Water pipes were turned into rockets by Gaza terrorists
Terrorists’ ability to turn seemingly innocent household commodities into the tools of terror has always created a challenge for peaceful states fighting terror. Fertilizer has been used to build lethal bombs and instead of using tons of cement that Israel permitted into the Gaza Strip for the building of homes, schools and factories, Hamas built 100 kilometers of terror tunnels that Israel destroyed in the recent war.
Now there is another seemingly innocuous construction material that has joined the arsenal of terror: water pipes. There were some reports that Israel was surprised by the high number of rockets - 4,300 - that Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists had in their arsenals to launch against civilians in Israeli cities in the recent 11-day Gaza war. Now the Secretary-General of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad has explained this: He bragged that the “resistance engineers” have turned “water pipes… into the rockets that you see.”
The ability to easily turn construction materials into lethal rockets in simple underground factories, creates new challenges for Israel. It means that Israel must be even more cautious about what dual-purpose materials are allowed into the Gaza Strip and who controls their distribution.
The following is a longer excerpt of the statement by Islamic Jihad Secretary-General Ziyad Al-Nakhaleh:
“Let the world, which is silent, know that our weapons – with which we are confronting the most modern products of the American military industry – are water pipes that the resistance engineers have turned into the rockets that you see. Here the occupation state (i.e., Israel), with all its capabilities, is unable to confront Gaza and its modest capabilities.”
[Twitter account of Al-Mayadeen TV (Lebanon), May 19, 2021]
For years, international organizations, including the UN, have been investing in the development of Gaza’s water supply system. The seemingly never-ending extent of this work can now be understood based on the explanations of Al-Nakhaleh. Using water pipes designated for humanitarian assistance to the residents of Gaza to make rockets is another demonstration of how the terrorist organizations in Gaza not only cynically use and abuse the Gaza civilian population to forward the terror goals, but also how they misuse foreign aid and fool the donors.