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.
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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.
what did you expect from a group created and funded by israeli intelligence to dismantle peaceful pro peace palestinian leftist organizations?
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?
Maybe Israel didn’t found Hamas as such but they certainly nurtured it like a baby bird.
they basically created it in the same way us created al qaeda
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?