Hamas actively enlisted support for the violent riots and attempted infiltrations into Israeli territory along the Gaza border over the past seven weeks, and then used the ensuing violence to deceive Western leaders and media outlets, Israel’s top military spokesman has claimed in a new Wall Street Journal piece.
Writing in the Journal Sunday, Brig. Gen. Ronen Manelis, the IDF’s chief spokesman, detailed Hamas’ efforts to provoke clashes between Israeli security personnel and rioters on the border, paying Gazans to flood the Israel-Gaza border in an attempt to breach Israel’s security fence and force their way into Israeli territory.
The riots, which began on March 30th, were dubbed the “March of Return”, were organized by the High Coordination Committee for the March of Return, a body dominated by members of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror groups.
Hamas, Manelis noted, bused rioters to the Israel-Gaza frontier, paying rioters $14 a person to join in the clashes. The terror group even encouraged women and children to participate, paying $100 to families which came together to the riots. The terror group even subsidized injuries – paying out $500 to those wounded while attempting to breach the Israeli border.
Meanwhile, plainclothes Hamas terrorists mingled with the crowd, inciting violence and leading armed charges of the Israeli border while carrying “machine guns, Molotov cocktails…improvised explosive devices, and grenades”.
While Hamas and its supporters used the resulting violence, which left more 110 rioters dead, including roughly 60 fatalities last Monday, the terror group has been surprisingly candid at times regarding the campaign to breach the Israeli border. READ MORE
