If you, like the rest of us, have been wondering why, after having received the promised cash infusion from Qatar late last month, following four days of an intense war, Hamas and the Islamic Jihad have been heating up the front with the occasional rocket shot into Israel and with daily attacks using incendiary balloons, a senior Hamas official suggested it was all Israel’s fault.
More than two weeks after the entry of the Qatari money into the Gaza Strip, on Thursday morning, the senior Hamas official warned that “the situation will continue to escalate” if Israel does not implement the understandings reached at the end of the last round of confrontations in May.
“If the agreement is implemented, the situation will calm down,” the official said.
According to him, “We are not trying to sabotage what we have reached,” but the terrorist organizations in Gaza “do not feel that Israel respects the agreements, it just keeps postponing and postponing the implementation of the understandings regarding the entry of money into Gaza, increasing the fishing zone, and allowing the entry of dual-use materials into the Gaza Strip.”
Dual-use items have a primary commercial/civil application but also have the potential for weapons-making applications. The US Department of Commerce has listed the dual-use items, software, and technology it controls. This list is divided into ten broad categories, as follows (source: University of Oklahoma):
Nuclear
Materials, Chemicals, Microorganisms and Toxins
Materials processing
Electronics
Computers
Telecommunications and Information Security
Lasers and Sensors
Navigation and Avionics
Marine
Propulsion Systems, Space Vehicles and Related Equipment
Within each category, controlled items are divided into five groups, as follows:
Equipment, Assemblies and Components
Test, Inspection, and Production Equipment
Materials
Software
Technology
We should add to the list cement sacks which should go to the reconstruction effort in Gaza, but instead are being used to build terror tunnels into Israel.
This is the reason goods shipped to Gaza must first undergo a detailed inspection in Israel – if they were shipped by sea they are inspected at Ashdod harbor. Israeli customs officials discover each day violations of the ban on goods, and confiscate the items.