"People sometimes have to move. But not if you make them part of the structure."
Gaza City, January 21 - The current pause in Gaza warfare has provided the Islamist militia that still governs the territory with an opportunity to analyze the strategies and combat tactics that they have employed against the IDF over the last year-plus, and to develop improvements to counter the effectiveness of Israel's technological and operational superiority - with one promising avenue the use of noncombatants not merely as shields by dint of their presence in or near Hamas assets, but as actual construction material to prevent those human shiels from moving and negating the defensive and propaganda advantage.
Hamas officials regrouping in the battered Gaza Strip took time from celebrating their self-proclaimed victory - after a year and four months of crying they were helpless victims of genocide - to refine their approach to Israeli operations, which the current ceasefire and hostage-release agreement does not rule out in the near future. A swift resumption of the violence at scale would delay any rebuilding efforts, one official explained, so Hamas might opt to maintain quiet for as long as it takes to get international rebuilding efforts going, and only then to start putting children in the walls.
"We appreciate that holding on to more hostages, whether alive or dead, risks a quicker restart of the war," stated Fawzi Barhoum. "Some of us are willing to take that risk, because there is honor in causing the enemy pain regardless of how much it makes our people suffer. But others take a more strategic view, and are already preparing for the next aftermath of an October 7 operation, which we intend to do again and again, until the Zionists disappear."
"That preparation must involve a reassessment and adjustment of our methods," he continued. "Everyone already knows we position our men and materiel with or under women and children. In schools, hospitals, mosques, and community facilities. That is hardly news, though mainstream news organizations obligingly leave out that information from their reporting, despite our boasting about it. But while we can convince or coerce Gazans to serve as human shields, and have that either protect our assets or become a propaganda coup when those noncombatants die, it's an imperfect solution. People sometimes have to move. But not if you make them part of the structure."
Analysts praised the poetic significance of the move, which makes manifest in the most concrete way the use of children, representing the future and possible change, to cement an unchanging reality of violence and oppression.
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