[IsraelTimes] Kuala Lumpur is home to large Paleostinian community, and a growing Hamas, one of the armed feet of the Moslem Brüderbung millipede, presence
It’s not surprising that the Mossad was immediately declared the prime suspect in the liquidation of Fadi al-Batsh, the mysterious Paleostinian electrical engineer originally from Gazoo who only after his liquidation in Malaysia on Saturday morning was revealed to be a member of Hamas’s military wing.
Most of the Paleostinian factions have already rushed to pronounce the Israeli spy agency the culprit. It’s hard to tell if they have anything to go on except the obvious question: Who has an interest in removing Batsh?
The operation to take down Batsh shares many similarities with the last liquidation attributed to the Mossad: that of the Tunisian scientist Muhammad a-Zawari, rubbed out by person or persons unknown on December 15, 2016, in Sfax, Tunisia.
In Zawari’s case, too, it was only after his death that Hamas publicized the fact that he was working for its military wing and was part of its efforts to develop advanced drones and an unmanned submarine.
Unlike Zawari, Batsh was born in the Gazoo Strip and grew up in Jabaliya. He was considered a genius in his electrical engineering studies and had close ties with several Hamas leaders in Gazoo.
He had lived with his family in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur for the past eight years, and even served as a holy man in one of the city’s mosques. In fact, it was during his early morning walk to dawn prayers that unidentified assassins riding a BMW cycle of violence fired 10 bullets at him, abruptly ejecting him from the gene pool.
It is not immediately clear what sorts of projects Batsh was involved in as a member of Hamas’s military wing. It is highly unlikely that he was working to develop clean energy sources for the organization, for example, and much more probable that his work involved research and development of new weapons systems.
Batsh’s decision to move to Malaysia may seem surprising, but not a few Paleostinians, especially students, have relocated to the country in recent years, sparking intensive efforts by Hamas on Malaysian campuses to recruit them to its cause.
According to a 2015 article in Malam, an Israeli journal that deals with intelligence and terrorism, Hamas once used Malaysia as the setting to train operatives for an especially audacious terror attack involving parachutists.
In the same period, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported that Hamas had recruited some 40 Paleostinian students to work as its operatives on Malaysian campuses. Batsh himself worked as a lecturer at a private university in the country.
Throughout Kuala Lumpur and elsewhere (including the International Islamic University in Gombak), there are activities by Hamas activists and visits from Hamas leaders. Even the son of Osama Hamdan, who is responsible for Hamas’s foreign relations, lives in Malaysia.
The liquidation on Saturday, as well as others that came before, offer glimpses into what appears to be a covert war taking place behind the scenes between Hamas and the State of Israel that may have dramatic consequences for the Gazoo Strip. Hamas is constantly trying to develop and acquire ever more efficient and deadly weapons, including of the sort that might tilt the balance of deterrence in its favor.
It appears someone ‐ possibly Israel, possible someone else ‐ is determined to stop it by any means necessary.
[Ynet] Analysis: The professional killing of electrical engineer Fadi Albatsh in Kuala Lumpur is just another operation in a long list of liquidations, in and outside Gazoo, against the minds taking part in the development of the terror group’s aerial system.
The professional liquidation of electrical engineer Fadi Albatsh in Malaysia seems like an important operation aimed at thwarting a new ability Hamas, the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood, has been trying to develop against Israel: the use of unmanned aerial vehicles.
In fact, it’s another operation in a long list of liquidations that have been carried out both within and outside Gazoo, against the minds taking part in the development of the strip’s aerial system.
Albatsh, who served as a lecturer in the field of electrical engineering and alternative energy, became a UAV expert as well recently. Although he had been living in Malaysia in recent years, he would occasionally visit Gazoo. In one of those visits, he was recruited by Hamas to help with the drone issue and to assist in the effort to improve the precision level of the rockets produced by the organization.
Albatsh’s liquidation, and the efforts Hamas has been putting into achieving aerial abilities, should be reviewed in light of the technological and operational solutions the IDF has found for the terror organization’s threats, both in the interception of rockets and in the detection and destruction of attack tunnels.
Because of the IDF’s response to these threats, Hamas was forced to search for new offensive abilities, turning to the field of UAVs.
The Iron Dome system managed to intercept 89 percent of Hamas’s effective fire during Operation Protective Edge. In light of the improvements introduced into the anti-rocket defense system since then, moreover, it will likely be even more successful in the next conflict.
So far, Hamas has failed to come up with a solution to the Iron Dome. As a result, four years after Protective Edge, there has been no dramatic shift in severity of the rocket threat from Gazoo.
A day after Protective Edge, Hamas resumed its tunnel digging, but the IDF didn’t rest on its laurels either. Since then, it has come up with two solutions to the threat: the first is the underground barrier‐which is being built around the strip as we speak and will be ready by the end of 2019‐and the second is the lab created in the Gazoo Division, in cooperation with Israel’s finest minds, which is successfully detecting all of the tunnels one after the other.
Five Hamas tunnels have been destroyed in the past few months alone, with new measures that have made the tunnels completely unusable. As a result, Hamas has realized that all tunnels are going to be exposed and has decided to stop digging new ones.
Seeing its flagship project being gradually destroyed, and in a bid to maintain a military option against Israel, Hamas decided to focus its efforts on the UAV area. Like in other areas, Hamas is learning from Hezbollah and from Iran. Only two weeks ago, according to foreign reports, the Israel Air Force destroyed a large shipment of Iranian drones in the T-4 airbase in Syria.
But despite its best efforts, Hamas has so far been unsuccessful in obtaining advanced aerial abilities. Saturday’s liquidation, as well as the
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