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ASHKELON, Israel — A Hamas subject guide obtained by The Washington Put up and different paperwork discovered within the wake of the group’s brutal assault on Israel two weeks in the past illustrate a few of its army capabilities and preparations for close-in, bloody killing.
The guide, dated final yr and located on the physique of a Hamas fighter, lists directions on working sure weapons, identifies vulnerabilities in Israeli army gear and provides recommendations on killing with a knife. The doc seems to have been ready for various models of Hamas’s elite Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, together with anti-armor, engineering, sniper, infantry and tunnel specialists in addition to what the booklet describes as “shock troops.”
“This can be a secret army doc,” the primary web page begins. “It ought to be stored in a secure place. It’s forbidden to maneuver with it besides when there are orders.”
On its again cowl is an image of the Palestinian sheikh Abdullah Azzam, a mentor of Osama bin Laden. “If that is their supply of inspiration, and that is the determine, the image, they’re , I perceive one thing extra about their conduct on Oct. 7,” stated Michael Milshtein, a former head of the Palestinian division in Israeli army intelligence, referring to the date of the assault that left 1,400 Israelis useless. Milshtein examined the sector guide on the request of The Put up.
Consultants, together with Milshtein, stated the guide seemed to be real and matches a cache of different paperwork gathered by Israeli forces and first responders following the assault. The Israeli prime minister’s workplace has verified 17 pages of paperwork for The Put up. Some paperwork, together with the sector guide, weren’t supplied for verification due to figuring out marks that would determine who first discovered them and gave them to The Put up.
How Hamas’s rigorously deliberate Israel assault devolved right into a chaotic rampage
Others Hamas paperwork have included maps and detailed plans for assaults on a number of particular person kibbutzim round Gaza, together with the intention to kill and kidnap civilians.
The doc obtained by The Put up supplied steering on working weapons that they’re recognized to have carried and likewise supplied detailed descriptions on the vulnerabilities of Israeli tanks and armored autos. Included, as an illustration, are directions for utilizing North Korean F-7 rocket-propelled grenades, which Pyongyang has denied supplying to Hamas. Round 50 of the high-explosive munitions had been discovered by Israeli troops following the assaults, in line with the army, which has displayed among the materiel it discovered.
Hamas officers in Gaza and Beirut didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Hamas’s secretive army wing al-Qassam is estimated to have a constructed a pressure of anyplace between 15,000 and 40,000 combat-ready fighters — 1,200 of whom it has stated had been concerned within the Oct. 7 assault.
In earlier years when tunnels had been open to Egypt, Hamas might simply smuggle in explosives and rockets to Gaza, stated Mkhaimar Abusada, an analyst at Gaza’s Al-Azhar College. However Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi has clamped down on smuggling routes.
“Actually I don’t know the way they’ve stored up their potential to construct this army functionality,” Abusada stated, noting the safety perimeter round Gaza. Members of al-Qassam’s elite Nukhba particular forces that spearheaded the assault are recognized to have been skilled in Iran and have returned to Gaza to coach others, he stated.
What a floor battle in Gaza might appear like
Militants used paragliders, motorbikes and vans to cross the border fence from Gaza into Israel, and small specialised models attacked Israeli communities, in step with the directions within the handbook.
“We noticed they’re working as skilled troops,” stated Maj. G, a commander of the Israeli Institute for Weapons Analysis on Friday, as he displayed weapons that had been seized from Hamas. The foremost might solely be recognized by his rank and first title underneath guidelines set by the Israeli briefers. “They labored very particularly. It was very organized. One automobile is IED, one automobile was RPGs, one automobile was a command workforce.”
The directions for “shock troops” additionally included the very best locations to stab somebody, in line with the sector guide obtained by The Put up. The “neck within the collarbone space,” “backbone” and “underarms” are listed.
Aymenn al-Tamimi, an knowledgeable with the Center East Discussion board who has extensively studied paperwork recovered from battlefields in Iraq and Syria agreed that it appeared real. “It wouldn’t be shocking for paperwork like this to be within the possession of fighters,” he stated.
The Israeli army says a whole bunch of paperwork and different materials have been collected by the Intelligence Directorate and the Yahalom fight engineering unit, together with Hamas cellphones, communication gear, cameras and intelligence stories.
Many paperwork have emerged in a Telegram channel known as South First Responders, which compiles proof gathered within the aftermath of the assaults by these clearing the areas. The group declines to reply questions on its strategies for gathering paperwork and materials — citing dangers to sources.
Those that have labored to take away the our bodies of a whole bunch of Palestinian militants killed within the assault say that corpses are first checked over by bomb squads to ensure there are not any hidden explosives.
“They got here with the whole lot, absolutely outfitted, with paperwork, maps and directions,” stated Yossi Landau, a front-line responder with the Zaka medical group, which has been working to take away our bodies.
One 14-page doc partially posted by South First Responders and verified by Israeli authorities outlined assault plans for Mefalsim, a small kibbutz of 1,000 folks that managed to flee comparatively unscathed from the assault. Kibbutz safety fought off a bunch of round 30 militants armed with grenades and AK-47s on the entrance gate.
The doc particulars the scale of the Kibbutz safety workforce, the variety of minutes it might take to journey between numerous factors locally and the objective to “take troopers and civilians as prisoners and hostages and negotiate their launch.”
In line with 4 further pages obtained by The Put up, the workforce on the entrance gate was purported to distract the Kibbutz safety pressure whereas a Hamas explosives unit blew a gap within the again gate.
“The group retains the Kibbutz busy till the remainder of the forces arrive,” the planning doc stated. However the reinforcements by no means arrived, in accordance to people who fought within the Kibbutz.
“They knew the place the gates had been, they knew the place the mills had been to chop the electrical energy,” stated Yarden Reskin, a panorama architect and volunteer on the safety workforce on the kibbutz. Wanting on the assault plans, and the loss of life toll in surrounding communities: “We do really feel like we had quite a lot of luck,” he stated. “We did our half, we did it good, however we had quite a lot of luck.”
Hendrix reported from Jerusalem.