Since the IDF started withdrawing from parts of Gaza where it had taken apart Hamas’s battalions in the late winter and early spring, the Gaza terror group has been using innovative ways to rebuild its combat forces and to keep the broader population dependent on its rule.
In recent months, the IDF’s commando unit – composed of the Duvdevan, Egoz, and Maglan special units – has taken on many unique missions in Gaza, beyond the standard clear a certain sector of terrorist operations carried out by the regular IDF infantry.
The commando unit is run by Col. Omer Cohen, who the Jerusalem Post embedded with in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza in December 2023.
During an operation in Tel el-Awa in northern Gaza near Shifa last Friday, the IDF said that Cohen’s commandos had uncovered a new Hamas headquarters within a UNRWA building.
What the IDF did not disclose until Monday, however, was that Hamas was using the UNRWA building as one of its critical centers for recruiting new fighters, drone makers, and bomb builders.
After a firefight and the killing of several Hamas terrorists inside, the IDF also took apart a series of stations at the UNRWA building, which included: Hamas controlling and handing out food aid right next to a station for signing up for its combat units, right next to a seminar for building drones, right next to a separate seminar for building improvised explosives.
Recruitment methods exploit current humanitarian disaster
In other words, Hamas used a UNRWA facility where all civilians would need to come to receive food, to juxtapose all of its various fighting needs and connect Gazan civilians’ conception of their future to Hamas first in terms of food, and then in terms of terrorism.
This new method of recruitment can sidestep significant periods of ideological orientation by using the current humanitarian disaster in Gaza as the main motivation for getting civilians to join Hamas and immediately also learn how to build threatening weapons.
Near the UNRWA facility, the commandos also found a rocket-making seminar concealed in a university.
In another operation connected to Rafah in southern Gaza where the IDF has been since early May, the IDF commandos eliminated the most important remaining weapons development location for Islamic Jihad in Gaza, aspects of which were underground.
The IDF commandos acted rapidly and with precise intelligence to overcome all resistance at the Islamic Jihad weapons location and were able to intercept many of the Jihad fighters as well as the weapons they were making.
Despite these successes, the IDF warned that its soldiers would continue to encounter these systematic Hamas efforts to exploit humanitarian areas or tunnels for reconstituting its forces and its weaponry.
The IDF did not have real answers to what would break Hamas’s will to rebuild its military other than continued IDF missions to break apart any such rebuilding attempts before they expand to a dangerous point.
According to the IDF, Hamas is also using houses that seem half-destroyed and which the IDF has already attacked and moved on from, to hide many of its weapons, expecting that the military will not think to return to such locations.
Further, the IDF said that Hamas is using children often to run interference and as human shields when planting improvised explosives in areas where it anticipates IDF forces are likely to travel to.
The Jerusalem Post Staff contributed to this report.
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