At the start of this week, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) fired a strike on al-Mawasi, a humanitarian zone in Gaza, killing three senior Hamas terrorists responsible for the massacre on October 7. Hamas has claimed numerous civilians were killed, while officials in Israel dispute those claims. Additionally, American media has characterized the scene after the attack as nothing but “sand and rubble,” but the IDF has stated it was “a precise strike on a number of senior Hamas terrorists who were operating within a command and control center embedded inside the humanitarian area.”

To better understand what’s unfolding in Gaza, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins and President of the Jerusalem Washington Center Gideon Israel discussed details of the event on Tuesday’s episode of “Washington Watch” — what the U.S. media is getting wrong, how Hamas uses Palestinian civilians, and more.

“I don’t think the media understands how Hamas operates in Gaza and what the situation is,” Israel stated. “When we hear that civilians were killed,” the media bypasses the fact that “the whole network, the whole civilian infrastructure in Gaza is Hamas.” For instance, he explained how innocent looking individuals such as Muslim grandmothers, “people walking around … in jeans and a t-shirt,” mothers, fathers, and husbands are actually all operating under Hamas’s payroll. “They look like innocent people,” Israel noted, “but their job is to go into buildings where the IDF has been and pick up intel” or provide “whatever information … they need to do coordinating attacks.”

You can have a nice looking family with children who are “also part of the terrorist network.” And on top of the civilians, there are “the actual soldiers who come and attack the IDF, the Hamas terrorists.” Even they often aren’t “wearing uniforms,” he observed. “They’re coming in civilian clothes. They come, they shoot an anti-tank missile, they shoot a little bit of a machine gun, and then they run back to the refugee camp and … sit down and smoke with friends.” In the case of this week’s air strike, Perkins noted that it was another example of how Hamas, based in a refugee camp, doesn’t “mind using [civilians] to facilitate their terror.”

“[N]ot only do they don’t mind,” Israel added, but “they do it specifically because they know that the IDF tries to minimize attacks on these so-called humanitarian areas.” And regarding Hamas’s inhumane tactics, Perkins explained how “just a couple of weeks ago, one of Hamas’s leaders who is living abroad was in a conference in Istanbul, Turkey, and he called upon a return to suicide terror attacks in Judea and Samaria.” Is it true, he asked, that we have “seen a rise in these suicide and terrorist attacks and activity in Judea and Samaria?”

According to Israel, “[E]ven before June, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority terrorists, they have been preparing for this” rise in terror. He continued, “They have been amassing weapons that we haven’t seen before in Judea and Samaria, such as shoulder missiles. They’ve been mining the streets with IEDs and so forth.” There have also been “mines that blew up beside buses, which is “something that didn’t happen before.” So, “yes,” he sighed, “there has been an increase in attacks.”

Unfortunately, Perkins added, “The IDF has been criticized by the United Nations” for their efforts to uproot these terrorist organizations. Which is “always happening,” Israel interjected. “There is a coordination between the terror groups, between Hezbollah, between Hamas and Gaza, and Hamas in Judea and Samaria.” According to Israel, this is a problem because in times “when Hamas is in Gaza and is in a bad position,” they can have “Hezbollah in Lebanon start revving up the attacks to sort of take pressure off them.”

Perkins contended that the situation further speaks to why the two-state solution is problematic, “because this would combine Gaza” with “Judea and Samaria and the terrorist activity there, putting Israel at tremendous, tremendous risk.” Ultimately, “it’s unworkable.” And really, Israel concluded, “[W]hen we hear that phrase, we should” refer to it as a “two-state ‘idea,’ because it’s not … a solution.”