The al-Qassam Brigade, Hamas' armed wing, during a rally on Jan. 31, 2016 in Gaza. (Credit: AFP / Getty Images / Mahmud Hams)
"Israeli military and intelligence officials have concluded that a significant number of the weapons used by Hamas in the Oct. 7 attacks and the war in Gaza came from an unlikely source: the Israeli army itself," the New York Times reports in an article published on Sunday.
"What is clear now is that the very weapons that Israeli forces have used to enforce a blockade of Gaza over the past 17 years are now being used against them. Israeli and American military explosives have enabled Hamas to shower Israel with rockets and, for the first time, penetrate Israeli towns from Gaza," the NYT report continues.
Hamas has manufactured many of its rockets and anti-tank weapons using munitions launched by Israel that failed to explode in the Gaza Strip, according to weapons experts and Israeli and Western intelligence officials quoted by the newspaper. The militant group has also used weapons stolen from Israeli military bases.
"Weapons experts say that roughly 10 percent of munitions typically fail to detonate, but in Israel’s case, the figure could be higher. Israel’s arsenal includes Vietnam-era missiles, long discontinued by the United States and other military powers," the paper reports, before citing an Israeli intelligence officer who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on condition of anonymity, as saying the failure rate of some of these missiles could be as high as 15 percent.
"Israeli officials knew before the October attacks that Hamas could salvage some Israeli-made weapons, but the scope has startled weapons experts and diplomats alike," continues the newspaper, which cites a military report from early 2023, which it was able to consult, as indicating that thousands of bullets and hundreds of rifles and grenades had been stolen from poorly guarded bases.
The blockade and the elimination of numerous smuggling tunnels into and out of Gaza have forced Hamas to get creative. Its manufacturing capabilities are now sophisticated enough to saw off the warheads of bombs weighing up to 2,000 pounds (900 kilos), harvest the explosives and reuse them, writes the NYT.