As Israel Defense Forces work to close the terror tunnels dug by Gaza-based Hamas, the Islamist party has resorted to using reconnaissance balloons to spy on Israel, even posting photos of them aloft onto the Hamas Facebook page.This doesn't make much sense.
In an interview with Israel’s Channel 2, a senior IDF officer in the Southern Command said that Hamas has resolved to gather intelligence deep inside Israel, and not just on the border. To this end, the officer said, Hamas has also erected a line of poles to which they’ve attached balloons filled with helium and mounted with cameras.
The officer said that the observation balloons have alarming capability to collect intelligence on military and civilian movements in Israel. He said the IDF sees Hamas trying to expand its reconnaissance abilities to strengthen its offensive capacity, based on building its rocket arsenal and digging tunnels into Israel.
The officer said that Israel recently allowed a large shipment of helium gas into Gaza for civilian use, the transfer of which may be rescinded if the intended use is to fuel more spy balloons.
I can't find any Hamas announcement of these balloons, and I can't find the Hamas Facebook page the article refers to. The only Arabic articles I'm finding are quoting Hebrew sources.
But even stranger is the simple question: if the IDF is worried about balloons, why don't they just shoot them down? It can't be that hard. It is not as if it is a violation of the laws of armed conflict to destroy an enemy surveillance system.
A few months ago I wrote about IDF balloons being used for reconnaissance into Gaza. If this report didn't seem legit (IDF officer interviewed on TV), I would have guessed that this was the same story after a few rounds of Arabic media "telephone." And it still seems possible to me that there was a mis-communication, that an Arabic site that screwed up the earlier balloon story somehow got onto a Hamas page and the IDF officer was only reacting to a rumor, which got mixed up again in this report.
I know it sounds unlikely, but this Hamas surveillance balloon story is more than weird.
UPDATE: I found the Walla article about this. It shows a photo from the Hamas Facebook page of the supposed balloon:
Sorry, this has got to be Photoshopped. There is no way a balloon this large is hovering over a building in Gaza and no one is reporting it.
UPDATE 2: Commenter Heb Macman notes that the photo wasn't Photoshopped but taken at an angle to make it look much bigger. Even so, commenter Bob Knot found another photo that also makes it look pretty big, although again it could just be the angle:
UPDATE 3: Bob Knot found a Facebook page saying that the balloon was built by the Information Office of the Al Qassam Brigades to film a demonstration, probably the first anniversary of Pillar of Cloud.
