New York Times on hamas

WASHINGTON — By firing rockets deep into Israeli territory, the militant Palestinian group Hamas has in recent days displayed an arsenal that has been upgraded with weapons parts smuggled into Gaza since it seized control of the territory 18 months ago, according to American and Israeli officials.

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That strategy was used successfully by Hezbollah militants against Israel in Lebanon in 2006, although Hezbollah had access to missiles and rockets far more sophisticated than those being used by Hamas. Israeli officials said that Hamas was still relying on unguided rockets, rather than guided weapons like the Iranian-made C-802 cruise missile that Hezbollah used against an Israeli ship during the summer of 2006.

Still, the rockets fired by Hamas in the current fighting have flown farther and been more accurate than weapons used by the group in the past, the officials said. Some have flown nearly two dozen miles, destroying buildings in the southern Israeli cities of Ashdod and Beersheba.

Hamas and other militant groups have lobbed thousands of rockets into Israel since 2001. The difference now, officials said, is that Hamas is using more of the imported Katyusha rockets, which have a longer range than the crude, homemade Qassam rockets it relied on in the past. Officials say the group has been emboldened to improve its arsenal since it routed its rival, Fatah, in 2007 and assumed control of Gaza.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss intelligence matters, said that Hamas appeared to have relied on a combination of black-market entrepreneurs and help from its longtime patrons Iran and Syria to procure rocket parts.

A senior Israeli military official said Israeli intelligence also believed that Hamas took advantage of a six-month truce with Israel to bolster its stockpiles.

The officials said the extent to which Iran and Syria directly supplied Hamas was murky because arms shipments were difficult to track. Yet they generally agree about the smuggling route: by land across the Sinai Peninsula, often aided by Bedouin tribes, and through the warren of tunnels under Egypt’s border into Gaza.

An American counterterrorism official said it was rare for Hamas to try to smuggle complete weapons systems into Gaza. More frequently, he said, rocket parts were taken through the tunnels and assembled inside Gaza by Hamas munitions experts.

Israeli officials have said their objective in carrying out airstrikes on Gaza is to end Hamas’s ability to carry out further rocket attacks. But analysts said that goal could require Israeli ground troops to strike into Gaza, in operations that could run the risk of fighting an entrenched guerrilla war in a densely populated area.

“The problem you have to consider from an Israeli perspective is that you score most of your victories from the air in the first 48 hours. Afterward, you get into punitive damage,” said Anthony H. Cordesman, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

American officials said Hamas’s tactics in recent years had evolved from suicide bombings to more sophisticated attacks like roadside bombings and bombs set off by cellphones, all of which would be a particular risk to Israeli troops and tanks.

David Schenker, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute and a former Pentagon official specializing in Middle East issues, said the increasing sophistication of Hamas’s tactics was evidence that the group might have received training from Hezbollah.

American and Israeli officials said there was evidence that at least some Hamas fighters might also have been schooled in urban assault tactics at Iranian camps run by the Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

In April, the Israeli Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center released a report saying Hamas had been engaged in a military buildup since the group took control of Gaza in June 2007. The report cited data by Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, asserting that Hamas had smuggled at least 80 tons of explosives into Gaza since then, and that the group had obtained advanced antitank weapons.

A senior Hamas leader called the report an “exaggeration” intended to scare Israelis.

The report concluded that if Israel were to carry out ground raids, Hamas would initially put up little resistance. But when Israeli troops reached densely populated areas, Hamas would use booby traps and roadside bombs.

More Articles in World » A version of this article appeared in print on January 1, 2009, on page A12 of the New York edition.