Hamas monitored political activity, online posts, and apparently even love lives. Palestinians were stuck between an Israeli blockade and a repressive security force.

The Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar has for years overseen a secret police force in Gaza that conducted surveillance on everyday Palestinians and built files on young people, journalists and those who questioned the government, according to intelligence officials and a trove of internal documents reviewed by The New York Times.

The unit, known as the General Security Service, relied on a network of Gaza informants, some of whom reported their own neighbors to the police. People landed in security files for attending protests or publicly criticizing Hamas. In some cases, the records suggest that the authorities followed people to determine if they were carrying on romantic relationships outside marriage.

Hamas has long run an oppressive system of governance in Gaza, and many Palestinians there know that security officials watch them closely. But a 62-slide presentation on the activities of the General Security Service, delivered only weeks before the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, reveals the degree to which the largely unknown unit penetrated the lives of Palestinians.

. . .

Everyday Gazans were stuck — behind the wall of Israel’s crippling blockade and under the thumb and constant watch of a security force. That dilemma continues today, with the added threat of Israeli ground troops and airstrikes.

MBFC
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  • bartolomeo@suppo.fiEnglish
    164·
    6 months ago

    I know they were funded in part by Israel to destroy Palestinian unity and give Israel an excuse to kill more Palestinians and take their land, but was Hamas really created by Israel?

    • sazey@lemmy.worldEnglish
      115·
      6 months ago

      Maybe Israel didn’t found Hamas as such but they certainly nurtured it like a baby bird.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
          23·
          6 months ago

          A legal fiction needed to function as a scapegoat for US trials in absentia?

          Or are we talking about a tool of the East Asia Cold War, intended to operate as a front for paramilitary operations in the Russian and Chinese back country?

      • VirtualOdour@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        54·
        6 months ago

        This argument is made a lot in conspiracy circles and anti isreal communutues, however the argument comes from the fact that Isreal paused prior conflicts for humanitarian or political reasons instead of actually destroying them with superior force. The thing you want them to do now, go easy and end the conflict early is also what you’re complaining about them doing before.

        • AstridWipenaugh@lemmy.worldEnglish
          5·
          6 months ago

          Shlomo Brom, a former deputy to Israel’s national security adviser, told the New York Times that an empowered Hamas helped Netanyahu avoid negotiating over a Palestinian state, saying the division of the Palestinians helped him make the case that he had no partner for peace in the Palestinians, thus avoiding pressure for peace talks that could lead to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. (source)

          Damn those anti-israeli national security advisors.

          • VirtualOdour@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            12·
            6 months ago

            Did you read the article? Exactly as I said the argument that is that allowing aid info Palestine helped prop up hamas.

            The same people that complain Isreal does not let aid in push this argument based on them letting too much aid in.

            • AstridWipenaugh@lemmy.worldEnglish
              2·
              6 months ago

              Why do you insist on conflating funding a terrorist organization with cash with providing humanitarian aid via food and medicine?

              • VirtualOdour@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                11·
                6 months ago

                Because that’s what this argument is, they’re talking about UNRWA and similar groups that are officially separate from hamas but in practice are largely controlled by hamas.

                Do you really not follow any of this? You have such strong opinions for someone that doesn’t seem to follow the big talking points at all. I get if you want to disagree but not knowing the arguments make you seem very uninformed.