Hamas Preparing For War With Israel
The fact that Hamas risked digging a terror tunnel into Israel – as the IDF announced on Monday – shows that Gaza’s Islamist leaders are preparing for the possibility of war with the Jewish state.
Hamas has recently been weakened by successful Egyptian military actions to take out smuggling tunnels along the Egypt-Gaza border. It has not yet fully recovered from the massive damage inflicted by the IDF on the Islamic group’s militant infrastructure during the 2014 Israel-Gaza War. Hamas most likely does not want a war with Israel in the near future, fearing an Israeli military campaign can threaten its rule in Gaza.
However, there is a paranoid wing within the Hamas leadership that believes Israel will launch a confrontation in Gaza at some point to further minimize Hamas’s political and militant positions. And so Hamas seems to be prepping all fronts for a war that could break out tomorrow, next week, next month, or next year.
As part of this readiness campaign, Hamas apparently took the daring move to dig a tunnel into Israel.
The IDF did not discover weapons inside the tunnel and Hamas reportedly realized its tunnel was discovered at about the same time that the IDF found the tunnel opening in Israeli territory. Yet Hamas did not immediately use the tunnel to carry out an attack before the IDF could quickly react, further indicating that the tunnel is part Hamas’s preparations for a future battle and was not meant for an imminent terrorist attack.
Breitbart Jerusalem first reported last November that Hamas is in the process of building a sophisticated network of tunnels beneath the Gaza Strip, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the issue.
The underground tunnel infrastructure mirrors the network built by Hizbullah in Lebanon. The Iran-sponsored militia is known to have dug a vast underground tunnel complex replete with war rooms, internal communication lines, ventilation systems, and even missile silos.
Terrorists Likely In Possession Of MANPADs
The CIA believes that Mideast rebels have already obtained man-portable air-defense systems, or MANPADs, and the agency fears the weaponry could be acquired by terrorist groups and utilized against civilian aircraft.
This significant detail was contained in the 13th paragraph of a Wall Street Journal article reporting on CIA plans to possibly arm moderate Syrian rebels with more advanced weaponry if the truce in Syria continues to deteriorate and full-scale fighting resumes.
The Journal reported: “The CIA believes that rebels have obtained a small number of Manpads through illicit channels. Fearing these systems could fall into terrorists’ hands for use against civilian aircraft, the spy agency’s goal now is to prevent more of them from slipping uncontrollably into the war zone, according to U.S. and intelligence officials in the region.”
It is widely known that some Syrian rebel elements have already obtained and deployed MANPADs.
Earlier this month, a Syrian jet was reportedly shot down by rebels utilizing an antiaircraft missile. The event marks the second time the Syrian government said it was attacked in recent weeks by rebels deploying antiaircraft missiles. The Syrian military last month said one of its warplanes was shot down in western Syria in March.
This reporter has raised questions in the past about how the Mideast rebels may have obtained MANPADs. Did NATO-member Turkey, already in hot water for brazenly shooting down a Russian warplane, pass antiaircraft missiles to rebels as part of Ankara’s obsessive bid to counter the Syria-Russia axis? Turkey, concerned by Syria’s recent gains against the Islamic State and other rebel forces, is known to be one of the main suppliers of more extremist elements among the anti-Assad rebels.
There is also the possibility that antiaircraft weapons were obtained by Syrian rebels from elements that looted Moammar Khadafi’s reserves of of MANPADS. The largest terrorist looting of MANPADS took place immediately after the 2001 U.S.-NATO military campaign, strongly pushed by Hillary Clinton, that toppled Khaddafi’s regime in Libya.