Once smuggled by land or water from Sudan along the Red Sea, then in Sinai tunnels to reach Gaza, Hamas rockets are now manufactured in the tiny seaside city itself, security experts tell the Washington Examiner.
A network of underground manufacturing facilities assembles rocket parts from Iran, smuggled by sea with the help of fishing boats. Once inside Gaza, Iranian Revolutionary Guard-trained personnel move the rockets to underground staging points, where they can be quickly set up to fire volley after volley indiscriminately into Israel.
Israel’s intelligence operation in Gaza, however, has allowed the country to mass a target list that it has been checking off for the last eight days: production facilities, underground tunnels, and staging points. Israeli security forces are so adept that sometimes before the crude rockets can even be fired from their tripod-like launchers, Hamas personnel are hit.
In recent days, the Hamas rocket barrage has waned, while Israeli strikes continue unabated despite a call from President Joe Biden to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu encouraging a ceasefire. Experts believe Hamas is running out of rockets and the specially trained forces to man them.
“I doubt that’s Hamas restraint,” said Jim Phillips, Middle East security expert at the Heritage Foundation. “It’s more likely to be an attrition effect from Israeli strikes against weapon storage sites and firing sites and the tunnels.”
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Phillips said this fourth conflict between Hamas and Israel since 2008 has demonstrated the increasing capability of the rockets used.
In 2008-2009, Hamas could only strike communities bordering Gaza, a range of 20 km to 50 km. By 2012, it had slightly expanded its range, and by 2014, rockets not taken down by Israel’s Iron Dome defense system could theoretically reach half the country. Today, Hamas rockets can reach the entire country of Israel from the tiny Gaza Strip.
“Hamas has improved the range and firepower of its unguided rockets and increasingly has improved the accuracy,” said Phillips.
Iron Dome is neutralizing 85% to 90% of the rockets fired from Gaza, allowing stray rockets destined for rural areas away from population centers to fall. Still, as of Tuesday, 10 Israelis had died in the flareup and more than 200 Palestinians had been killed, including scores of children.
Foundation for the Defense of Democracies researcher Jonathan Schanzer, who has spoken to Israeli officials during the conflict, said Hamas is still having some success with limited direct hits.
“I don’t believe that we’ve seen anything precision come out of Gaza, with the exception of some drones, one of which appears to have made a direct hit on the Ashkelon gas pipeline,” he said. “Massive fireballs reaching into the air.”
‘Have come from Iran’
Before the military takeover that put Abdel Fattah al Sisi in power in Egypt in 2013, the smuggling route from Sudan through Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula was in its heyday. Convoys sped across the desert moving Iranian weapons, while tunnels underneath the sand transported them to their final destination. The entire operation was supported by Bedouin smugglers in the desert and corrupt Egyptian military officials, said Schanzer.
That ended when al Sisi came to power.
Al Sisi overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood and quickly went to work rooting out its sympathizers and its aid to Hamas, the brotherhood’s Palestinian offshoot.
Desert tunnels were destroyed, and convoys were targeted by Israeli strikes. The warehousing in Sudan stopped, too. Once believed to be targeted by an Israeli electromagnetic pulse attack, weapon storage houses in the capital of Khartoum were also hit by Israeli airstrikes. In 2020, Sudan made peace with Israel.
Weapon smugglers found new methods.
Iranian oil tankers passing through the Suez Canal en route to Syria could rendezvous with Gazan fishing boats to transfer rocket parts. Palestinian rocket assemblers and targeteers, too, were smuggled out of Gaza and into Iran for training.
Once back in Gaza, experts say they were at secret manufacturing facilities putting together rockets and laying them out at staging points. The process continued for years despite a naval blockade imposed by Israel in 2007.
Even with Israel and Egypt targeting tunnels and port access blocked, terrorists opposed to the Palestinian Authority government and the peace process found ways to use humanitarian materials to make rockets.
Sewage pipes, circuit boards, and small motors are among the material that can be used to build a rocket.
“We continue to understand that this stuff is converted for military means,” said Schanzer.
Still, the state sponsor of terror sourcing actual rockets and rocket parts was the same: Iran.
“Hamas’s most dangerous rockets have come from Iran,” said Phillips.
“Iran shares and reinforces the goals of Palestinian extremists in destroying Israel, and I think that’s an important point that is missed for those that say a ceasefire is needed to go back to the drawing board on peace,” he added. “Hamas is opposed to peace.”
‘More precision’
Both security experts warn this latest phase in the fighting will also evolve and further challenge Israel’s defenses.
“We’re expecting to see more precision through the use of drones and attempts to acquire precision-guided munitions, so not rockets but missiles,” said Schanzer. “That will be the next phase in all of this.”
Schanzer said Hamas is already using off-the-shelf quad drones to drop grenades, but if they could get their hands on the same Iranian drone technology being transferred to Houthi fighters in Yemen, they could pose a more serious threat.
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Likewise, Hezbollah is believed to have several dozen or hundred precision-guided missiles in its inventory in Lebanon. Hamas, too, could begin to amass this type of advanced weaponry, potentially capable of evading the Iron Dome system.
“As long as Hamas is preserved through ceasefires, then this doesn’t end,” said Phillips. “If Hamas is able to claim a victory, and enough people believe that, then this will subside, and then Hamas will start preparing for the next round.”
