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JERUSALEM – Early in Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip, an anti-tank missile fired by Palestinian militants hit an armored personnel carrier and killed – by burns, shock or shrapnel – at least nine Israeli soldiers.
The Oct. 31 attack on Gaza’s sandy northern periphery represented the largest number of Israeli casualties in the ground war. It also demonstrated the evolution and expansion of Hamas’s firepower.
Where Israeli forces once faced stones and Molotov cocktails thrown by Palestinians, they now face weapons such as laser-guided rockets and anti-tank munitions. Hamas has “armed itself to the teeth,” said a military analyst.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are now in Gaza City, fighting Hamas above and below ground – among civilians, near hospitals, schools and mosques – in areas the IDF says are riddled with tunnels.
In Gaza’s tunnel network: places where Hamas can attack, flee and regroup
In such close quarters, Hamas fighters have shown off some of their improved arsenal: a staggering number of shoulder-fired grenade launchers and anti-tank missiles, military experts say. Many of the weapons were smuggled into Gaza via tunnels, land crossings and the sea over the last decade as a result of wars in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Sudan, and were also manufactured by Iran and even North Korea.
Variations of these weapons were also produced in Gaza in underground factories of increasing sophistication.
Analysts say Israel is closely monitoring the types of weapons Hamas possesses: advanced sniper rifles, paragliders, RPGs, “magnet bombs,” suicide bomber drones, mini-submarines, landmines, anti-tank missiles and the long-range missiles that… Now he can until to Haifa in the north near the Lebanese border and as far south as Eilat on the Red Sea, although still without much accuracy.
A month after the Gaza invasion began, Israel’s endgame remains a mystery
Hamas and its fighters – an estimated force of 30,000 or more – are so fully armed and well-trained that their brigades, which the United States designates as terrorist organizations, resemble “state armies,” said Michael Milshtein, a former Palestinian army chief Department of the IDF and senior analyst at the Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University.
As Milshtein observed the first two weeks of the ground invasion, he said, “There is actually nothing new or surprising about the weapons themselves. The biggest surprise is the quantity.”
Milshtein said Israel faces “a much more powerful Hamas.”
Despite the United States calling for further “humanitarian pauses” – and demanding a comprehensive ceasefire from regional powers – Israel shows no signs of stopping its offensive as its tanks surrounded several hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip on Friday, slamming medical facilities, where displaced people were housed came under fire.
Israeli army radio said tanks had surrounded several hospitals and demanded their evacuation, which doctors said was impossible and could be done safely.
Avi Melamed, a former Israeli intelligence official and founder of the Inside the Middle East Institute, said Israel will face “very challenging” conditions. “It’s a massively armed enemy,” he said, “not a bunch of little kids running around with guns.”
Hamas’s deployment of large numbers of anti-tank units is particularly worrying for the Israeli armed forces – so much so that the IDF appears to be focusing its intelligence on finding targets for air and ground forces to wipe them out.
Every few days, the IDF media office releases information about attacks and killings by its troops on Hamas anti-tank commanders. Hamas does not confirm the deaths of its operatives, so Israeli claims often cannot be independently verified.
Nevertheless, it is already clear that this war in Gaza is the deadliest compared to the fighting in 2009, 2012, 2014 and 2021.
According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, Israeli bombings and ground attacks have killed more than 11,000 people, including many women and children. On October 7, at least 1,200 Israelis were killed and 240 others were taken hostage in Hamas’s attack on farming communities, military bases and a rave concert along the Gaza border.
So far, 41 IDF soldiers have been killed in Gaza in the ground offensive, the Israeli military said.
In a May 2021 war, mostly between Hamas and Israel, Hamas anti-tank missile teams were able to launch attacks that killed military personnel and civilians – proving more effective than drone strikes, said Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. a think tank in Washington.
“Hamas drones and rockets were intercepted,” he said. “Their unmanned micro-submarines have been stopped. Cross-border tunnel workers were spotted.” But “their anti-tank troops broke through and landed attacks,” he said.
Anti-tank systems used by Hamas include the Bulsae-2, a North Korean copy of the Soviet-era Fagot; the RPG-7, also originally Russian; as well as a North Korean version called the F-7, military analysts said.
Other systems seen in Hamas videos in the past include the Russian-style Kornet and Konkurs, as well as the Iranian Raad, a version of the Soviet Malyutka.
“Taken together, this cocktail of foreign weapons can complicate even the most sophisticated armies in an urban combat scenario,” Taleblu said.
He added: “Expect more, not less, emphasis from Hamas on anti-tank weapons and anti-tank warfare as the IDF advances further into Gaza.”
Over the past decade, many of the anti-tank weapons were smuggled into Gaza through tunnels from Egypt’s Sinai Desert into the Gaza Strip and in trucks driving through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, the analysts said.
Yehoshua Kalisky, a weapons expert and senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, said the weapons could be dismantled and the individual parts hidden in food and aid shipments.
Of the anti-tank weapons Hamas has, some are manufactured in the Gaza Strip, such as the Tandem 85 warhead, said Amael Kotlarski, senior analyst and weapons expert at defense intelligence agency Janes. This type of projectile uses two charges to penetrate modern armored vehicles. These are Iran’s signature weapons, which were supplied to allied militants such as Hamas and used to devastating effect against US troops in Iraq.
Hamas’ propaganda arm has released numerous doctored images of militants firing rockets and missiles at Israeli vehicles. While the videos may show fiery explosions, it is sometimes unclear whether the impacts destroyed or damaged vehicles.
Israel has developed a defense system against these weapons, called the Trophy active protection system, said Ryan Brobst of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. It works by using radar to track incoming munitions and then intercepting them with its own defensive projectiles. It was largely successful. But — as with rocket fire against Israel’s Iron Dome air defenses — the Trophy system can be defeated by overwhelming it with large numbers of projectiles or projectiles fired at close range, Brobst said.
What is noteworthy, according to Brobst, is that the US Army received Trophy systems for its Abrams tanks in 2019 and used them in Europe.
Kalisky, the Israeli analyst, said that in the 1967 Israeli-Arab War, Israel needed three divisions in Sinai to defeat the Egyptian army in six days. Now the IDF has been using the same forces in Gaza for almost a month, with very different results.
“This is a different war. It is a very difficult war,” he said. “You’re equipped.”
Sudilovsky reported from Jerusalem and Nakashima and Horton from Washington. Hazem Balousha in Cairo contributed to this report.
Israel-Gaza war
Israeli tanks surrounded crowded hospitals in Gaza City on Friday amid explosions and shells falling. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel is not trying to “occupy Gaza,” marking a change in tone from his earlier comments that set off alarm bells in the Biden administration. Understand what is behind the Israel-Gaza war.
Hostages: According to official figures, Hamas militants kidnapped around 239 hostages in a well-organized attack. Four hostages – two Americans and two Israelis – have been released as families remain hopeful. A released Israeli hostage told of the “spider web” of the Gaza tunnels where she was held.
Humanitarian aid: The Palestinian Red Crescent said it received over 370 trucks of food, medicine and water into the Gaza Strip through the Egyptian Rafah border crossing. However, the PRCS said there is still no approval to import fuel to run the enclave’s hospitals, water pumps, taxis and more.
Israeli-Palestinian conflict: The Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip has a complicated history and its rulers have long been at odds with the Palestinian Authority, the U.S.-backed government in Gaza West Bank. Here is a timeline of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.