CLAIM: Hamas puts civilians in danger by placing their tunnels underneath civilian infrastructure, and using some hospitals, schools, etc, as weapons depots, hideouts, or rocket launch sites.
RATING:
True
Due to Israel’s powerful air force and Hamas’s lack of anti-aircraft defense systems, if Hamas officially designates even a single building as a military post, it would have been almost immediately destroyed by IDF airstrikes.
Not keen on being blown up, Hamas militants are forced to either go underground (in tunnels or bunkers) or hide in civilian buildings. This makes it nearly impossible for Hamas to properly separate itself from civilians if it wants to continue the Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation. But this also clearly puts Gaza’s civilians in danger. Some describe this as Hamas using “human shields.” While there is certainly some truth to this, there is also a lack of viable alternative strategies that could be pursued by Hamas.
As for the tunnels, the Gaza Strip has over 2.1 million inhabitants but only 365 square kilometers, leading to a high population density of almost 6,000 people per square kilometer. This makes it virtually impossible for tunnel infrastructure to be far away from civilian infrastructure. Tunnels entry points must of course be placed somewhere, and although some are placed in open spaces, most of them appear to be in civilian buildings.
To gain perspective, it’s worth looking at whether Israel has used similar strategies in the past or present.
Most people are unaware that early Jewish militias in Palestine—such as the Haganah—similarly used underground tunnels and hid their weapon caches in civilian buildings.
Modern-day Israel also hosts some of its military infrastructure close to civilian buildings. The Israeli military headquarters in Tel Aviv (also known as Camp Rabin military base) is right in the middle of town, next to shopping malls. However, Israel can better afford to intermingle its military and civilian infrastructure since it has a powerful anti-missile defense system, the Iron Dome, protecting these from aerial attack.
One reply on “Israel-Palestine Mega Fact Check!”
Keep trying to invent history. The palis didn’t exist until the mid 1960s.
One other fun fact – every group, every political organization, and every government that has ever tried to destroy the Jews has been destroyed. Fun fact #2 Israel has never been stronger.