Hamas invites children to take selfies with guns and RPGs

Families were invited to pose for selfies with guns and rocket-propelled grenades as Hamas held its first-ever weapons exhibition in the wake of worsening Israeli-Palestinian violence.

Members of Hamas’s Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, dressed in fatigues and balaclavas, mingled with the public while inviting them to cradle sniper rifles, RPGs and automatic weapons.

Photographs show children peering through gun scopes with big smiles on their faces and holding up weapons twice their size.

“Resistance is an image and a memory. Take souvenir photos with many of al-Qassam’s weapons,” said the group in an invitation on social media.

The event – the first of its kind in Gaza, which coincided with Eid al Adha, a major Islamic holiday – was one of several exhibitions held by the group across the Gaza Strip and featured drones, RPGs and Russian “Kornet” missiles.

The occupied West Bank has in recent weeks experienced some of the worst violence since the early 2000s, with 16 Palestinians and four Israelis losing their lives over six days in late June.

Israeli settlers have also rampaged through Palestinian towns carrying out deadly attacks.

While support for the militant movement often grows at such periods, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), the number two militant group in Gaza, formally announced on the weekend that it had branched out and started operations in the West Bank.

The Islamic Jihad opposes the peace process with Israel and as the non-governing body is focused on military confrontation. Hamas, on the other hand, has in recent years been trying to rein in the conflict.

Tzachi Hanegbi, Israel’s national security adviser, in May estimated the PIJ to have about 6,000 rockets.

Hamas, it believes, has an arsenal four times that size, along with long-range rockets the PIJ is not believed to possess.

Violence has surged in the West Bank this year and is unlikely to settle after Ziad al-Nakhaleh, the leader of the PIJ, claimed to have started to establish cells in the West Bank under Iranian orders.

The leader of Iran-backed PIJ, Gaza’s second largest militant group, was pictured meeting with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, on June 16.

Just three days later, they took responsibility for a roadside improvised explosive device that wounded eight Israeli troops during a raid in the West Bank.

The incident led to an escalation in tensions in the West Bank, culminating in Israel firing missiles from a helicopter gunship for the first time in almost two decades.

An interview with al-Nakhaleh published in the Arabic press on Saturday claimed that Khamenei had “reaffirmed” his desire for the West Bank to shift from a “state of calm to a state of resistance”.

Al-Nakhaleh claimed that the PIJ had already begun setting up “fighting battalions” in Palestinian cities across the West Bank.

Source » msn