Hamas practiced in plain sight, posting video of mock attack last month

NEW YORK, Oct 13 (AP): 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 practiced in a very public dress rehearsal.

A slickly produced two-minute propaganda video posted to social media by Hamas on Sept. 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 had militants in body armor and combat fatigues 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' ability to breach its Gaza defenses, 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 U.S. 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."

The Associated Press reviewed and verified key details from dozens of videos Hamas released over the last year, primarily through the social media app Telegram.

Using satellite imagery, the AP matched the location of the mocked-up town to a patch of desert outside Al-Mawasi, a Palestinian town on the southern coast of the Gaza Strip. A large sign in Hebrew and Arabic at the gate says "Horesh Yaron," the name of a controversial Israeli settlement in the occupied Palestinian West Bank.

Bowman said there are indications that Hamas intentionally led Israeli officials to believe it was preparing to carry out raids in the West Bank, rather than Gaza.