debkafile Exclusive: Hamas parades its first female commando and suicide units at huge 20th anniversary Gaza assembly

In addition to the female commmandos, our military sources report Hamas has formed hundreds of suicide killers into a large unit for obstructing a major Israeli offensive against its missile-mortar offensive from Gaza. Its planners figure that if only one out of ten is successful, the Israeli advance will be seriously slowed. Another special unit created by Hamas is composed of fighters clad in IDF uniforms and armed with Israel weapons and gear to confuse Israeli Air Force surveillance craft and drones and slow their counteraction. Hamas has stockpiled thousands of Qassam missiles, enough to rain down 100 a day on Israeli civilian and military targets.
The hundreds of thousands of participants at the Hamas celebration in Gaza City Saturday, Dec. 15, were a demonstration of strength which belied claims of its waning powers. This claim is often heard from Israeli officials as a pretext to avoid a military confrontation in Gaza. debkafile‘s military sources report that every passing week sees Hamas strength enhanced and better organized to take on Israeli counter-terror assaults.
The jihadist group’s leaders in Gaza, Syria and Lebanon are certain that a major Israel offensive is on the way and believe they know the IDF war plan. They anticipate:
1. Tactics quite different from those employed in the 2006 Lebanon war;
2. Most Israeli and Western military pundits expect the IDF to cut through to northern Gaza – to stifle missile fire, and to the Philadelphi border enclave in the south – to stem the smuggling of fighters and arms from Sinai. Hamas, to the contrary, estimates that Israeli armored columns will race from the north and the east to converge on Gaza City and wipe out the command centers located there.
3. The IDF is expected to lay down a ferocious blanket of fire from land, sea and air. The suicide unit will be sent into action against the sources of fire and the tank columns.
4. Because no Hamas commander believes Israel tank columns can be stopped, they have drawn up Plan B: terrorist chiefs will go to ground and wage guerrilla warfare against Israeli troops in the same way as Sunni insurgents and al Qaeda combat US forces in Iraq.
5. After unifying the Hamas and Jihad Islami commands, as we have reported, the Islamist tacticians have merged all the terrorist groups operating in the Gaza Strip into a single 9,000-10,000 strong army. This is one-third larger than the Hizballah militia which fought Israel in 2006. It is made up of Ezz e-Din al-Qassam Brigades, combat-trained Gaza police units and the elite Hamas force which spearheaded the coup that expelled the Fatah-ruled Palestinian Authority from the Gaza Strip last June.