In a video released in December 2022, Hamas fighters can be seen flooding a training area, firing missiles and capturing mock prisoners as they surround fictitious Israeli buildings.
The field, according to an analysis of the CNN had just been built and was very close to the Erez Crossing, the pedestrian crossing between Gaza and Israel that Hamas fighters stormed last weekend in an attack that killed more than 1,200 people in Israel.
Another video taken more than a year ago shows Hamas fighters practicing takeoffs, landings and assaults with paragliders – the same unusual mode that Hamas employed, to lethal effect, in the recent attack.
An investigation of the CNN analyzed nearly two years of training and propaganda videos released by Hamas and its members to reveal the months of preparation that led to last week’s attack, finding that the extremists trained in at least six locations in Gaza.
Two of those sites, including the arid training site shown in the December video, were just over a mile from the most fortified and patrolled section of the Gaza-Israel border. Of the remaining sites: one is located in the center of Gaza and the other three in the extreme south.
Two years of satellite images, also reviewed by CNN do not show any indication of offensive Israeli military action against any of the six identified locations.
Not only has there been activity in recent months in the fields, but some have also absorbed nearby farmland, converting it from agriculture to barren areas for training in the past two years, according to satellite images.
In the aftermath of Hamas’ relentless incursion – where extremists abducted up to 150 people, overran Israeli military bases and devastated cities – questions are being raised about the operational and intelligence failures of Israel’s security apparatus.
The fact that Hamas trained for the attack in plain sight for at least two years raises questions about why Israel, home to the most sophisticated military and espionage operation in the Middle East, was unable to detect and prevent the attack?
When the CNN contacted the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for comment, its international spokesman, Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, said the findings were “not new.”
He added that Hamas “has had many training areas” and that the Israeli military “has attacked many training areas over the years in different rounds of escalation.”
Conricus noted that Israel has not had a major escalation with Hamas in more than two years, in reference to the period when hostilities between Israel and Hamas began in 2021.
Following weeks of tension in Jerusalem, where a group of Palestinian families were evicted from their homes in East Jerusalem in favor of Jewish nationalists.
Conricus also stated that Hamas may have made the facilities “appear civilian.”
However, five of the sites – the sixth is an airstrip – have no civilian features and are almost identical in the way they are built and laid out.
See also: Robbery, threats: images show Hamas action during the invasion of Israel; watch
Source: CNN Brasil
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