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Earlier this week, Hamas held a memorial for seven Palestinians fighters killed when a tunnel collapsed in Gaza. As office of the ceremony, the group unveiled a supposed main battle tank congenital from captured Israeli tank components.

The new Hamas tank has a number of tanky, tankish, or tank-like features. As someone who owned a number of toy tanks every bit a child, I tin confirm that this life-size tank can agree multiple people, rolls forwards, and has a big protruding tube mounted in front with real rotating activeness. As an added nostalgia bonus, it even has imitation treads.

TankishThing

How do we know they're fake? There's a rather telling photo of the front of the "armor" (and boy do nosotros use that term loosely).

TankWheels

Real tanks don't take secondary wheels for driving. And the treads actually touch the ground.

This video shows the tank in more particular, including the gun lifting and moving.

This tank ain't fight

Hamas' non-tank superficially resembles an Israeli Merkava tank (a Merkava Mark IV is pictured beneath). This would make sense — the Merkava tank family has been used against Palestinian militants in both the Second Intifada and the subsequently Gaza state of war. If Hamas actually managed to capture tank components, this would be the type of tank they'd accept likely scavenged.

Merkava4

An Israeli Merkava Mark IV

The real trouble with the "Hamas has a tank" story is that if yous managed to scavenge some tank components and shells, you don't really build another tank. Instead, yous strip the armaments and guns and mount them on quick-moving vehicles that can launch attacks on enemy positions, then escape earlier beingness caught.

Ane tank, without support, isn't actually all that useful. Tanks require a dandy deal of fuel (there's a reason Toyota canceled its plans for a treaded, armored Prius), maintenance, and support. During the Gaza War, Hamas deployed multiple anti-tank units and weapons. While no tanks or modern APCs were confirmed destroyed in that conflict, Hamas demonstrated a basic awareness of anti-tank tactics and weapons.

Imagine the possibilities.

Imagine the possibilities.

The concluding reason to dubiety the organization'south claims is perhaps the simplest: Israel maintains a vice grip on what material (or materiel) is allowed within the Gaza Strip. While it's truthful that Hamas has dug tunnels and created a sophisticated smuggling infrastructure, it's one thing to smuggle in the components of a primitive RPG and something else entirely to fit a master battle tank chassis through a smuggling tunnel simply wide enough to fart in.

Plenty of organizations, militias, and guerilla fighters have fielded impromptu arms or converted tanks. They tend to expect like this:

Shan

Improvised tank

Converted vehicles use what's available. They bend and weld sheet metal. During WWII, desperate Soviet workers converted tractors into tanks. Foxtrot Blastoff has a full gallery on the types of vehicles people build today when they want armored firepower, but can't afford to build or buy a traditional MBT.

What they don't build are wood and fiberglass props with a car within them to pretend they take something they don't. That's military theater, not armed forces prowess.