(Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center - ITIC)

As in years past, summer camps are held in the Gaza Strip. Most of them are run by Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and operate for more than 100,000 Gazan children and adolescents. The campers participate in social activities and receive radical Islamist indoctrination and semi-military training.

For Hamas the camps are an important venue for indoctrinating Gazan youth with radical Islamist ideology. Their objective is to foster a cadre of future Hamas supporters and operatives for its military-terrorist wing and its organizational and administrative institutions. The campers learn the themes of "the liberation of Palestine," jihad and "resistance" [i.e., terrorism], the destruction of the State of Israel, the so-called "right of return" and other facets of the movement's anti-Israeli Islamist ideology.

Indoctrinating Gazan youth in its summer camps is one aspect of Hamas' broader educational concept of preparing the next generation of Hamas operatives in the de-facto Hamas administration's educational institutions throughout the Gaza Strip. During the 2012-2013 school year Hamas instituted a new curriculum in its schools called Al-Futuwwa, within which tens of thousands of youths receive theoretical and practical military training during their studies.