Hamas training recruits for new women's military wing at secret site in
Gaza

Geostrategy-Direct, www.geostrategy-direct.com, August 30, 2005

GAZA CITY - Hamas has established a military wing for women insurgents.

Hamas said dozens of women have been recruited for insurgency attacks.
The recruitment was conducted in the Gaza Strip and would soon move to
the West Bank.

Hamas sources said the women recruits have already undergone training
in weapons and rocket use as well as in handling of explosives. They
said training took place at a secret location in the Gaza Strip.

The women, both married and single, would be absorbed into Hamas's
Izzedin Kassam military wing, the sources said. The women would soon
carry out such attacks as planting improvised explosive devices,
infiltrating Israeli communities and firing mortars and rockets.

"Our husbands know that we are members of Izzedin Kassam," a Hamas
woman recruit was quoted as saying. "As for those who are not married,
their brothers and fathers know about their activities. The husbands
and brothers of most of the women are also members of the armed wing of
Hamas."

The Hamas women's wing was announced as Israel prepared to complete the
eviction of Israeli residents from the Gaza Strip. On Aug. 22, Israeli
military and police were preparing to evacuate the Jewish community of
Netsarim in the central Gaza Strip.

The Israeli operation came as authorities received an intelligence
alert of plans by Palestinian insurgency groups to launch mortars
toward the southern Jewish community of Morag. Israeli helicopters and
unmanned aerial vehicles were reportedly sent to the area.

"Gaza is not Palestine," a Hamas spokesman told a news conference in
Gaza City on Aug. 20. "As for Jerusalem and the West Bank, we will seek
to liberate them through resistance just as the Gaza Strip was
liberated."

The Hamas-aligned Palestine Information Center website posted
photographs of masked women dressed in military fatigues. The recruits
brandished AK-47 Kalashnikov rifles and also pistols.

Hamas has been developing extended-range Kassam-class missiles with a
20-km range. Israel has requested that Egypt prevent the smuggling of
technology and components required for the Kassam and other weapons
program. So far, Egypt, which plans to deploy 750 police commandos
along the 12-kilometer long border with the Gaza Strip, has not relayed
such a formal commitment.

On Aug. 22, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told the Knesset
Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that the Palestinian Authority
foiled a major insurgency strike on the Israeli bloc of Jewish
communities in the Gaza Strip. Sharon said the attack was planned to
have been launched on Gush Katif from neighboring Khan Younis during
the current evacuation of Jewish communities.