After 100 days in the reserves inside the Gaza Strip, Channel 13 and former Ynet reporter, Roi Yanovsky, has returned with a series of insights that he formulated during that timespan.
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These involve Gaza itself, what daily life in Gaza must have been like prior to Israel's offensive, what can be found inside people's homes, how Hamas operatives walk around during the day, how well embedded they really are into the local population and how Hamas uses its propaganda arms to present a false image to the world.
1) Perceived by the world as an overcrowded, third-world territory that is constantly besieged, watching Gaza City with one's own eyes presents a wholly different picture. It is a modern, well-developed city. Big houses, a big plaza, parks, well-maintained walkways right on the beach and so much more. It looks far more like Tel Aviv than Jenin. The world's "most crowded"? Not by a long shot.
2) If this is considered a siege, then sign me up. People here live just fine. Homes are loaded with fancy belongings, be it furniture, appliances or anything else. Some of what I saw could give Monte Carlo a run for its money. Most places are bigger than my Tel Aviv apartment. Blaming their will to fight Israel on their poor living conditions does a disservice to the truth.
3) Who knew Gazans had such an affinity for their geography? In most homes, the single most prevalent of objects seems to be a map of Israel. Of course, it doesn’t say Israel, as it refers to the entire territory as Palestine.
Neither the State of Israel nor Israeli communities are to be found anywhere. These maps can be found in almost every home, every school and every public institution, with the stated goal being the complete eradication of Israel. This is not something they hide or are mildly ashamed of. Their historical misperception of the region they live in teaches of an alternate reality they choose to inhabit, making it far more difficult to find common ground.
4) Military infrastructure can be found in every single neighborhood we were in. Weapons, tunnels, explosive charges and launchpads are all conveniently located inside residential buildings, some of which are equipped with holes in the walls so the transition between the various structures is seamless.
Palestinian civilians who reside within these combat zones are acutely aware of all this. They had received countless warnings to evacuate, long before the first IDF soldier set foot inside the enclave. IDF leaflets can be found virtually everywhere. Those who have decided to stay inside the combat zones either belong to Hamas or are civilians who made the conscious decision to remain, Israeli shelling notwithstanding.
5) Doing their utmost to remain elusive and unassuming, Hamas operatives hardly ever walk around while visibly armed. They’re fully aware that if they stroll in civilian clothing, the IDF is highly unlikely to view them as hostile, and therefore will not engage.
This element transforms combat into a multifaceted operation, far more than any other arena that we’ve seen. So anyone sitting in their air-conditioned suites, offices or studios, presuming to pass judgment as to why IDF troops were not "careful enough" to avoid civilian casualties, let him venture into Gaza for a week or two, and we’ll see what they have to say then.
6) Not only is Hamas embedded within the Palestinian population, the population is embedded within Hamas. Its ideology, in one form or another, can be found in practically every home, every picture and every piece of propaganda. Hamas and Gaza are the same as Maradona and Argentina.
7) Hamas would never have become this powerful, entrenched and prevalent without active assistance from the locals. There is no way civilians who lived in the structures where we found munitions and arms, were unaware that the place serves as a Hamas launching pad. Equally, I find it hard to believe that parents of children who stayed in the kindergarten where there was a shaft leading to a tunnel did not know any of this. Who sends his children to a kindergarten that is used as an infrastructure for a terrorist organization?
8) As well stocked and well trained as Hamas may be, it’s not the physical equipment that makes it so powerful, but rather its lies and propaganda. Those are at the heart of what sustains Hamas as Gaza's ruling entity. This is what they did for years in order to craft, polish and maintain the lie of the so-called "siege". The pictures of the innocent victims, and the killing of so-called journalists who later were discovered to be terror operatives, are part of that mirage. Gaza is the only place in the world where they’re able to report 500 casualties within half an hour of an explosion.
Even in the world's most devastating earthquakes and sites of various natural disasters, reports would not emerge for days after the fact, as it would take that long for rescue operations to estimate the number of casualties.
Somehow, however, the Palestinian health ministry has an unreasonably fast grasp on the number of casualties, often releasing an official figure mere minutes after the event itself transpired. The fact global media regurgitates these figures as if they were written on a stone tablet passed by Moses himself, is nothing short of pathetic. The same can also be attributed to reports of so-called "starvation" in the Rafah border crossing.