Display put on by youths attending a summer camp before a delegation of senior Hamas figures who visited the Khan Yunis Province (Facebook page of the Khan Yunis Province Summer Camp Committee, August 7, 2018)
Theoretical classes and exercises
Tests of courage: passing through fire exercise
Theoretical lessons in operating weapons
Climbing walls
Overview
As part of the summer camps for children and youth that are held annually, this year Hamas also organized summer camps at facilities and outposts of the Hamas military wing throughout the Gaza Strip. The camps opened on August 6, 2018, and are called Pioneers of the Liberation. The camps are held in two sessions (morning and evening). The instructors are military operatives, members of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, and the participants are children and youths, some of them in uniform, mainly the older ones.
Display put on by youths attending a summer camp before a delegation of senior Hamas figures who visited the Khan Yunis Province (Facebook page of the Khan Yunis Province Summer Camp Committee, August 7, 2018)
- Photos documenting the summer camps in the Khan Yunis area have been posted on the website of the Hamas Central Committee for Summer Camps. The summer camp activities are being held near several outposts that are mentioned on the website (including the Al-Qadisiyyah, Yarmouk and Al-Shuhadaa’ outposts). Most of the activity is devoted to basic military training. The youths are trained by instructors wearing uniforms bearing the insignia and badges of Hamas’s Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades. In addition to summer camps held in Hamas facilities, summer camps are held in schools throughout the Gaza Strip. Most of them are organized by Hamas on a wider scale (tens of thousands of participants). The summer camps in schools are also devoted primarily to military training and ideological indoctrination by Hamas.[1] Training during these summer camps is a supplement to the military training, both theoretical and practical, undergone by high school students during the school year.[2]
- Hamas and other terrorist organizations attach great importance to shaping the consciousness of and providing military training to the children and youth growing in the Gaza Strip, from preschool age to graduation from university. From Hamas’s perspective, this is intended to create a new generation of operatives, which will be integrated into the movement’s political, military and governmental activities and will guarantee its long-term rule over the Gaza Strip.
- Hamas inculcates radical ideology among the new generation: hatred of Israel, the “liberation” of all of Palestine through a military struggle, the values of radical Islam according to the Muslim Brotherhood, and the return of the Palestinian refugees to “Ashdod, Yavne, Jaffa, Acre, Lod, Ramla and all the villages in Palestine” (from a speech by Fathi Hamad, former interior minister of the Hamas de-facto administration, at the opening ceremony of training camps held at high schools, Al-Rai; Filastin Al-‘Aan, January 7, 2014). For a list of publications of the ITIC on the military and ideological training of the younger generation in the Gaza Strip, see Appendix.
Examples of activity at the summer camps
- Following are examples of the activities of the summer camps at the various facilities of the military wing, as documented on the Facebook page of the Hamas Central Committee for Summer Camps, August 6, 2018.
Drill practice
- Uniformed children doing drill practice at the evening session in the Al-Qadisiyyah outpost in the Khan Yunis Province.
Theoretical classes and exercises
- Theoretical class in the Al-Qadisiyyah outpost in the Khan Yunis Province. A uniformed military wing operative is visible on the right. Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades appears on his name tag. The insignia of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades appears on the arm of the instructor on the left. The instructors’ faces are not shown in the picture.
Tests of courage: passing through fire exercise
- A passing through fire exercise was held on the first day of the evening camp at the Hamas military wing’s Yarmouk outpost in the Khan Yunis Province.
Theoretical lessons in operating weapons
- A theoretical lesson in the classroom and classes on operating weapons; documentation from the first day of the evening camp at the Yarmouk outpost in the Khan Yunis Province.
Climbing walls
- Children and youths practice climbing up and down walls (from documentation of activities on the second day of the Pioneers of Liberation camps in the Khan Yunis Province).
Visit by the Hamas leadership in the Khan Yunis Province and a display by the trainees
- A visit by senior Hamas figures in the Khan Yunis Province took place on the second day of the camp’s operation (August 7, 2018). The visitors were headed by Palestinian Legislative Council member Yahya Moussa and Khan Yunis Province Summer Camp Committee Chairman Imad Aslim. The youths apparently put on a display for the visitors. During the visit, photos of shaheeds (who had been operatives of the military wing and residents of Khan Yunis) were put up, as part of the culture of glorifying shaheeds that is instilled in children and youths (Facebook page of the Khan Yunis Province Summer Camp Committee, August 7, 2018)
[1] See the ITIC’s Information Bulletin from July 18, 2018: “Hamas announced the opening of summer camps for children and adolescents in the Gaza Strip. This year summer camps are inspired by the “return marches,” and include military training as they do every year.” ↑
[2] See the ITIC’s Information Bulletin from January 16, 2014: “Military Training as Part of the School Curriculum: The Al-Futuwwa Program in the Gaza Strip Schools Provides Military Training for Students. Its Objective is to Raise a New Generation of Military-Terrorist Operatives for the De-Facto Hamas Administration.” ↑
