However, truth, faith, and determination were always present among Palestinians and did not leave the generations throughout the years of struggle with the occupier, and on all fronts including the military combat front, specifically confronting the enemy’s tanks and vehicles that its soldiers were long fortified in. However, the Palestinian resistance achieved a significant and tangible success in confronting those vehicles and dispelling the enemy’s illusion of protecting its soldiers, turning those machines into mobile coffins that transport the enemy’s soldiers to inevitable death.
With the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000, the zionist occupation thrust tanks and armored vehicles into the hearts of cities and camps in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the resistance had only light rifles that could not confront those armors in any way. The resistance began its journey in facing these tanks, initially with large explosive devices buried in the enemy’s expected paths.
These attempts were successful, but the difficulty of maneuvering with those devices remained a problem, due to their size, weight, and the large amounts of explosives consumed in a time when those materials were scarce, as well as the need to plant them in the ground under complex security conditions to ensure they were not discovered by the enemy. From here, a long path began in an attempt to develop other weapons within the available capabilities and local raw materials.
The Initial Nucleus
The year 2002 witnessed the first attempts to manufacture anti-armor shells and bore the name (Al-Bana – Al-Battar) as well as side bombs, but the challenge of penetration and destruction remained due to the enemy’s improvement and development of its vehicle armoring and defensive systems. In contrast, Al-Qassam Brigades continued its efforts, and its engineers managed in 2004 to manufacture the Yassin shell and launcher (P2), a version of the Russian-made P2-RPG, thus the Brigades achieved a relative abundance of weapons and ammunition. Yet, the challenge of penetration and destruction was not solved. In the same year, very few Russian P7-RPG launchers entered Gaza Strip at very high prices, reaching $30,000 for a launcher and a shell, passing through complex stages and overcoming many barriers with difficulty.
As the work of Al-Qassam Brigades and its military apparatus developed, the Brigades worked on dividing their forces into specialties, with the anti-armor specialty being one of the most prominent and important. With the liberation of Gaza Strip from the zionist occupation forces and the removal of the settlements in 2005, the supply situation improved, reflecting on the general development of the Palestinian resistance capabilities and the military manufacturing development of Al-Qassam Brigades specifically.
In 2007, quantities of weapons entered Gaza Strip, including P7-RPG, in abundant quantities, leading to the phasing out of the Yassin launcher, as well as other types of long-range guided anti-armor weapons such as Fagot, Kornet, Konkurs, and others. Within the framework of preparation and training, the Brigades succeeded in training a number of fighters on these weapons outside occupied Palestine, thus enhancing the anti-armor specialty within Al-Qassam with expertise and equipment.
A Qualitative Leap
In 2014, within the lessons learned from the Battle of Al-Asf Al-Maakoul, the recommendation was to produce an effective anti-armor weapon against enemy vehicles and armored vehicles like (Merkava 4, the Namer carrier, the armored D9 bulldozer, and others) and in response to this recommendation, the research and development teams of engineers and cadres in the military manufacturing units of Al-Qassam Brigades worked diligently and prepared studies on the possibility of achieving this, especially since this type of science requires high precision in measurements, materials, and alloys.As a result of sincere efforts, creative minds, and a will that defied the impossible and dug into the rock, after dozens of attempts and experiments in the years 2015-2016-2017, the Al-Yassin 105 anti-armor shell entered production in 2018, as well as the anti-fortification and anti-personnel Al-Yassin shells, in addition to guerilla action devices.This was a complete innovation attributed to the engineers of Al-Qassam from scratch until the successful and powerful launch of the shell and its continuation until reaching its target, with the ability to penetrate armor at a distance ranging between 60-100 cm in the body of the tank and the armored vehicle.In parallel with this development in military manufacturing, the Brigades worked on training armor snipers to confront the vehicles and armored vehicles of the occupation army. This path included a detailed study of the Merkava tank and other vehicles of the occupation army, identifying their weaknesses and operational mechanisms and tactics, as well as building models that accurately mimic those vehicles in terms of size and shape, and designing shooting simulators to train the fighters on various types of shooting—fixed, moving, close, and long-range—and also training on maneuvering with anti-armor weapons in the field.Thus, an important stage in the development of preparation and readiness within the ranks of Al-Qassam Brigades was completed, summarizing Al-Qassam’s readiness to fight against the enemy’s armor and fortifications.
Yassin 105 and the Flood
With the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Flood battle on October 7, 2023, the Brigades announced the entry of the Yassin 105 anti-armor shell and the Yassin 105 TBG anti-fortification and anti-personnel shells into service, threatening the enemy that this weapon would play an active role in dispelling its illusions and destroying its vehicles in ground warfare. Indeed, the Yassin 105 shell became a prominent and important icon in the Al-Aqsa Flood battle.
From the first day of the Flood and during the great crossing operation, Al-Qassam fighters used this shell, and its name emerged with the start of the ground battle through Al-Qassam’s consecutive announcements about the armor crews and elite forces confronting the enemy’s vehicles and tanks, foremost among them the Merkava 4 BAZ tank, which the occupier had always boasted about and equipped with the most powerful weapons, defensive systems, and armoring against guided missiles, with the production cost of a single tank reaching about $6 million, divided between $3 million for the body and armor of the tank, $1 million for the cannon system, and $2 million for the rest of the devices and systems installed on this tank. In contrast, the production cost of a single Yassin 105 shell did not exceed $500.
But it was the fighting will of the Palestinian fighter and the spirit of martyrdom that were clearly and powerfully present in the battlefields where the fighters advanced towards convoys and gatherings of tanks despite the violent and insane aerial bombardment, drones, and artillery shelling based on the scorched earth policy, showing dozens of video clips that documented those heroic battles in which the fighters sought those vehicles to hit them in their strongholds and disable or destroy them, killing and injuring those inside them from the enemy’s soldiers and mercenaries.
In a tally published for the first time—up to the preparation of this report—Al-Qassam fighters successfully disabled and destroyed more than 1,108 vehicles, including 962 tanks, 55 troop carriers, 74 bulldozers, 3 excavators, and 14 military jeeps, resulting in the killing and injuring of a large number of the enemy’s officers, soldiers, and mercenaries inside those tanks and vehicles, some of whom burned inside them and others were killed after their vehicles were crushed by aircraft, due to the inability of the rescue forces to pull them out.
Heroic battles and direct clashes of Al-Qassam fighters with the enemy’s vehicles that were smashed and destroyed by a qualitative weapon manufactured inside a besieged and depleted Strip for more than 16 years, yet, the help and success of Allah were with this group of fighters, marking with this blessed national achievement a new page in the history of the Palestinian people’s jihad and resistance.
Translated by Resistance News Network