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Why Hamas stores its weapons inside hospitals, mosques and schools
Inside a Gaza Strip mosque in January 2009, nothing at first seemed unusual with the wooden pulpit pushed against the cement wall. Barely taller than a man, it stood beside a microphone stand near an electric fan and some plastic chairs, according to photographs captured by the Israel Defense Forces.
But hidden inside the pulpit, Israel alleged, were a Kalashnikov assault rifle, a bulletproof vest and binoculars. Soldiers soon spread the mosque’s cache on the floor, a haul that included a rifle, grenades and ammunition. Hamas operatives, Israel charged, were to blame.
“The many mosques in the Gaza Strip serve not only religious functions, but are also put to military use by Hamas and other terrorist organizations,” the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center said at the time. “They are used to hide terrorist operatives, store weapons, as sites from which rockets and mortar shells are launched.”
To many observers, one of the most troublesome facts of the Gaza Strip conflict — which has killed around 1,340 Palestinians, many of them civilians, and 56 Israeli soldiers — has been Israel’s apparent willingness to strike civilian institutions such as mosques, schools and hospitals. On Wednesday, following a strike on a school while its inhabitants slept, killing 20 people and wounding dozens more, a United Nations official said Israel had violated international law. “I condemn in the strongest possible terms the serious violation of international law by Israel forces, said U.N. official Pierre Krähenbühl. “This is an affront to all of us, a source of universal shame. Today the world stands disgraced.”
Israeli military officials, for their part, say the reality of the strikes is substantially more complicated and claim Hamas’s maintenance of military operations inside civilian institutions precipitate such attacks.
“Hamas chooses to use these protected areas for military purposes in order to shield itself from IDF strikes,” the Israel Defense Forces said this week. “And to draw international condemnation of Israel if the IDF is forced to respond.”
