Hamas is now so depleted of weapons it has reportedly been forced to recycle missile waste left over from unexploded Israeli munitions, while the militant group has also recruited 30,000 barely trained youths to replenish its troops. The Saudi Arabia based al-Hadath news site reports that Hamas’s military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, was running out of drones and long-range missiles and was instead using the missile waste to manufacture ground-based explosive devices and other improvised weapons. Palestinian sources told al-Hadath the organisation had recruited 30,000 young people who had previously received training in Hamas’s secret military camps. However, the sources said the new recruits had received only basic training in “guerrilla warfare,” rocket fire, and planting explosives. The Jerusalem Post also reports that Hamas has lost so many troops it has been forced to recruit untrained minors into the organisation’s ranks.
The latest news of Hamas’s weakened status comes with the military organisation now so short of cash it can’t pay its fighters, while even senior Hamas fighters and political staff are receiving only half their usual pay. Israel last month cut off supplies of aid to the enclave, some of which Hamas had been seizing and selling to raise funds, according to Arab, Israeli and Western officials. The Israel military’s renewed offensive in the second stage of the Gaza war has targeted and killed Hamas officials who played important roles in distributing cash to cadres and sent others into hiding, Arab intelligence officials said. In recent weeks, the Israeli military has said it killed a money changer who was key to what it called terrorist financing for Hamas as well as a number of top political officials in rapid succession, The Wall St Journal reports. Meanwhile the powerful clans who run the enclave and have previously worked with Hamas appear to have turned against the group, with Israeli TV reporting that some clan leaders had been seen in recent protests calling for the terror organisation to leave Gaza.
The shortfalls in cash, weapons and men signal widening fractures in the militant group as it contends with a more aggressive Israeli military strategy. On Saturday Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had instructed the military to intensify pressure on Hamas after the group rejected a temporary truce in Gaza in exchange for the release of 11 Israeli detainees, instead offering to hand over all prisoners if the Israelis side agreed to a complete withdrawal and a permanent cessation of hostilities. Since the war with Hamas resumed on March 18, Israeli troops have taken over about a third of the Gaza Strip, pushing out their populations as part of its strategy to ratchet up pressure on the militants. Gaza’s civil defence agency has reported that Israeli air strikes killed at least 25 people across the Gaza Strip. “Since dawn today, the occupation’s air strikes have killed 20 people and injured dozens more, including children and women across the Gaza Strip,” Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for the civil defence agency, told AFP.
Source: The Australian