Ukraine's Resold Soviet-Made Arms Ended Up in Hamas' Hands: Expert

"The Ukrainian weapons from Ukrainian warehouses ended up in the hands of Arab countries [...] Ukraine traded arms with Libya, Lebanon, and Syria. And these are all states that border Israel. Further on, Soviet weapons, now Russian it seems, continue to fall into the hands of Hamas. Yes, Hamas has many types of weapons. Basically, these are MANPADS, but not to mention Soviet-made RPG [handheld anti-tank grenade launcher] missiles, Soviet modifications. They have the 'Igla', which is in small quantity, but still there," Tsipis accused.

"After the collapse of the USSR, Ukraine came out on top several times in the arms trade, illegal arms trade and arms smuggling [...] Several of the most prominent arms dealers are citizens of Ukraine. [...] In the years of 1990-2000, Ukraine was one of the leading states that sold weapons to everyone. Most of the weapons went to the countries of Asia, Africa, Central Asia, North Africa and the Middle East," he explained.

"Internal intelligence, which deals with Hamas, is called Shabak, which used to be called Shin Bet. For Shabak, this is probably one of the biggest failures in the history of this special service, because they controlled internal security, and they had all the necessary intelligence resources both among Hamas and in the Gaza Strip, and no one was able to get reliable information," the analyst noted.

"Even those contacts who worked, collaborated with the Shabak, that is, the Palestinians who collaborated with the Israeli special services, they deliberately led to a dead end, they gave them disinformation, and this is also one of the reasons for the failure. [...] It is quite possible that they could give out misinformation to their agents. It's all together. It was a planned action, a planned operation. Therefore, most likely, they could have reached a dead end, misled our special services, and this had its effect, the failure that we are now witnessing," he underscored.

"There are several reasons. First, there is probably the largest internal political crisis in the history of Israel. Our government that came to power... Now, according to the results of the fifth consecutive election. This government is set up, this is a right-wing, radical government. So, the only chance to stay in power is to play and provoke a war. That is, my personal opinion is that this government, which is right-wing led by [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu, it was actually already on the verge of collapse and fall. A few days before these events, we had a number of splits within the coalition. Plus, the second reason is the judicial reform, which caused a very big rebuff from most of the Israeli society," he shared.