Overnight, Hamas Establishes an Army

Hamas' military industry is giving serial production numbers to the roadside charges and Qassam rockets it manufactures, a senior intelligence officer in the Southern Command told Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi during his visit to the rocket-battered town of Sderot on Monday.

According to the officer, intelligence sources believe that a real 'Hamas army' exists in the Gaza Strip and includes between 7,000 and 10,000 soldiers, who are being armed continuously with weapons smuggled through the Philadelphi route.

The officer told Prodi that Hamas and radical Islam organizations have completely taken over the Fatah headquarters in the Strip.

"Six kilometers (3.7 miles) away from here, some 800,000 people are concentrated in the Gaza Strip, where they are controlled by the Hamas army. This army's goal is to hurt innocent Israeli citizens living around the Gaza Strip," the officer said.

According to the report given to the Italian premier, about 30 tons of explosives have been smuggled over the past year into the Strip to Hamas and radical Islam organizations. Thousands of rifles and antitank missiles were also smuggled.

"As if this smuggling, which comes from Egypt, is not enough, Hamas has developed a real military industry, which operates inside buildings and private houses. The weapons manufactured there already have serial numbers, which testify to the development of this military industry," the intelligence officer said.

Senior officers described the change in Hamas in a way that was reminiscent of Hizbullah: A hierarchy, a clear division of roles, a training system, groups responsible for smuggling weapons and others in charge of preparing explosive devices, planning sophisticated terror attacks in an effort to take advantage of the IDF's weak points, etc.

In spite of the smuggling of weapons from Egypt to Gaza, the most worrying thing as far as the IDF and the Shin Bet are concerned, is the fact that representatives of the organization acquire knowledge outside the Strip, mainly in Tehran.

The return of the "students" to Gaza and the passing of knowledge to many others constitutes a key threat which cannot be fully addressed even through a wide-scale ground operation in the Strip.