An in-depth analysis of Hamas' governance in Gaza, mapping its administrative structure and implications for regional security.
After eight months of war in the Gaza Strip, three kinds of zones have taken shape there, where each one functions differently from the civilian perspective. In parts thereof, civil administration is still in Hamas hands and civilian agents from within the local leadership, which are functioning on its behalf. In other parts, administration is in the hands of local agents with looser links to Hamas. Other areas have become pockets of chaos. Wherever the IDF is absent, the municipalities are the leading factor in managing the civilian life. These bear variable degrees of affinity to Hamas. And also the international aid organizations play a key part in this respect.
The war has proven that degradation of Hamas’ military centers of power has also resulted in gradual degradation of the civilian systems that relied on it, and that Hamas’ strength was due, inter alia, to its control over the aid arriving in the Strip and on its distribution.
This means that elimination of Hamas’ civilian rule over the Strip requires elimination of its military capabilities and taking over the territory for awhile, while at the same time assigning responsibility for distributing the aid to those international organizations which have no link to Hamas.
Local Administrations
Hamas claims that some 200 of its civil administration institutions have been destroyed in the course of the war. Included among these are police and internal security institutions, which Hamas considers a red line. This being said, the local administrations, as well as the health and even civil defense systems, are still partially functional, especially in those areas where the IDF has not operated on the ground.
This is also the finding from following the functioning of the civilian organizations in the Strip. The local administrations have so far proven impressive resiliency – they are present and functioning. Even the Gaza Municipality, which sustained substantial damage due to the ground maneuver, is currently issuing guidelines for safe bathing on the beaches.
The municipalities in the central region of the Gaza Strip, on the other hand, in areas where ground maneuvers of lesser intensity have taken place, are now restoring the water, sewage, electricity, and road infrastructures. The Khan Younis Municipality is even building tent cities for tens of thousands of residents returning to its territory, including from the Rafah areas in which the ground maneuver has begun.
In some of the places, emergency committees are standing in, partly working under Hamas guidance and partly under the Hamas Minister of the Interior, substituting for the central government. This for example, these committees in the Jabaliya Refugee Camp have recently called on the residents not to return to their homes due to the continuing war.
Other committees are dealing with education. Such education committees are even operating in the displaced persons shelters. Others are supervising prices while still others are functioning as policing committees.
At the moment, and ever since the ground offensive has begun and ended in the Jabaliya refugee camp, these committees are less and less seen in the north, while in the camps located in the central Gaza Strip, their presence is greater and more noticeable.
Such committees, for example, have punished a journalist, who came out against Hamas and dismantled the temporary shelter her family built in Nuseirat.
In the north, however, these committees have not totally disappeared. Just recently we have received reports from sources inside the Gaza Strip, that such a committee shot at the legs of 23 juvenile delinquents in the city center, as a lesson for anyone breaking into the homes of displaced persons who have fled south.
The Relationship Between Terrorism and Population Mobility
Eight months of fighting have shown that in the northern Gaza Strip the Hamas governance is in a stage of advanced degradation. Its governance in the central Gaza Strip is in survival mode, while in the southern Strip, primarily in Rafah, Hamas still has impressive civil government capabilities.
Speaking of the situation in northern Gaza, a security source said, “The very fact that there is a population able to move freely is a tremendous advantage in terms of Hamas’ ability to restore its capabilities and to reorganize”. “At the moment a process of disintegration is underway from a brigade level to guerilla groupings”.
And as for Rafah, the source notes, “This is a consequence of the fact that the Rafah Brigade is still fully functional and has three regular battalions. The deeper the Israeli maneuver advances, the nearer it approaches the built-up area, this brigade will find it more difficult to maintain brigade-level battle fitness”.
Hamas has until recently maintained a civilian administrative center at the Rafah Crossing, Palestinian sources report. They add that “At this crossing Hamas has set up interrogation rooms, it has controlled the outgoing traffic toward Egypt and the distribution of the incoming aid from Egypt. However, when the ground operation at the Rafah Crossing began, Hamas shut down this center and apparently relocated it to other places…”
Official sources in Israel believe, based on information and other indications, that “besides movement of the civilian population, movements of terrorist elements are also noticeable, where these remain close to the new population centers in an effort to restore civilian and military infrastructures within them…”
Thus, for example, gave rise to the significant operation in Shifaa Hospital. Hamas attempted to set up a “mini-government” there under its undersecretary of the interior and the senior officers from the Northern Brigade. The entire command and control apparatus in Shifaa Hospital collapsed and top senior commanders were captured in the IDF’s lightning-speed operation in that facility.
This being said, it appears that Hamas currently is not embarking on a force-building drive. Instead it is attempting to adapt its capabilities for its next goals and to reorganize itself. “It’s like a person who has developed gangrene in parts of his body due to frostbite. He sheds those parts to save the rest of his body”, said a security source in response to questions.
“In Khan Younis and in the central camps, one cannot talk about two brigades since the forces have already maneuvered there so there’s no longer a brigade there following orders from a brigade commander”, say Israeli sources, but they add that “some of the militants are still present there in large numbers, which gives the commanders the ability to reorganize”.
In the eastern Khan Younis area, where returning residents can be seen, including others moving away from Rafah, the friction with the IDF forces has increased. This is a consequence of the return of terrorists into densely-populated areas.
Jabaliya, on the other hand, is where at the moment there is limited population movement. The intensity of the fighting there has decreased down to a level that has enabled the IDF to move out of there completely since Hamas has concluded that it is going to be unable to regroup there.
Administrative Territorial Contiguity
Monitoring of the developments shows that the Gaza Strip no longer has an administrative contiguity. Parts of it have descended into pockets of variable degrees of chaos. This situation is a function of the state of the Hamas brigades in the different areas. The Northern Gaza Brigade commander, Izz a-Din Haddad, is on the run. This, according also to sources within the Strip. The Central Brigade commander, Ayman Nawfal, has been killed and the fate of the Rafah Brigade commander, Muhammad Shabbaneh, remains unclear following a recent targeted assassination attempt.
Israel’s security forces have been noticing another trend: Hamas in northern Gaza is losing its governing capabilities. This process is gathering momentum primarily since the Netzarim Corridor – which Hamas demands be dismantled as part of the hostage return negotiations – the corridor isolates the northern Strip from the center and thereby stifles Hamas’ governability. According to that security source, “ – it appears the Netzarim Corridor has become a chokehold on Hamas in Gaza.
The damage wrought by this corridor on Hamas’ governability in the north is tremendous – this is why Hamas is so adamant in its insistence that it be removed, even now, as a precondition to a hostage return deal.
Pockets of Chaos
In other areas the chaos is intensifying. In the Deir al-Balah area Hamas gunmen fired at the Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades commander. He had been part of the terrorist network under Hamas.
A Palestinian source says that in Deir al-Balah, which is sheltering tens of thousands of displaced persons, Hamas is trying to establish a local force. This is causing disputes with Fatah, hence the string of killings by the IDF of Hamas policemen and terrorists.
Sources in Gaza are telling us that “This violent conflict has erupted over power struggles for control over the aid, where it now turns out that whoever controls the aid in the Strip, effectively controls the entire population…”
Controlling the Aid
Israel has detected a highly-significant effort by Hamas to wrest control over the incoming aid from the Rafah Crossing and of late also from the Kerem Shalom Crossing.
In the north there is a plethora of organizations, committees and clans, all vying for control over the aid and its distribution. This is not solely under Hamas’ control. In the center, Hamas dominates a large proportion of the aid through committees it operates or which are operating on its behalf. However, in Rafah, where Hamas still has a functioning regular brigade, control over the aid is tighter.
Another trend noticed in Rafah lately is “distribution lines”.
It appears Hamas is handing out distribution lines to crime families such as the Bureika Family – a kind of local militias under their control. In exchange for control of the distribution routes, these gangs are given a share of the aid plus other benefits.
Hamas has carefully monitored the attempts to find civilian alternatives to its rule in the Gaza Strip. Gunmen have threatened the clans and,cording to some of the sources, they have also murdered the chief of the Dughmush Clan, which does not kowtow to Hamas.
“Hamas has murdered at least two of the Palestinian Authority personnel and arrested a network of 25 Fatah members and Palestinian Authority personnel, who are local Gaza Strip residents. They had been trying to supervise the aid under Ramallah’s guidance,” said a senior Palestinian Authority official.
Where Is This All Going?
In Israel, the situation is described as follows: the IDF is facing an onion. The more it remains at work, the more layers it will be able to pare off Hamas’ military and civilian capacity. Therefore, what we have seen in Jabalia we will soon be seeing in Rafah when the ground maneuver will be completed there”, said an official Israeli source. “If we look at what is happening in the Strip, we can indeed see there is a gradual process of disintegration.”
One hopes that “Only after we take action time and time again, will we be able to see the increasing degradation of all of Hamas’ layers of government”, he added. “In the north,” he says, “Hamas no longer has an organized military apparatus. This has been replaced by guerilla squads – a sign of things to come.”
Quite clearly the reality that will develop going forward depends mainly on Israel’s willingness and ability to deliver an alternative to Hamas’ civil administration.
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