The Gazan terrorist group, far from deterred, is already preparing for another round of fighting, says military reporter.
By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
Far from being deterred, Hamas is using the current ceasefire period to rearm and rebuild so it can attack Israel again, Yediot Ahronot reported Tuesday.
Thousands of terrorists have returned to central and northern Gaza, where they had been hiding in refugee camps and preserving their weapons on orders from their top command “once they realized Hezbollah had abandoned [Hamas],” wrote military reporter Yoav Zitun.
The Lebanese Iranian proxy did not try a mass invasion of Israel after the Hamas massacres of October 7, 2023, contenting itself with showing support by firing over 10,000 missiles, rockets, and UAVs at northern Israel over the 15 months of war.
The terrorists could move freely among the hundreds of thousands of civilians who started walking back to their hometowns right after the ceasefire began last month, since Israel quickly abandoned the Netzarim Corridor that had divided the Strip roughly in half.
Only those going north by car are inspected by security contractors as to their identities and belongings.
According to Zitun, these fighters found “many hundreds of terrorists” who had never left Gaza City and its environs over the course of the war.
Together, they have reconstituted themselves into new companies and battalions and staffed them with new commanders, he wrote.
While the flow of arms from outside has been halted due to the IDF’s presence on all sides of the coastal enclave, especially on the Philadelphi Corridor at the Egyptian-Gazan border, the terror organization has found an “inside” source, the report added.
“Hamas has gathered, over the last month, a large amount of explosives from the arsenal of the IDF after it retreated,” Zitun wrote, “enabling it to booby-trap areas with bombs and create new weapons for its forces.”
In January 2024, The New York Times reported that Israeli investigators had found that military-grade contents of Hamas rockets came from unexploded ordnance fired by the Israeli air force in earlier rounds of clashes in Gaza.
According to Yediot Ahronot, the group is also repairing tunnels that the IDF damaged and preparing those that were not found, including for offensive purposes.
The terrorists have also both set up stationary cameras and begun using drones for observation purposes in many central points in the Strip in an attempt to rebuild its intelligence capabilities.
In addition, the report said, “Hamas has managed to locate and re-aim not a few rocket launchers” that the IDF did not find and destroy during the war.
Perhaps to send a message that it is still capable of doing so, they have fired four rockets towards Israel in the last week, although they did no damage, having been shot down or falling within the Strip.
In another sign that it has not been deterred, Zitun noted, Hamas has renewed its civilian governance of the Strip, providing municipal services and collecting taxes from the distribution of food and fuel aid that Israel brings in, in order to pay its members’ salaries.”
The IDF, he concluded, is finalizing its own preparations for another widespread land and air operation, knowing that while Hamas has been greatly damaged, “there is still a lot of work to do to finish it off militarily.”