Israel has published a ‘Hamas manual’ which it claims boasts about the propaganda value of Gaza civilian deaths and the advantages of operating in populated area.
The publication of the manual came as rare footage emerged today of Gaza militants firing a rocket at Israel from a densely populated area of the Palestinian territory just minutes before Monday’s ceasefire began.
Israel has long claimed that Hamas fires from residential areas and uses its civilians as human shields to garner international sympathy.
The footage was captured by an Indian television crew from the balcony of their Gaza hotel and appears to show three men preparing a rocket launch site quietly under a blue tent at 6:30am according to the timecode.
The video report, narrated by the NDTV correspondent Sreenivasan Jain was not broadcast until hours after he and his crew had left the Gaza Strip for safety reasons.
Glimpses of Gaza militants have been scare over the month-long war.
It coincides with the IDF’s announcement on Monday that it has discovered a manual called ‘Urban Warfare,’ which belongs to the Shuja’iya Brigade of Hamas’ military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades.
It stated the writings proves that Hamas is aware that Israel tries to minimise civilian casualties and that the terror group ‘exploits these efforts by using civilians as human shields against advancing IDF forces.’
But a translation of the two pages posted by the IDF did not find specific statements that Hamas uses its own civilian population as human shields, reported CNN.
One section does discuss the benefits for Hamas when civilian homes are destroyed.
Today a 72-hour humanitarian truce is holding in Gaza, halting a month of war that has claimed more than 1,900 lives.
Israel and the Palestinians have sent delegations to Cairo to discuss the possibility of a longer-term truce and a broader deal for the war-ravaged Gaza Strip.
In the coming days, Egyptian mediators are to shuttle between delegations from both sides to try to work out a deal.
Some details have emerged about the negotiating points of Hamas, the Islamic militant group that controls Gaza, including an internationally funded reconstruction that would be overseen by a Palestinian unity government led by President Mahmoud Abbas.
The cease-fire is the longest lull in a war that has killed nearly 1,900 Palestinians.
Israel has lost 67 people, including three civilians.
Meanwhile, Norway is organizing a donor conference and the Western-backed Abbas is expected to take the lead in overseeing the rebuilding in the coastal territory, which his Fatah movement lost to Hamas in 2007.
The war broke out on July 8, when the Israeli military began bombarding targets in Gaza in an attempt to stop Hamas from launching rockets at Israel.
On July 17, Israel sent ground troops into the densely-populated territory to destroy underground tunnels it said Hamas had constructed for attacks inside Israel.
But in the weeks leading up to the war, Israeli-Palestinian tensions were soaring in the wake of the June killings of three Israeli teenagers, Naftali Frenkel, Gilad Shaer and Eyal Yifrach, whose bodies were discovered two weeks after they disappeared in the West Bank.
The youths disappeared from a hitchhiking stop in the southern West Bank and were found dead on June 30.
Israel rounded up hundreds of Palestinians in a bid to find the three while they were missing, also crushing the West Bank network of Islamist movement Hamas, which it accuses of abducting the teens, though there has been no claim of responsibility.
According to Israeli media, Hossam Kawasmeh made it known during his interrogation that he received financial help from Hamas operatives in Gaza to recruit and arm the kidnappers.
Israel accused Hamas of being behind the abductions, and subsequently carried out a massive ground operation in the West Bank, arresting hundreds of Hamas operatives as part of a manhunt.
And in early July, an Arab teenager was abducted and burned alive by Israeli extremists in an apparent revenge attack.
Six Jewish Israelis were arrested in that killing.
On Wednesday, Israel’s justice ministry confirmed that the suspected mastermind behind the killing of the three Israeli teens had been arrested in July.
‘Hossam Kawasmeh was arrested by Israeli security forces last month in Shuafat (a neighbourhood of Arab east Jerusalem), on suspicion of leading a commando group that kidnapped and murdered the three adolescents,’ the police said in a statement.
The suspect, allegedly led a three-man cell that Israeli prosecutors say kidnapped and murdered the teens.
It wasn’t immediately clear if al-Qawasmi has been charged.
Israeli authorities are still searching for two other Palestinians in connection with the murders, police said on Tuesday.
In Gaza, people took advantage on Wednesday of the calm to return to their devastated homes and inspect the damage.
Cars and donkey carts loaded with household goods and mattresses filled the streets and queues formed at banks as people waited to withdraw cash from ATMs.
Crews from utility companies worked frantically to repair downed electricity and telephone lines, though with Gaza’s only electrical generating plant badly damaged by an Israeli attack, it may be a long while before anything resembling normal service is restored.
In the devastated Shijaiyah neighborhood east of Gaza city, carpenter Mahmoud Al Maghani, 44, surveyed the damage to his property.
‘I think my workshop was here, but honestly I can’t make sure of that.’
Mailonline
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