CNN –
The footage is from the last two years, but is shockingly prescient. In a December 2022 video, Hamas fighters are seen flooding a training area, firing rockets and capturing fake prisoners as they surround fake Israeli buildings.
As a CNN analysis shows, the camp had just been set up and was located very close to the Erez Crossing, the pedestrian crossing between Gaza and Israel that Hamas militants attacked last weekend in a bloody attack that killed over 1,200 people Israel was finally broken through.
Another video, taken more than a year ago, shows Hamas fighters practicing takeoffs, landings and attacks with paragliders – the same unusual attack mode that Hamas used to deadly effect in the same attack on October 7.
A CNN investigation analyzed nearly two years of training and propaganda videos released by Hamas and its allies to uncover months of preparation for last week’s attack. It found that militants were training for the attack at at least six locations across the Gaza Strip.
Two of those sites, including the dry training ground shown in the December video, were just over a mile from the most heavily fortified and patrolled section of the Gaza-Israel border. Of the remaining sites, one is in the central Gaza Strip and the other three are in the far south of the Gaza Strip.
Two years of satellite images, also reviewed by CNN, show no evidence of offensive Israeli military action against any of the six identified sites.
According to satellite images, not only has there been activity in the camps in recent months, but some camps have also taken up surrounding farmland, converting it from agricultural land to barren area for training over the past two years.
The shocking fallout from Hamas’s reckless invasion – in which militants kidnapped 150 people, overran Israeli military bases and devastated towns and farms – questions are being raised about the intelligence and operational failings of the Israeli security apparatus.
The fact that Hamas spent at least two years publicly preparing the attack raises further questions: Why was Israel, home to the most advanced military and espionage operation in the Middle East, unable to carry out the October 7 attack to pick up and stop?
When CNN reached out to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for comment, international spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus said the findings were “nothing new.”
He added that Hamas “had many training sites” and that the Israeli military had “attacked many training sites in the various rounds of escalation over the years.”
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Conricus noted that there had been no major escalation between Israel and Hamas in over two years, citing the outbreak of hostilities between Israel and Hamas in 2021. It followed weeks of tension in Jerusalem, where a group of Palestinians Families in East Jerusalem were threatened with eviction from their homes in favor of Jewish nationalists.
Conricus also said Hamas may have made the facilities “look civilian.”
However, five of the sites – the sixth is an airstrip – have no civilian features and are almost identical in their construction and layout.
They are all surrounded by massive earthen walls that are taller than the buildings in the camps. The buildings – most of which have no roof – are almost all made of cinder blocks and cement.
Some camps have gates and fences, while others have curbs but no paved roads.
When asked about the camps, Conricus said they couldn’t answer CNN’s questions “as they relate to the complex analysis of intelligence information at the same time we are fighting a war.”
“This issue, along with numerous other issues, will be examined by the IDF at the end of the war,” he added.
Senior Hamas official Ali Baraka, head of Lebanon-based Hamas National Relations Abroad, told RT Arabic after Saturday’s attack that the terrorist organization had been preparing for the attack for two years.
Metadata analyzed by CNN suggests Hamas conducted the training for months, sometimes over a year, before posting the propaganda montages on its social media channels.
The videos also foreshadow the events of October 7th.
In one clip, militants can be seen practicing take-offs, landings and attacks with paragliders. The metadata showed that the film was shot over a year ago. The shadows and position of the sun in the video also suggest that the training sessions filmed either lasted for hours or took place over several days.
During the Oct. 7 attack, paragliders took off at dawn near two training camps geolocated by CNN near the Gaza-Israel border.
The videos show that the same training launch site used by the paragliders was also used to test drones developed by Hamas itself. Metadata suggests that these tests took place months before the paraglider assemblies.
Propaganda videos also show Hamas terrorists practicing with the type of weapons they would use to attack on October 7th. They have constructed imitation Israeli buildings and roads and can be seen using various attack tactics on them.
At a training site several hundred meters from the Erez border crossing, a drawing of two palm trees and an animal figure resembling the insignia of the Israeli Erez border crossing battalion can be seen on the wall of a building.
The video shows them even practicing taking prisoners and tying their hands in the camp.
Satellite images show that the camp was built within the last year and a half.
In three of the training camps, they even made fake Israeli tanks consisting of what appeared to be a large outer shell surrounding a truck. Fighters can be seen practicing an attack against it, firing RPGs and other explosives.