Israeli navy and intelligence officers have concluded {that a} vital variety of weapons utilized by Hamas within the Oct. 7 assaults and within the struggle in Gaza got here from an unlikely supply: the Israeli navy itself.
For years, analysts have pointed to underground smuggling routes to clarify how Hamas stayed so closely armed regardless of an Israeli navy blockade of the Gaza Strip. However latest intelligence has proven the extent to which Hamas has been in a position to construct lots 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 specialists and Israeli and Western intelligence officers. Hamas can be arming its fighters with weapons stolen from Israeli navy bases.
Intelligence gathered throughout months of preventing revealed that, simply because the Israeli authorities misjudged Hamas’s intentions earlier than Oct. 7, in addition they underestimated its potential 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 towards them. Israeli and American navy explosives have enabled Hamas to bathe Israel with rockets and, for the primary time, penetrate Israeli cities from Gaza.
“Unexploded ordnance is a essential supply of explosives for Hamas,” mentioned Michael Cardash, the previous deputy head of the Israeli Nationwide Police Bomb Disposal Division and an Israeli police advisor. “They’re reducing open bombs from Israel, artillery bombs from Israel, and a number of them are getting used, in fact, and repurposed for his or her explosives and rockets.”
Weapons specialists say that roughly 10 p.c of munitions usually fail to detonate, however in Israel’s case, the determine could possibly be larger. Israel’s arsenal consists of Vietnam-era missiles, lengthy discontinued by the US and different navy powers. The failure fee on a few of these missiles could possibly be as excessive as 15 p.c, mentioned one Israeli intelligence officer who, like others interviewed for this text, spoke on the situation of anonymity to debate intelligence issues.
By both rely, 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 lots of of missiles or rockets.
Hamas didn’t reply to messages in search of remark. The Israeli navy mentioned in an announcement 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 specialists and diplomats alike.
Israeli authorities additionally knew that their armories have been susceptible to theft. A navy report from early final 12 months famous that hundreds of bullets and lots of of weapons and grenades had been stolen from poorly guarded bases.
From there, the report mentioned, some made their approach to the West Financial institution, and others to Gaza by means of Sinai. However the report targeted on navy safety. The results have been handled virtually as an afterthought: “We’re fueling our enemies with our personal weapons,” learn one line of the report, which was considered by The New York Instances.
The results grew to become obvious on Oct. 7. Hours after Hamas breached the border, 4 Israeli troopers found the physique of a Hamas gunman who was killed outdoors the Re’im navy base. Hebrew writing was seen on a grenade on his belt, mentioned one of many troopers, who acknowledged it as a bulletproof Israeli grenade, a latest mannequin. Different Hamas fighters overran the bottom, and Israeli navy officers say some weapons have been looted and returned to Gaza.
A number of miles away, members of an Israeli forensic workforce collected one of many 5,000 rockets fired by Hamas that day. Inspecting the rocket, they found that its military-grade explosives had almost definitely come from an unexploded Israeli missile fired into Gaza throughout a earlier struggle, 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 varieties of weapons that Hamas is understood to smuggle into Gaza via tunnels. Iran stays a significant supply of Hamas’s cash and weapons.
However different weapons, like anti-tank explosives, RPG warheads, thermobaric grenades and improvised gadgets have 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 troublesome merchandise to smuggle into Gaza.
But Hamas fired so many rockets and missiles on Oct. 7 that Israel’s Iron Dome air-defense system could not keep up. Rockets struck cities, cities and navy bases, giving cowl to the militants who stormed into Israel. One rocket hit a navy base believed to deal with 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, proscribing the import of products, together with electronics and laptop gear, that could possibly be used to make weapons.
That blockade and a crackdown on smuggling tunnels main into and out of Gaza pressured Hamas to get inventive.
Its manufacturing talents at the moment are subtle 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 navy business in Gaza. A few of it’s above floor, a few of it’s beneath floor, and they’re able to manufacture a number of what they want,” mentioned Eyal Hulata, who served as Israel’s nationwide safety adviser and head of its Nationwide Safety Council earlier than stepping down early final 12 months.
One Western navy official mentioned that a lot of the explosives that Hamas is utilizing in its struggle with Israel seem to have been manufactured utilizing unexploded Israeli-launched munitions. One instance, the official mentioned, was an explosive booby trap that killed 10 Israeli troopers in December.
The navy wing of Hamas, the Qassam Brigades, has flaunted its manufacturing talents for years. After a struggle 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 items, permitting folks to securely return to their properties. In addition they assist Hamas gear up for the following struggle.
“Our technique aimed to repurpose these items, turning this disaster into a possibility,” a Qassam Brigades commander instructed Al Jazeera in 2020.
Qassam’s media arm has launched movies in recent times displaying precisely what they have 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 lots of of munitions on two World Battle I-era British navy vessels that had sunk off the coast of Gaza a century earlier. The invention, Qassam boasted, allowed it to make lots of of latest rockets.
Early within the present struggle, a Qassam video confirmed militants assembling Yassin 105 rockets in a sunless manufacturing facility.
“Essentially the most important method for Hamas to acquire weaponry is thru home manufacture,” mentioned Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Center East coverage analyst who grew up in Gaza. “It’s only a tweak of chemistry and you may make just about no matter you need.”
Israel restricts the mass importation of development 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 invaluable materials, Mr. Alkhatib mentioned.
Hamas can’t manufacture every part. 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 line with two Israeli intelligence officers, a minimum of a dozen small tunnels have been nonetheless working between Gaza and Egypt earlier than Oct. 7. A spokesman for the Egyptian authorities mentioned its navy had carried out 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 mentioned in an electronic mail.
However the besieged streets of Gaza itself are more and more a supply of weapons.
Israel estimates that it has carried out a minimum of 22,000 strikes on Gaza since Oct. 7. Every typically includes a number of rounds, which 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 might be left after this struggle,” mentioned Charles Birch, the pinnacle of the U.N. Mine Motion Service in Gaza. These “are like a free reward to Hamas.”
Vivian Yee contributed reporting from Cairo, and Zakaria Zakaria from Rotterdam, the Netherlands.