According to four residents and a senior official from the Islamist organization, Hamas has begun deploying police forces and even paying partial salaries to some of its officials in Gaza in recent days, according to Al Arabiya.
These are areas of the capital of the Gaza Strip from which Israel withdrew most of its troops about a month ago. The war is entering its 122nd day, after four months of intense fighting as part of an Israeli ground operation aimed at ending Hamas’ military power and rescuing the more than 130 Israeli hostages.
Signs of a Hamas resurgence in the enclave’s largest city are bad news for Israel, and in recent days the military has carried out renewed air strikes on the western and northwestern parts of the city, including areas where some of the salary distributions were reportedly being carried out became .
Gaza witnesses assured AFP that in recent days uniformed police officers, as well as men in plain clothes, had been stationed near police headquarters and other government offices, including near Al Shifa Hospital, the largest in the enclave. These residents described seeing both the officers’ return and subsequent Israeli attacks on the makeshift offices.
According to local residents and information shared on social networks, including by Hamas itself and Islamic Jihad, the various Islamist factions are waging a disorganized guerrilla war, attempting to attack Israeli armored vehicles and opening fire in the streets . “People in civilian clothes and armed with rocket launchers are firing at any military target that moves in the area, using tunnels and shafts,” a Gaza resident living in one of the refugee centers told Haaretz newspaper. “These are not people waiting for instructions from a command center or for logistical deliveries. The theory of the fight is to damage everything that is Israeli and moves,” he added.
Despite Hamas’s attempts to demonstrate its authority, residents, refugees and displaced people in the Gaza Strip are questioning whether Hamas’s control at the civil and administrative levels is real or whether a complete government vacuum has emerged in the Gaza Strip. stripes. Since Hamas took control of Gaza nearly 17 years ago, it has maintained a government bureaucracy with tens of thousands of officials, including teachers, traffic police, plainclothes police, health teams and everything except its military wing, which is known to have paid great attention from an economic perspective.
The partial salary payments of $200 that the Saudi media reportedly pays to at least some government employees suggest that Israel has not yet delivered the expected blow to Hamas, despite claiming to have killed more than 9,000 fighters. In recent days, Hamas has distributed videos showing the organization arresting people suspected of looting and breaking into empty homes in the northern Gaza Strip. This is likely an attempt to demonstrate the need for the police and show the population that they are still the competent authority. Residents say police presence varies from region to region.
Prices for basic goodslike flour, They are ten times higher than normal, People close to Hamas in particular are identified as the main sponsors of this black market. Products they steal from international aid, arrive on the Strip in trucks, and then resell at inflated prices.
However, the photographed and published arrest of the looters by the Hamas police is intended to convey that the Islamist movement is still maintaining order on the ground.
With these so far few but conspicuous gestures, Hamas is determined to demonstrate that it still has administrative capacity and that, despite Israeli declarations of its destruction, the organization remains present throughout the Gaza Strip, even in the north and even after four months of fighting.