Hamas's public dress rehearsal

Less than a month before Hamas fighters blew through Israel’s high-tech “Iron Wall” and launched an attack that would leave more than 1,200 Israelis dead, they practised in a very public dress rehearsal.

A slickly produced two-minute propaganda video posted to social media by Hamas on September 12 shows fighters using explosives to blast through a replica of the border gate, sweep in on pickup trucks, and then move building by building through a full-scale reconstruction of an Israeli town, firing automatic weapons at human-silhouetted paper targets.

The Islamic militant group’s live-fire exercise dubbed operation “Strong Pillar” also shows militants wearing body armour and combat fatigues swiftly carrying out operations that included the destruction of mock-ups of the wall's concrete towers and a communications antenna, just as they would do for real in the deadly attack last Saturday.

While Israel’s highly regarded security and intelligence services were clearly caught flatfooted by Hamas’s ability to breach its Gaza defences, the group appears to have hidden its extensive preparations for the deadly assault in plain sight.

“There clearly were warnings and indications that should have been picked up,” said Bradley Bowman, a former US Army officer who is now senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington research institute.

“Or maybe they were picked up, but they didn’t spark necessary preparations to prevent these horrific terrorist acts from happening.” (AP)