Hamas is increasingly using sensitive civilian facilities in Gaza to protect its military assets from being targeted by Israel, ahead of a further round of conflict. It is also digging dozens of “terror tunnels” into Israel, The Times of Israel has learned.
Gaza’s Islamist rulers have been placing rocket launching pads next to water reservoirs, and attaching reconnaissance cameras to mosque minarets and water towers, The Times of Israel was told, in a bid to avoid IAF airstrikes during an upcoming round of confrontation.
The response from the Forum of Palestinian Journalists is interesting:
The forum of Palestinian journalists (FPJ) warned against the gravity of the media campaign that was launched recently by the Israeli occupation to prepare the world's public opinion to accept its justifications to bomb civilian areas and structures in any intended war on the Gaza Strip.Of course Israel wants to destroy mosques! That's why there are so many mosques in, um, Israel!
In a press release on Sunday, the forum said that this campaign included alleged press remarks made by Israeli military officials and unnamed sources, amplifying the military capability of the Palestinian resistance and claiming that it uses mosque minarets to set up surveillance cameras to monitor the movement of the Israeli army in border areas.
The resistance is also propagated to cache its rockets and weapons in places beneath residential buildings and use civilian areas for its resistance activities, among other claims intended to justify Israel's intents to bomb mosques, populated areas and civilians.
Hamas had of course used mosques for storing weapons and shooting at Israelis. Here's a video of weapons found in a mosque in 2009:
This video shows massive secondary explosions when the IDF hit an arms depot hidden in a mosque:
Hamas (through the FPJ) is trying to make sure that their weapons mosques are off-limits in any future war. They never explained these videos, though.