TEL AVIV – Footage released by the IDF Wednesday shows a Hamas terrorist who was arrested when he breached the border into Israel explaining how the terror group cynically exploits the ongoing riots to prevent an uprising in the Gaza Strip, and women and children are instructed to advance to the front row of the bloody protests with the promise that the “army doesn’t kill women or children.”
“Hamas organizes these riots so the people won’t revolt,” said the Gazan.
“They’re the ones controlling the Strip, ruling it. Everything that happens goes through them,” he added.
This is in stark contrast to claims made by both the Palestinians and elements of the western media that the so-called March of Return protests are peaceful and civilian-led.
Earlier this week, a Hamas co-founder confirmed in a TV interview that the riots are backed by the terror group’s fighters and added that calling the protests part of a “peaceful resistance” is simply a tactic to “deceive the public.”
The man in the film released Wednesday was one of several Palestinians who successfully breached the security fence on Tuesday.
The footage shows the man sitting on a kite covered in swastikas, most likely one of the attack kites outfitted with canisters of burning gasoline that have been flown into Israeli territory from Gaza during the protests.
“Hamas is the one sending us Facebook and text messages to go, and at the mosques they yell and hand out flyers calling us to go to the fence,” he said.
“When there’s (electric) power, and the televisions are on, all you see is the March of Return, the march, the march,” the suspect added.
He said Hamas arranges buses to wait outside mosques in Gaza to take worshipers to the riots.
The suspect added that the terrorist group specifically encourages women and children to approach the border, telling them “the army won’t shoot girls” and “the army won’t shoot little kids.”
He claimed that the protests divert from the hopelessness of Gazans, who are living in deplorable living conditions with a few hours of electricity every day and, in many cases, unclean water, the result of a rift between the terror group and the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority.
“People wear out and get fed up. I’m one of those people,” the suspect said.
“They are putting pressure on their people and ‘exporting’ that pressure toward Israel, the Palestinian Authority and the international community,” a senior official in Israel’s military liaison unit to the Palestinians told reporters on Sunday.
On Wednesday, a Hamas official said that 50 of the 62 people killed over the last two days were Hamas members. Palestinian Islamic Jihad said another three of the dead were members of its terror group.