A poster showing Abu Obaida, the spokesman for Hamas’s military wing, on the streets of Burj Barajneh, a Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut. (Diego Ibarra Sanchez/Washington Post)
JERUSALEM - After nine months of Israel’s all-out war against Hamas, the group’s government remains a key source of civil authority across the Gaza Strip - a testament to the organization’s reach and resiliency, and the limits of the military campaign aimed at eradicating its influence.
Thousands of airstrikes have killed not just fighters and commanders, but civilian police and employees from all echelons of government - from mayors and ministers to medical and municipal workers - as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vows to finish off the group. In an address to Congress on Wednesday, he said Israel “will fight until it destroys Hamas’s military capacities, and its rule in Gaza.”
As law and order collapse, though, Hamas has retained pockets of power, analysts and residents say, and has been quick to reemerge in areas when Israeli forces withdraw. Local officials still exercise a degree of control over the economy, provide limited services to war-battered neighborhoods - and mercilessly punish their critics.
“Hamas is part of our national fabric,” said Jabril Rajoub, a prominent figure in Fatah, Hamas’s main political rival.
The movement’s durability has widened the rift between Netanyahu and the Israeli military, which says the group cannot be defeated. “Hamas is an idea,” Daniel Hagari, the top spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces, said last month. “Anyone who thinks we can eliminate Hamas is wrong.”
The IDF said last week it had killed about “half” of the group’s military leadership, but it did not respond to a request for comment on whether civilian employees of the Hamas-led government were military targets. COGAT, the arm of Israel’s Defense Ministry in charge of administering Gaza, referred questions back to the IDF. “Civil workers, i.e. in water and sanitation, are never targeted,” government spokesman David Mencer said.
But as the crisis in Gaza deepens, the governing arm of Hamas maintains its influence: Civil defense workers respond to the scene of airstrikes. Municipal employees work to keep public utilities functioning. Officials impose price controls on commercial goods, or ask for their cut on black-market deals, and the group’s feared Internal Security Service still crushes dissent.
Since its founding in 1987, Hamas “built a network of schools, clinics, universities, NGOs, everything,” in the territory, contributing to its staying power, said political scientist Mukhaimer Abu Saada, who fled Gaza for Egypt late last year.
And while Palestinians there are increasingly critical of Hamas, that is largely overshadowed by anger against Israel, who most blame for spreading disorder and deprivation, he said.
“Israel has gone after the Palestinian civilian population and civilian infrastructure,” Abu Saada said. “Whoever is fighting back is respected by the Palestinian people.”
Composed of a political and a military wing - the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades - Hamas embedded itself in all facets of Gazan life over 17 years in power. The government employed around 40,000 people before the war; an additional 27,000 to 40,000 were estimated to belong to the Qassam Brigades.
The militant group’s top operatives inside Gaza went into hiding Oct. 7, when Hamas-led fighters stormed southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostage.
Yehiya Sinwar, the group’s military leader in Gaza, is thought to be running operations from the enclave’s extensive tunnel network and tops Israel’s most-wanted list. On Saturday, an Israeli strike targeted his second-in-command, the shadowy military commander Mohammed Deif. It’s not clear whether he was among the more than 90 people local health authorities said were killed in the attack.
Hamas officials who were outside of Gaza when the war began, including the Qatar-based political leader Ismail Haniyeh, have not returned.
Hamas established its own de facto government in Gaza in 2007, after violently ousting its chief rival, the Fatah party that dominates the Palestinian Authority in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Under an Israeli land and sea blockade, the government often struggled to carry out basic functions. Most Gazans could not leave, and relied on the United Nations and other humanitarian groups for food, health care and education. Meanwhile, military leaders spent millions of dollars smuggling in rockets and other weapons.
The war has badly hobbled Hamas’s governing infrastructure.
Gaza’s Education Ministry suspended all schooling for the Strip’s 625,000 children, who make up about a quarter of the population.
The U.N. estimated in April that more than 87 percent of Gaza’s schools, and all its universities, have been damaged or destroyed.
Gaza’s Finance Ministry is also a shadow of its former self. Hamas cannot pay regular salaries, but periodically gives small cash handouts to some government employees, said Abu Sada said.
Some ministries and agencies are still operating, though it “depends on the place,” said Wael Balousha, the Gaza Strip director of AMAN, the Ramallah-based chapter of Transparency International. He spoke by phone from Egypt, where he fled during the war.
Gaza’s civil defense workers continue to provide emergency services, he said, rushing to the scene of strikes despite limited fuel for ambulances and the threat of Israeli attack.
He also pointed to the Health Ministry, which has put out near-daily war casualty reports. More than 38,500 people have been killed, according to the ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says most of the dead are women and children.
Despite the efforts, Gaza’s state health-care system has collapsed. Israel has repeatedly raided the strip’s main hospitals, alleging they are used by Hamas fighters, a claim denied by doctors and patients.
Gaza’s municipalities were already cash-strapped before the war, relying on revenue from utilities and other local services, Abu Saada said. Now, many municipal buildings have been hit or evacuated. More than two-thirds of water and sanitation infrastructure and about two-thirds of all roads have been damaged or destroyed, according to U.N. estimates.
City workers throughout the enclave are still trying to pick up trash, repair roads and keep water taps flowing, local residents say, but many have been repeatedly displaced and their reach remains limited.
On Monday, authorities in Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza, announced they had run out of fuel needed to power their 19 wells and water tanks, serving about 700,000 people. “The municipality is trying to resolve this problem as soon as possible,” they wrote on Facebook.
In the war’s initial months, Gaza’s civilian police force, which is separate from the Qassam Brigades, were among the most visible remnants of Hamas authority, helping provide security for aid convoys.
When Israel’s military began targeting police officers in the winter, they stopped guarding aid trucks, which became targets of widespread, and sometimes deadly, looting. “Hamas police is Hamas,” Col. Elad Goren of COGAT told reporters in March, adding that “we won’t allow Hamas to control the humanitarian assistance.”
Plainclothes police are still operating in some places, including as guards at shelters for the displaced. But insecurity, alongside hunger and disease, is spiraling.
“Clan fighting, robberies, shootings,” Abu Sada said. “All of that is happening and there is no one to intervene.”
Hamas officials have tried in other ways to reassert their authority.
When goods were coming through the Rafah crossing with Egypt, Gaza’s Economy Ministry monitored sales, set prices and collected taxes, Mohammad Abu Jiyab, the editor of a business newspaper in Gaza, said by phone.
Israel’s seizure of the Rafah crossing in May has undercut Hamas efforts to control local commerce, he said. Plainclothes Hamas authorities have now resorted to extortion, according to merchants interviewed by The Washington Post, seeking a cut from cigarette smuggling and other black-market trade.
Fear was always a hallmark of Hamas rule, and the group maintains the ability to silence its opponents.
While many Gazans still support Hamas and its fight against Israel, open criticism has become more common as the war drags on and civilian suffering deepens.
On July 8, Amin Abed, a prominent political activist and critic of Hamas, was on his way to deliver donations in Gaza City when a group of masked men with hammers and crowbars attacked him. He said they led him to an abandoned building and severely beat him for more than 20 minutes.
“’You insult your masters from the resistance,’” Abed, 36, recalled the men saying. They identified themselves as being from the Internal Security Service, he said.
“I heard the person in charge telling them, ‘Break the fingers on his hands that he uses to write and incite against us,’” Abed said.
“And indeed they broke my fingers with the crowbar.”
Beirut-based Hamas spokesman Basem Naim said in a WhatsApp message that he had “no information” about the allegations. “Hamas takes advantage of people’s need for food,” Abed said, “and whoever objects, it attacks them only to say that we are here to stay and that we still control Gaza.”
Israeli officials have said they are committed to replacing the Hamas government, but have offered no viable alternatives. Efforts to elevate local clans have been unsuccessful, and Netanyahu has bristled at a U.S.-backed plan to reinstall the Palestinian Authority in Gaza.
“There is no clear scenario for us,” said Taghred Jumaa, a women’s rights activist and mother of three who has been displaced several times during the conflict.
“There is fear that the next stage after the war will be a vacuum,” she said, resulting in more violence.
Abu Saada said this political void could ultimately benefit Hamas.
“The ‘day after,’ there isn’t going to be a smooth transfer, let’s be realistic here,” he said. “Hamas hasn’t lost complete control of the streets of Gaza.”
Harb reported from London. Hazem Balousha in Cairo contributed to this report.
