Washington Post article about how Hamas prepared for the war

[Aurelian]

Hamas built an underground war machine to ensure its own survival​

Vowing self-sufficiency, Hamas turned a maze of tunnels in Gaza into weapons factories and well-stocked fortifications. A year after the war began, parts of the group remain deeply entrenched.​

AMMAN, Jordan — Six months before the Oct. 7 attack, Hamas’s top leader in the Gaza Strip was meeting with visiting Palestinian businessmen in the enclave when he made a shocking disclosure. Hamas was planning something big, Yahya Sinwar told his guests. “There’s going to be a surprise.”

Sinwar’s secret plan would reveal itself on a morning one year ago as waves of attackers swarmed Israeli villages and military bases, killing about 1,200 people and taking some 250 hostages. But the nature of Sinwar’s preparations — how, exactly, the group armed itself for the assault while simultaneously engineering a sophisticated, multilayered defense against the inevitable Israeli military response — would become clear only gradually, in the weeks and months of heavy fighting that followed.

Evidence accumulated over the past year has brought new clarity to Hamas’s operational planning before Oct. 7, revealing how and from where it obtained the means for both the attack itself and a carefully considered resistance phase that was designed to last up to 12 months. It shows how, despite years of isolation within a densely populated strip of land the size of Philadelphia, Hamas acquired an astonishing arsenal of rockets, explosives and small arms, while constructing the financial and defensive networks that enabled Sinwar and his followers to hold out for months under a determined assault by one of the world’s most capable militaries.

 

[Aurelian]

Hamas that Sinwar built was no mere proxy group, officials and experts said. Mindful of Israel’s ability to cut off Gaza from the world, Hamas spent years perfecting a war machine that could make its own munitions, carry out operations without outside approval or even knowledge, and then allow its fighters to disappear inside an elaborate underground maze — a warren beneath the streets of the seaside enclave estimated to consist of hundreds of miles of interlinked, reinforced passages, rooms and bunkers.

 

[Aurelian]

How the hell one isolated group can make such preparation to last against one of the most advanced armies in the world?


you should read it

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/10/05/hamas-tunnels-weapons-gaza-war-october-7-attacks/

 

[Aurelian]

But the biggest surprise, U.S. and Israeli officials say, was the tunnels within Gaza. Israeli war planners well understood the challenge IDF soldiers faced in trying to defeat a foe that could move fighters and supplies freely through underground passages. But the size, scale and complexity of the Gaza “metro,” as it came to be dubbed, far exceeded Israeli estimations. IDF officials in interviews described their dismay after picking their way through bunkers 30 feet beneath Gaza’s streets, only to find shafts leading to deeper tunnels buried 120 feet underground.

 

[Riftvalley]

Many analysts had believed that Hamas was heavily dependent on Iran and had smuggled in large shipments of Iranian-made rockets and missiles while making new ones in large underground factories. Yet a year later, IDF investigators in Gaza have turned up surprisingly few Iranian-made weapons, and no large-scale factories for mass assembly of rockets and missiles. Instead, they mostly found small workshops where metalworkers with simple lathes turned scavenged pipes and agricultural chemicals into components for explosive projectiles to be lobbed into Israeli villages.

This is astounding.

 

[Aurelian]

Many analysts had believed that Hamas was heavily dependent on Iran and had smuggled in large shipments of Iranian-made rockets and missiles while making new ones in large underground factories. Yet a year later, IDF investigators in Gaza have turned up surprisingly few Iranian-made weapons, and no large-scale factories for mass assembly of rockets and missiles. Instead, they mostly found small workshops where metalworkers with simple lathes turned scavenged pipes and agricultural chemicals into components for explosive projectiles to be lobbed into Israeli villages.

This is astounding.

All that while they are embargo and continues monitoring.

 

[Idilinaa]

It fits into what i said before about so called ''terrorist groups'' that they are not irrational or random or crazy, but often very calculating and measured and deeply motivated by the act of resistance

Although i don't condone their actions (especially when it targets innocent people), terrorists are not as irrational as some would have you believe. The old canard of the random crazy terrorist is not a serious assessment, just a better way to continuing denying the merit and agent of certain grievances.
Especially when those grievances are the results of US foreign policy and admitting that would make America liable.

Terrorist, if anything, are not random, cowards, or illogical. A coward is someone who flies a nuclear bomb high in the sky and drops it on women and children at zero risk to himself. A coward gets 7 nations to attack one 3rd world country.

They are also not cowards either. Take for example their whole human shield angle they accuse hama's with makes zero sense, when they aren't hiding behind civilian targets or directing them to shield them, they are hiding and moving underground in tunnels.

Rather it's Isreali Soldiers that are using Palestinians as humans shields to enter tunnels

Israeli forces in Gaza ‘use civilians as human shields’ against possible booby-traps

Newspaper and campaign group allege Palestinians are sent ahead of troops into buildings or tunnels that need clearing

www.theguardian.com

For many years before the oct.7 resistance the IDF used Palestinians human shield to approach houses/buildings because they were less likely to get shot , to avoid getting shot themselves, that's how cowardice they are

Interestingly enough, by contrast, there is extensive evidence of the IDF quite literally engaging in human shielding — forcing Palestinian civilians to approach houses for them because they’ll be less likely to be shot at than Israeli soldiers, for example. Israel’s High Court banned the practice in 2005, but Israeli human rights group B’Tselem reports that “soldiers continue to occasionally use Palestinians as human shields even after the court ruling, especially during military operations.”

 

[Aurelian]

It fits into what i said before about so called ''terrorist groups'' that they are not irrational or random or crazy, but often very calculating and measured and deeply motivated by the act of resistance


They are also not cowards either. Take for example their whole human shield angle they accuse hama's with makes zero sense, when they aren't hiding behind civilian targets or directing them to shield them, they are hiding and moving underground in tunnels.

Rather it's Isreali Soldiers that are using Palestinians as humans shields to enter tunnels

Israeli forces in Gaza ‘use civilians as human shields’ against possible booby-traps

Newspaper and campaign group allege Palestinians are sent ahead of troops into buildings or tunnels that need clearing

www.theguardian.com

For many years before the oct.7 resistance the IDF used Palestinians human shield to approach houses/buildings because they were less likely to get shot , to avoid getting shot themselves, that's how cowardice they are

It is fascinating the level of commitment they have along side their level of intelligence. Gaza is ranked as one of the top five most literate place in the region