Israeli forces poised to invade Gaza on a mission to wipe out Hamas will confront an ever-more capable opponent trained for years by a clandestine support network that stretches far beyond the tiny enclave to Iran and allied Arab groups.
Hamas' deadly attack on southern Israel six days ago - unprecedented for the group in its planning and scale - was a devastating demonstration of the military expertise it has gained since seizing control of Gaza in 2007.
"They are a mini-army," said a source close to Hamas in the Gaza Strip, who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter. He said the group had a military academy training a range of specialisations including cyber security, and boasts a naval commando unit among its 40,000-strong military wing.
H.A. Hellyer, a senior associate fellow at Britain's Royal United Services Institute, said Israel was capable of destroying Hamas in its expected attack on the densely populated enclave. The group's leaders are spread across the Middle East in countries including Lebanon and Qatar, but its power base remains Gaza. It has urged Gazans notcall to leave ahead of the expected ground invasion, which follows days of Israeli bombardment that has killed about 1,800 people.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, said in an interview with Al Jazeera television last year that his group had received $70 million in military help from Iran. "We have rockets that are locally manufactured but the long-range rockets came from abroad, from Iran, Syria and others through Egypt," he added. After Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, Hamas began importing rockets, explosives and other equipment from Iran, Western intelligence sources have said. They were shipped via Sudan, trucked across Egypt and smuggled into Gaza through a labyrinth of narrow tunnels beneath the Sinai Peninsula, they added.
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