Early this summer, Amin Abed, a Palestinian activist who has spoken out publicly about Hamas, twice found bullets on his doorstep in the northern Gaza Strip.
Then in July, he said he was attacked by Hamas security operatives, who covered his head and dragged him away before repeatedly striking him with hammers and metal bars.
“At any moment, I can be killed by the Israeli occupation, but I can face the same fate at the hands of those who’ve been ruling us for 17 years,” he said in a phone interview from his hospital bed, referring to Hamas. “They almost killed me, those killers and criminals.”
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Abed, who remains hospitalized, was rescued by bystanders who witnessed the attack, but what happened to him has happened to others throughout Gaza.
The bodies of six Israeli hostages recovered last month provided a visceral reminder of Hamas’ brutality. Each had been shot in the head. Some had other bullet wounds, suggesting they were shot while trying to escape, according to Israeli officials who reviewed the autopsy results.
But Hamas also uses violence to maintain its control over Gaza’s population.
Some Palestinians have been injured or killed as Hamas wages an insurgent style of warfare that risks Palestinian lives to strike the Israeli military from densely populated areas. Others have been attacked or threatened for criticizing the group. Some Palestinians have been shot, accused of looting or hoarding aid.
Much international attention has focused on Israeli hurdles to delivering aid to Palestinians, its military operations that have killed tens of thousands of people and a bombing campaign that has reduced cities to rubble. U.S. officials have repeatedly expressed deep frustration with Israel for those failures, too, as well as for not providing basic security in the territory.
But the reality of the war, according to U.S. officials, is that the Israeli military and Hamas carry out questionable acts nearly every day. Many of the reports reviewed by U.S. intelligence analysts involve Israeli actions: military strikes that kill large numbers of civilians, errant attacks on aid convoys or other deadly incidents. But a large number of reports involve Hamas, both its acts of terrorism against hostages and its abuses of Palestinians.
Vice Adm. Frank Whitworth, the head of the U.S. intelligence agency that analyzes satellite imagery, compared the role of intelligence officials monitoring Gaza with that of an umpire.
“We also have a responsibility to tell the whole story,” he said at a gathering of reporters recently. “We certainly are enabling Israel to protect itself. But we are also calling every ball and strike and balk and foul, and we’re doing so in a very complete way.”
This article is based on interviews with more than three dozen U.S. and Israeli officials, Hamas members and Palestinian residents of Gaza. Many of the officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence assessments. Many of the Palestinians spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation.
Since the attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, which killed 1,200 people, Israel’s aim has been to “destroy Hamas.” In practice, that means that the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to end the group’s hold on power in Gaza. But after 11 months of war, U.S. officials say Hamas’ control has been loosened but not broken.
Palestinians are quick to excoriate Israel for the deaths and destruction in Gaza. But some Palestinians said in interviews that Hamas has put Gaza residents in Israel’s crosshairs by launching attacks from neighborhoods, running tunnels under apartment buildings and hiding hostages in city centers.
And Hamas is still able to inspire fear among the people it rules, despite the chaos that has taken hold across the territory.
“There’s no international law that justifies Israel killing civilians,” said Mkhaimar Abusada, a professor of political science who fled Gaza early in the war. “But Hamas has acted recklessly.”
Putting Civilians in the Line of Fire
Hamas’ practice of operating from civilian areas of Gaza has drawn sharp criticism from Palestinians.
“Those launching rockets and firing bullets from civilian areas don’t care about civilians,” said Abu Shaker, whose family has been repeatedly displaced. He asked to be identified by his nickname. “If you want to fight Israel, you should go do that. But why are you coming to hide among the civilians?”
At the beginning of the war, he said, militants fired rockets at Israel from the busy towns of Deir al-Balah and Nuseirat in central Gaza. Residents hurried indoors in anticipation of retaliatory Israeli strikes.
It is notoriously difficult to assess public opinion in Gaza. Mobile phone networks have been spotty. Polling is extremely complicated. Interviews are challenging to conduct, especially during a war. And speaking out against Hamas is risky.
Palestinians interviewed by The New York Times expressed frustration with Hamas, particularly over its practice of embedding in civilian areas. The Palestinians interviewed said that while Israel bore enormous responsibility for the suffering the war has brought upon them, Hamas did too.
Hamas built access points to its extensive tunnel network inside homes. An aerial photo recovered by the Israeli military from a Hamas commander’s post shows three dozen hidden tunnel entrances marked with color-coded dots and arrows in one crowded neighborhood.
To some Palestinians, an Israeli airstrike July 13 targeting senior military commander Mohammed Deif and another Hamas military leader is an example of the perils civilians face.
Israeli officials say that Deif had entered a villa in a designated humanitarian zone to meet with a Hamas commander who was hiding there. Some 70 Palestinians were killed in the assault, including many women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Israel later declared Deif dead, but Hamas has disputed the claim.
Munir al-Jaghoub, an official in the Fatah party in the West Bank, blasted Israel for the deaths. But he also condemned Hamas.
“Any soldier who wants to bear arms is required to protect civilians, not to hide among civilians,” he said in a televised interview.
Hamas officials rejected criticisms that the group put civilians in harm’s way and suggestions that it should keep its fighters away from towns and cities.
“There’s no such thing as being outside residential areas in Gaza,” said Husam Badran, a senior Hamas official. “These pretexts, primarily made by the Israeli occupation army, are meaningless.”
‘Shut Him Up’
Palestinians who protest face the threat of immediate retaliation.
On Saturday, the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate blasted the “policy of intimidation and threat” facing some journalists in Gaza after a group of gunmen stormed the home of Ehab Fasfous, a reporter and social media activist. While the syndicate did not explicitly name Hamas, it left little doubt that it was behind the raid on Fasfous’ home in the southern city of Khan Younis.
In its statement, the organization said that it viewed the raid with “great severity” and that journalists and their families should be protected.
“Journalists in Gaza are being constantly killed by Israel,” said Tahseen al-Astal, the deputy head of the group. “When internal Palestinian parties go after them, too, their work becomes impossible.”
Fasfous, a well-known critic of Hamas, has long been targeted by the group’s general security service, a secret police force in Gaza that has conducted surveillance on everyday Palestinians, according to Hamas documents obtained by the Times.
Weeks before the start of the war, the unit recommended taking action to prevent Fasfous from reporting as a journalist. “Defame him,” a file from August 2023 read, calling him one of Hamas’ “major haters.”
“We advise that closing in on him is necessary because he’s a negative person who is full of hatred, and only brings forth the Strip’s shortcomings,” the file said.
In an interview with the Times in May, Fasfous said Hamas held critics in contempt. “If you’re not with them, you become an atheist, an infidel and a sinner,” he added.
Ismail Thawabteh, the director general of the Hamas-run government media office, attempted to distance Hamas from the threats and violence waged against Fasfous and Abed. Without citing any evidence, he suggested that the two men were victims of personal disputes or street crime that he said had become increasingly prevalent since the start of the war.
The Interior Ministry, Thawabteh said, has opened investigations into both incidents.
Hamas has paid particularly close attention to journalists and activists who criticize its rule on social networks and to Western news media, according to U.S. officials and Palestinian analysts. But other Palestinians have also been threatened and intimidated.
Earlier this year, Alaa al-Haddad, 28, an activist from Gaza City, began criticizing Hamas as he watched the news with strangers at a shelter in Rafah. Soon after, Haddad said that his uncle was approached by a member of Hamas. “Shut him up,” Haddad said the man told his uncle.
“This is the story of the Palestinian people in Gaza,” said Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Palestinian American who is a fellow with the Atlantic Council. “The powerlessness of being stuck between a ferocious Israeli war machine and a nefarious Islamist group that operates among the civilians.”
While Hamas officials minimize criticisms of their conduct, they broadly argue that the suffering of the Palestinian people is the cost for fighting against the Israeli occupation of Gaza.
Hamas recognizes that “freedom doesn’t come for free,” said Salah al-Din al-Awawdeh, a member of the group who spent time in prison with its current leader, Yahya Sinwar.
“There is no liberation movement that has freed its people without paying a big price in terms of civilians,” he said.
But some U.S. and Israeli officials said their intelligence assessments indicate that Sinwar is more interested in inflicting pain on Israel than uplifting the Palestinian people.
“He’s not calculating the impact on human beings or property,” said Ted Singer, a recently retired senior CIA official who worked extensively in the Middle East. “He is calculating on bringing the Israelis down a notch and freeing Palestinian prisoners.”
‘It Was Horrific’
Hamas also hides hostages among Palestinian civilians, with devastating consequences.
In early June, Israel planned a mission to rescue four of the dozens of living hostages who remain in Gaza. But civilians in the densely populated Nuseirat area proved a complicating factor.
The Israelis sent in rescue vehicles June 8, and when one was damaged, Hamas militants moved in on it. A firefight broke out, and commandos called in the Israeli air force, which began striking the neighborhood.
The hostages were ultimately rescued. But more than 270 Palestinians were killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, though it has proved impossible to determine with certainty how many were Hamas fighters and how many were residents or innocent bystanders.
Many Palestinians are angry at Israel for conducting the raid. But others said they knew that Israel would try to rescue its people, no matter the toll.
“I’m totally against mixing prisoners and civilians,” said Kareem, a lawyer who spoke on the condition that only his first name be used to avoid retribution from Hamas authorities. “We saw what the operation resulted in. It was horrific. A very high price.”
According to Israeli and U.S. officials, intelligence intercepts show that Hamas leaders have ordered their fighters to kill hostages if it appeared that Israeli troops were moving in and could potentially rescue them. Earlier this month, Abu Obeida, the spokesperson for Hamas’ military wing, suggested that militants had been given such orders.
Israeli officials said they believed that was what happened last month. On Aug. 29 or 30, according to an Israeli intelligence assessment, Hamas militants holding six hostages in the tunnels below the Tel Sultan area of Gaza detected an Israeli military patrol above them. Israeli military officials said they believed that Hamas scouts or a camera revealed the Israeli soldiers’ movements.
Acting on the standing orders not to allow hostages to be liberated, the militants executed their captives and fled the tunnel, according to Israeli officials. The soldiers aboveground continued their patrol, not knowing they had come close to the hostages.
The Israeli military said that the entrance to the tunnel was located inside a child’s bedroom.
“A military force doesn’t do” what Hamas did, said Jonathan R. Cohen, a former U.S. ambassador to Egypt. “They’re a terrorist organization with a military structure. That’s a terrifying thing.”
A Hold on Power
To break Hamas’ control of Gaza, Israeli officials say they need to destroy not just its military power but also its ability to function as a government. Critics of Israel have questioned that strategy, which they say hurts ordinary Palestinians.
But nearly a year into the war, the civilian government still functions.
Thawabteh, the director general of the Hamas-run government media office, said the government still employs thousands of people, helps distribute aid and organizes Friday prayers. Security services continue to try to enforce the law, he added.
Government-run emergency committees help secure aid and maintain order, Thawabteh said.
“The government in Gaza is living through a time of challenges,” he said. “But it’s still in place carrying out its duties every day.”
Hamas is not the only group active in Gaza. Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a Hamas ally that participated in the Oct. 7 terror attacks, remains strong. Armed gangs and neighborhood committees operate throughout the territory, with some also making threats and carrying out revenge attacks.
U.S. officials say the groups operate with the implicit blessing of Hamas, though its precise level of oversight and control of them varies from group to group.
But Sinwar is the unchallenged leader of Gaza. While his day-to-day control of the government is attenuated as he tries to avoid being captured or killed by Israel, he still sets the broad goals and policies for Gaza, according to officials briefed on the intelligence.
Aid agencies trying to deliver humanitarian relief to Gaza acknowledge Hamas’ continued control. Aid convoys must coordinate their efforts with local Hamas leaders or risk the aid not getting through.
Efforts to have Palestinians in Gaza who are aligned with the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority help secure aid convoys have fallen apart. U.S. officials say Hamas hostility and threats on those convoys shut down the effort.
Looting has afflicted several Gaza cities after Israeli forces pulled out. Some of the looters may have been hungry people trying to feed their families. Others may have had more base motivations.
Israeli and U.S. officials say Hamas has tried to stop the looting, but often with brutal tactics.
In some instances, according to U.S. officials, people accused of looting have been shot in the leg. In one incident, a group of Hamas members beat people accused of stealing aid and spray-painted the word “thief” on the back of one of them, according to the Israeli military.
To some Palestinians, the rough justice has added to a climate of fear.
Abed, 35, the Palestinian critic of Hamas who was beaten in July, was attacked after writing on social media and speaking to news media, including to the Times, and believes that Hamas’ leaders want to make an example out of him.
On Wednesday, Abed left Gaza for the first time in more than two decades, one of dozens of wounded and ill people whom Israel permitted to travel to the United Arab Emirates for treatment.
“I feel terrible that I’ve left our family and people behind, but at the same time, I feel safe for the first time in 17 years,” he said in a voice message from his hospital bed in Abu Dhabi. “There’s no one that wants to kill, arrest or follow me.”
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