Hamas paragliders in a video posted online by Hamas' media division. (Screenshot)
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BEIRUT — On Saturday, Hamas shocked the world when its gunmen paraglided outside the besieged Gaza strip, paving the way for a land, air, and sea attack against Israel, the first of its kind since Israel’s establishment in 1948.
The operation is reminiscent of the surprise offensive in 1973 when Egyptians and Syrians declared war on Israel during Yom Kippur.
Israel relentlessly pounded the Gaza Strip early this morning as fighting raged with Hamas around the Gaza Strip and the death toll from the war against the Palestinian militants surged above 1,100.
All the while, videos and images have spread widely online of Hamas fighters infiltrating Israeli territory — including their descent over an outdoor rave festival just several kilometers outside Gaza — on paragliders.
L’Orient Today talks to two military experts, a paragliding instructor and a Hamas official to understand how the operation took place.
How could the training needed for a paragliding military operation go apparently unnoticed in a highly monitored and besieged area?
Lebanese military expert Riad Kahwaji told L’Orient Today that the paragliding gunmen most probably “received their training outside Gaza, meaning they must have gone outside the besieged strip.”
“The paragliding gunmen were essential in Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. To go over the defense wall you need to fly up, and once they landed they were able to remove a part of the siege and allow hundreds of gunmen to infiltrate into Israeli territory,” Kahwaji said.
Still, said the head of one sports paragliding organization in Lebanon, “from a technical point of view, what we saw in the video does not work,” as the fighters would have needed more space to land than what was visible in the video clips. He spoke on condition of anonymity as he did not want to involve himself and the sport in politics.
“Also, a typical paragliding journey could be sabotaged by one bullet from an average handgun.”
General Khalil Helou, another Lebanese military expert, told L’Orient Today, however, that he has “read several leaked reports from Israeli authorities that their intelligence had actually seen the paragliding exercises being conducted by Hamas militants, but they did not believe that Hamas has the capability of orchestrating such an operation, and that the paragliding technique would actually work.” L’Orient Today could not immediately verify the existence or content of such reports.
Helou noted that the paragliding had a motor engine and it was not a typical paragliding unit. Rather, he said, “it was a military design.”
“However, paragliding was a propaganda technique. It’s true that they need it to cross over places that are unreachable by foot due to the siege, but it was mainly used for propaganda reasons,” he said.
Helou said he felt the paragliding incident had more media exposure than its actual impact.
“There are 20,000 Palestinians that leave Gaza daily for work outside the Gaza strip and return daily, some of them are probably working for Hamas and have guided and paved the way for the operation geographically, so militants would know where the police stations are based and so on,” Helou explained noting that this infiltration by Hamas is more dangerous and effective than the paragliding video.
According to Helou, the paragliding by Hamas is mainly a technique “to boost the morale of Hamas’s supporters, and terrorize Israel and its supporters.”
Ali Barakeh, a member of Hamas’s leadership in Lebanon, told L’Orient Today that, in order for Hamas to execute its “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation and send its gunmen via paragliders, “it had to use the help of its allies and friends.”
“We have been planning for this honorable operation for two years,” he added.
“We have been occupied for 75 years and we want to resist and free our people, and we will use all the means we have. Israel has always portrayed itself as the invincible army, but on Saturday it collapsed in front of the Palestinian resistance,” Barakeh said.