Is Hamas’s military arsenal any match for the Israeli defence complex?

On Saturday morning the Palestinian Hamas group launched “Operation Al Aqsa Flood”, launching hundreds of rockets and sending footsoldiers into Israel via land, air and sea.

The videos of Hamas fighters paragliding near an Israeli open-air dance party and heavily armed men on pickup trucks cruising down Israeli towns took Tel Aviv and the world by surprise.

The group announced the secretive assault was in response to the Israeli storming of Al Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem and the increased settler violence against Palestinians.

Since its founding 1987, Hamas has played a prominent role in Palestinian resistance, particularly in the second intifada or uprising from 2000-2005.

Nevertheless, debate has surrounded the military capability of the group, which has relied on homemade projectiles to retaliate against what critics label as Israeli aggression. On the other hand, the Israeli military is equipped with advanced weapons including fighter jets, tanks and ballistic missiles.

Some analysts say Palestinian groups have deployed an asymmetrical warfare strategy against Israel, using unconventional means to take on a better equipped adversary.

Israel has the world’s 15th largest military budget and is one of the biggest military spenders on a per capita basis. It is also the 12th most important global arms exporter while the Israeli army has a mobilisation capacity of half a million soldiers, says Akram Kharief, a security expert,

In contrast, Hamas is “basically a paramilitary militia with no access to the world arms market and scarce financial resources,” with the impoverished Gaza being strongly reliant on aid from Qatar and other countries, he says.

Fabian Hinz, Research Fellow Defence and Military analyst suggests Hamas began as “a very ordinary militia with the kind of equipment and capabilities you would expect from a militia and has gradually expanded these capabilities.”

A story of indigenisation

“At first they just had rocket propelled grenades, lighter artillery rockets,”according to Hinz, noting the use of the Katyusha rocket that had been “smuggled” into Gaza.

In the early 2000s, accorrding to Kharief, a lot of weapons were smuggled in from Egypt and Libya.

Then the Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing, began importing rockets from Iran and Syria, says Kharief pointing out the Iranian-made Fadjr series rockets with a range of 40 km to 75 km.

However, since 2003 he suggests Gaza’s own local defence industry developed to manufacture rockets, missiles and drones while in the last two decades some “Israeli felons” and arms traffickers have allegedly provided arms shipments.

After the 2007 blockade Kharief says Palestinian groups in Gaza started to produce "copies" of rockets brought into the region in the previous years.

Hamas first developed the Q-12 and Q-20 rockets with short ranges of between 12 km and 20 km. By 2016, they were producing R-160 rockets, which can hit targets as far as 160 km. The A-120 and J-19 have ranges of 120 km and 90 km, respectively. “ The latter being the most widely used for artillery barrages and attacks against Tel Aviv and other cities," Kharief says.

"This range increase was also followed by saturation tactics; instead of launching a couple of rockets, Hamas launches salvos of up to 400 rockets a day,” Kharief adds.

He describes this tactic as increasing the “successful hits” and creating “panic.”

As part of Hamas’ strategy Hinz suggests smuggling limits the quantity of weapons while it was important for Hamas’ strategy “to really acquire a huge stockpile in order to acquire some sort of deterrent force”.

“And this is something they managed to do by starting their own production (on the same lines) as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and there are quite a few indications, especially with Palestinian Islamic Jihad but also with Hamas that Iran was essential for enabling them to really build up their local production capabilities," argues Hinz.

In the most recent conflict, the Qassam Brigades said in a statement that it had also launched 35 of its Al Zawari attack drones against Israel.

The Hamas-made Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) are remotely piloted or self-piloted aircraft carrying a range of technology including cameras. The UAVs are named after its inventor the Tunisian engineer Mohamed Al Zawari who was allegedly assassinated by the Israelis in 2016.

During Saturday’s “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood”, Hamas said it fired rockets and captured Israeli hostages.

The Israeli army has since launched “Operation Swords of Iron” against Hamas, including launching airstrikes on the enclave in Palestine.

On Saturday, the Israel Security Cabinet announced it was in a "state of war".

"These rockets that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have been firing can be intercepted, the Israelis have very, very good systems to intercept these kinds of rockets – the Iron Dome" says Hinz.

In March 2011, Israel deployed what was widely considered a state of the art rocket defence system - the Iron Dome - in a bid to combat the threat of projectiles from Gaza. From 2011-2021, the US contributed around $1.6 billion to the defence system while four years earlier the Iron Dome was first approved and developed by local defence contractor, Rafael.

A matter of costs

Built in makeshift workshops in Gaza, the rockets used by Hamas cost around $2000 a piece .

Their low cost means they do not carry advanced electronic components and circuitry - the mainstay for modern missiles, explains Kharief.

“The rockets can be manufactured in any forge or soldering workshop and can be either stored directly in the hidden launching platforms or in underground storage facilities," explains Kharief.

However, each missile fired into the night sky by Israel’s Iron Dome costs around $50,000 while each battery - the system to launch the missile - costs around $50 million, he suggests.

Kharief places the real cost per interception between $100,000 and $150 000, due to the failures and the interceptions that go awry.

He believes potentially that Hamas has 30,000-50,000 rockets in its arsenal, which means that the Israeli army would never be able to fully intercept them, impacting the Israeli defence budget by a “at several hundred billion dollars.”

Hinz describes the cost balance as favouring Hamas and PIJ - as the rockets are cheaper than the Tamir.

However, he argues it misses the fundamental point, noting how the Hamas rockets are aimed at "Israeli hinterland, not only border communities" and "major Israeli urban centres" to generate some kind of “psychological effect”.

Hinz acknowledges most of the rockets are intercepted. However, those that avoid interception at times he explains cause substantial damage, but are not "militarily significant" and achieve "a certain amount of deterrence" against the Israeli forces from undertaking "certain actions"

"Of course if you have this level of deterrence you can use it to further expand your military capabilities. So there has been a very crucial pillar, I would say of the Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) military strategy to build up this rocket arsenal," adds Hinz.

Israel has imposed a total siege of Gaza by cutting electricity, food, water and fuel supplies.

To date the number of Palestinians killed by the Israeli forces in Gaza has risen to over 700, the Gaza-based Health Ministry said early Tuesday with 4,000 wounded.

At least 900 Israelis have been killed and over 2,600 others wounded amid the conflict, according to the Israeli Health Ministry.

"One thing we have not seen yet in the Gaza Strip is the kind of sophisticated missiles that we have seen in Yemen that we know Hezbollah has – so precision guided missiles, anti-ship missiles. We haven’t really seen these and perhaps they don’t exist in the Gaza Strip," suggests Hinz.

However, he believes there is also "a possibility that there are additional capabilities" among the different groups. Hezbollah’s combat strategy is "to keep certain capabilities secret" and unveil them at certain points of escalation as a "surprise".

"It’s quite possible we are going to see something similar in Gaza in my opinion - that there could be certain capabilities that have been held back but will only be revealed in case there is a full invasion of Gaza," argues Hinz.