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.
No one is asking for Israel to tear down its walls and emplacements when they shout Free Palestine. Ironically, Bibi knowing but still not taking appropriate defensive measures for the Hamas attack on october, assuming he didn’t fund and encourage it directly as some of his interactions with Hamas would suggest, is what caused and keeps causing blood on the other side of the border, too.
There are plenty that are calling for exactly that.
In this current rogue and genociding state? Yeah some increase in wanting that. Normally? No, all everyone wants is Israel to stop the genocide and give back most of the land it had stole over the decades, not a disregard for an Israeli state to exist, nor even somewhere completely else if they can share the land fairly.