Haaretz Exposes Israeli Army Scandal: Over 3,000 Unexploded Bombs in Gaza Turned into Hamas Weapons
A technical failure in Israeli munitions has left Gaza littered with thousands of live bombs, now repurposed by resistance fighters amid a growing humanitarian and military crisis.
Watan-In a new military scandal shaking the Israeli army, the Hebrew daily Haaretz has revealed that over 3,000 Israeli bombs dropped on Gaza since the start of the war have failed to explode. These bombs remain intact due to technical faults involving defective fuses, many of which are decades old and were either sourced internally within Israel or received from the United States.
According to Haaretz, the rate of unexploded ordnance (UXO) has risen from an estimated 2% to as high as 20% in some cases, posing a direct threat to the lives of Palestinian civilians. These unexploded bombs have essentially become “ticking time bombs” buried under rubble and scattered in residential areas.
Even more alarming, the report states that Hamas has been repurposing these unexploded bombs as a strategic resource—extracting explosive materials to create new improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Israeli officers have expressed serious concern over Hamas’s ability to either harvest the explosives or detonate the UXOs remotely using wires, which poses a constant threat to Israeli ground troops during incursions.
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“وهآرتس” تنقل عن ضابط إسرائيليين تخوفهم: “الوضع الذي وصلنا إليه، حيث تنتظر عشرات الأطنان من المتـ ـفـ ـجرات في القطاع لتستخدم ضدنا هو وضع غير طبيعي”👇 pic.twitter.com/7u7eY7uDD3
— وطن. يغرد خارج السرب (@watanserb_news) May 7, 2025
The United Nations had previously documented this hazard, noting that 1 in 10 bombs dropped on Gaza did not detonate, leading to the deaths of 23 Palestinians and injuries to 162 others. Humanitarian organizations emphasized that efforts to clear these explosives during ceasefires are consistently obstructed by Israeli-imposed restrictions, deepening the humanitarian catastrophe.
From a dud bomb to a guided explosive, these technical failures in Israel’s arsenal have ironically become tools of resistance—highlighting a critical vulnerability in Israel’s military deterrence strategy and exposing a flawed weapons system that cannot be easily remedied.
