The attack was scheduled to happen on Rosh Hashana.
Hamas had built tunnels that opened into residential neighborhoods, a kindergarden and various hospitals.
The plan? Massive terror attacks from all the tunnels at the same time. Kill women. Kill children.
A report released by the Israeli Defense Forces outlines the details of a Hamas plan to launch the massive terrorist attack. The plot was discovered after the IDF moved into Gaza following the kidnapping and killing of 3 Israeli youths by the Islamic terrorist group.
According to the study, Hamas spent nearly $130 million building the concrete tunnels from the Gaza strip miles into Israel. The money was taken from humanitarian relief sent into the region for the purpose of rebuilding after the last conflict with Israel.
The report also shows that Hamas used children to build the tunnels and that at least 150 children died during tunnel construction from cave-ins and accidents. The children were taken from their families without their parent’s consent to be used in the tunnel construction.
According to the Times of Israel, most of the tunnels were lined with uniforms made to resemble uniforms of the IDF. The report says the goal was to confuse forces responding to the attack and make them unable to quickly stop the assault.
Leaders within the terrorist group Hamas have been celebrating the statements and actions of President Barack Obama that show his administration moving into a more hostile relationship with Israeli leadership.
The Obama administration has started restricting arms shipments to Israel, in an attempt to weaken Israel’s defenses against the Islamic terrorist group. According to the Times of Israel, sources inside the administration say they’re hoping to drive Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu out of power so they can find a more liberal leader for Israel that will give up land to the Palestinians.
The news of the Obama administration actions comes after British Prime Minister David Cameron allowed the British Ministry of Trade to announce they will not send more arms to Israel if Hamas attacks Israel again.
Hamas leadership is attributing the withdrawal of Britain and the backing away of the U.S. to their blocking the media in Gaza from showing any of their terrorist attacks on Israel or any wounded Israelis. They also credited the social media and broadcast campaign to control the words used by those expressing news to make it appear Israel was the aggressor instead of the truth that Hamas was making terrorist attacks.
Hamas leaders plan to increase their social media and media manipulation, believing it is their best chance to destabilize the Israeli government through the use of western leaders like Obama and Cameron.
An elite unit of the Israeli Defense Forces announced they had captured a Hamas operative who was planning a terrorist attack near Hebron.
The arrest led to Israeli police and the IDF carrying out a sweep in the West Bank and East Jerusalem that led to the arrest of nearly 60 people who were connected to the plot or to inciting riots.
The IDF did not release the name of the suspect or the details of the attack saying that the information was withheld for national security reasons.
The arrest is the latest in an IDF crackdown on those leading riots or attacks in Israel. The investigations into many of the arrested suspects had been placed on hold or in a lower priority because of the conflict with Hamas in Gaza.
Tbe IDF said that 12 suspects were arrested late Monday and Tuesday nights in the West Bank on top of the almost 60 arrested today.
Officials say that rioting has increased in the Jerusalem area as Arab groups took advantage of decreased IDF presence.
Hamas has announced they will not extend the current cease-fire unless they see “real progress” during negotiations in Cairo.
Hamas did not make clear what they would consider “real progress.”
Egypt had presented a revised draft for a long-term cease-fire that would be implemented in two steps by early 2015. Hamas rejected the deal outright. It would have called for Israel to open border crossings and withdraw troops from the buffer zone in the Gaza strip. Deals for prisoners, an airport and seaport would be delayed for a month in negotiations.
The current cease-fire ends at midnight.
Meanwhile, a reporter for the Associated Press was killed along with a translator working for AP when a rocket shot into Israel from the IDF exploded as technicians were disarming it. Simone Camilli, 35, had been working with AP since 2005. An AP photographer, Hatem Moussa, was one of four people seriously injured in the blast.
Camilli is the first foreign journalist to die during the current Gaza conflict.
Israel has released strong statements about the appointment of a Canadian lawyer with anti-Semitic views to head the inquiry into the conflict along the Gaza strip.
“This commission’s anti-Israeli conclusions have already been written, all it needs is a signature,” Israel foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said to AFP news agency. “For this commission the important thing is not human rights but the rights of terrorist organizations like Hamas.”
William Schabas says the accusations are “absurd.”
“The suggestion that I’m anti-Israel is absurd,” Schabas said according to The Canadian Press. “Like everybody inside and outside Israel, I disagree with people. Is everyone in Israel who has an opinion about (Benjamin) Netanyahu anti-Israel?”
However, critics of Schabas include even members of his own government.
“UN Human Rights Council continues to be a sham for advancing human rights; today’s (announcement) for members of its Gaza inquiry reveals its agenda,” Canadian Prime Minister of Foreign Affairs John Baird wrote on Twitter. “It’s an utter shame and will do nothing to promote peace and dignity in Gaza for the Palestinian people.”
The head of a U.N. watchdog group says that Schabas must stand down because of his previous criticisms of the Israeli government.
“Under international law, William Schabas is obliged to recuse himself because his repeated calls to indict Israeli leaders obviously gives rise to actual bias or the appearance thereof,” Hillel Neuer of UN Watch said in a statement.
The International Red Cross is coming under fire for making veiled accusations that Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza.
The European Center for Law and Justice has responded forcefully to the Red Cross assertions, stating that the terrorist attacks of Hamas and their continued use of children and women as human shields for their fighters and weapons is the real war crime.
“It is deeply disturbing that the International Red Cross, which should be an objective relief organization, is engaging in an unbalanced and biased campaign to smear Israel,” wrote Jay Sekulow, who serves as Chief Counsel of the ECLJ. “While insinuating that Israel is committing war crimes as it protects its civilian population under attack by Hamas terrorists, the Red Cross is turning a blind eye to the deadly terrorist tactics used by Hamas – using its own population as human shields – in clearly violation of international law. We are urging the Red Cross to rely on the facts and the truth in reporting what is taking place in the Gaza conflict.”
The President of the International Committee of the Red Cross made statements during a visit to Gaza last week that in Gaza he saw “serious discrepancies between obligations” under the “laws of war” and what was “reality on the ground.” The statement was widely seen as an attack on Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Hamas wasn’t just committing war crimes but “double war crimes.”
“Hamas is committing a double war crime. It is both targeting civilians and hiding behind civilians, including U.N. facilities, which are not only rocket storage sites but rocket launching sites and mortar launching sites,” Netanyahu said. “So, Israel has every right to defend itself and we are obeying the rules of war and the international code and those who are responsible for all these tragic civilian deaths are Hamas.”
Israeli scientists have developed a system that allows the Israeli Defense Forces to detect the infiltration tunnels used by the terrorist group Hamas.
A source inside the IDF told the Jerusalem Post the system has proven flawless in laboratory testing and it will now be taken into the field to see if it is as effective in real world situations. If it proves reliable, it would be able to be deployed full-time in about a year.
The IDF also announced on Israel Radio they are working on an upgrade to the Iron Dome system.
The new system is aimed at stopping multiple rockets at the same time or multiple other pieces of debris that are fired into the country. Also, the system will be able to target rockets and other objects much higher in the air than the current system.
The IDF believes that Hamas is being given upgraded weapons by countries like Iran that will help them overwhelm the current Iron Dome system.
The IDF also prised the Trophy tank defense system, saying it successfully stopped dozens of anti-tank missiles in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge.
Egyptian negotiators have been frantically moving back and forth between Israeli representatives and those representing the terrorist group Hamas after another 72-hour cease-fire agreement was struck between the two sides.
Israel had previously said they would not agree to negotiations or a cease-fire unless Hamas stopped their terrorist rocket attacks on Israeli civilians.
The cessation of hostilities went into effect around 5 p.m. eastern U.S. time Sunday after Hamas fired hundreds of rockets in the hour before it was to go into effect.
The Egyptian Foreign Ministry said they would be working with international aid groups to bring humanitarian supplies into the Gaza strip during the cease-fire. Reports say that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have pledge financial support for the rebuilding of Gaza and for humanitarian aid to Palestinians trapped in the Gaza strip.
The talks broke down last Friday when Hamas, enraged that Israel had not removed a naval blockade, broke a previous cease-fire with rocket attacks.
There has been one reported incident since the cease-fire. An Islamic militant was shot by the IDF after he opened fire on two Israeli soldiers in the West Bank village of Qabalan.
Islamic terrorist group Hamas lived up to their threat and broke the 72-hour cease-fire Friday by launching rockets toward residential areas of Israel.
According to sources within the Israeli Defense Forces, Hamas terrorists fired over 45 rockets Friday morning. The “Iron Dome” defense system only stopped two of the rockets from striking within Israel.
IDF spokesman said that Israel has resumed air strikes at rocket launching sites in response to the Hamas attacks.
“We will continue to strike Hamas, its infrastructure, its operatives, and restore security for the State of Israel,” Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Lerner said in a statement.
Egyptian negotiators have called for a resumption of the cease-fire because negotiations are close to reaching a solution. However, Hamas has refused to agree to stop their assaults because they demand all of their demands be met.
Ron Prosor, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, is calling out the body’s head for his open bias toward the terrorist group Hamas in the Gaza conflict.
After Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon made a verbal assault against Israel, saying they need to be investigated for their attacks that caused damage to some U.N. facilities in the Gaza Strip, Prosor responded by telling the Secretary-General he needs to realize who was behind the entire situation.
“Israel did not seek the confrontation,” Prosor said. “We left Gaza with the intention of never returning.”
Prosor was referencing the 2005 unilateral withdrawal.
It was also pointed out to the Secretary-General that Hamas was using schools, hospitals and other locations to launch attacks. On three separate occasions, Hamas weapons were found stored inside U.N. schools and the Secretary-General made no condemnation of Hamas for their actions in those cases.
Reports have begun from inside Israel that the government will agree to an extension of the 72-hour cease-fire to allow longer negotiations in Cairo, Egypt. However, a spokesman for the Israeli Defense Forces says they have plans in place to target Hamas leadership should they break the agreement and fire a single rocket into Israel.