taleblu, from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington. Finally, if in 1967 Israel managed to defeat Egypt in six days with three divisions, now, with the same force, after a month in Gaza the results are very different.
Source: IL Tempo
John Cameron is a journalist at The Nation View specializing in world news and current events, particularly in international politics and diplomacy. With expertise in international relations, he covers a range of topics including conflicts, politics and economic trends.
