by David Isaac
NGOs in Gaza are part of “an institutionalized framework of coercion" that serves the terrorist group's objectives, according to a new report by NGO Monitor.
Hamas Interior Ministry documents taken from the Gaza Strip shed new light on the methods the terror group used to exert control over foreign-aid groups, NGO Monitor revealed in a report on Wednesday.
“[T]he documents reveal that NGOs were complicit in this regime, hiding or downplaying Hamas abuses, and acquiescing to its demands,” according to the report, titled, “Puppet Regime: Hamas’ Coercive Grip on Aid and NGO Operations in Gaza.”
The Arabic documents were recently declassified by the Israel Defense Forces. They cover the years 2018-2022 and originate with the Hamas Interior Security Mechanism (ISM), a unit within the Hamas Ministry of Interior and National Security.
The documents prove that the NGOs in Gaza aren’t independent, said NGO Monitor, but part of “an institutionalized framework of coercion, intimidation, and surveillance that serves Hamas’ terror objectives.”
“We have long known that Hamas has manipulated humanitarian NGOs in Gaza to impose their control over the population and facilitate terror,” Gerald Steinberg, founder and president of NGO Monitor, told JNS.
“However, the documents demonstrate that the extent of this control and the mechanisms Hamas used, as well as the degree of cooperation by the NGOs, was far beyond the scope of our expectations,” he said.
Perhaps the most “invasive and egregious mechanism” utilized by Hamas was its “guarantor” system. It was an attempt, largely successful, to ensure that the terror group had an operative placed at a senior-level position inside every NGO.
“Guarantors” were local Gazans, approved by the Interior Ministry, who acted as middlemen between Hamas and the NGOs. Hamas required these individuals to hold top spots, such as director, or deputy director, guaranteeing Hamas’s say over key decisions.
At least 10 “guarantors” were Hamas members, supporters or employed by Hamas-linked authorities, according to a December 2022 document from the Interior Ministry’s Foreign Associations Department.
It lists, among others, the Gazan administrative director of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and the Gazan administrative director of the International Medical Corps (IMC) as supporters of Hamas.
The terror group used its guarantors as intelligence assets. A June 22, 2021, Interior Ministry report described a meeting of the Gaza director of the humanitarian group Mercy Corps with Hamas authorities, in which the latter threatened him for “his latest transgressions.” The intimidated director agreed to supply “any security, administrative or financial observations that arise during his work at Mercy Corps or during his collaboration with active foreign associations.”
NGO Monitor pointed to the moral collapse of NGOs that submitted to Hamas. In one case, an Oxfam water project appeared to help Hamas maintain and conceal “tactically advantageous positions for its forces,” NGO Monitor reported.
Norwegian Refugee Council employees, when fielding complaints from local Gazans about terror infrastructure in their neighborhoods, refused to follow up on those complaints. When the group’s head and five other employees visited an elderly man, a charity case, he asked if his floor had collapsed because of a tunnel under his home. They refused to reply.
“By choosing to stay quiet and cooperate with the regime, NGOs not only provide cover for Hamas’ abuses, they begin to internalize and adopt Hamas’s own agenda and propaganda,” said NGO Monitor. “The result is an aid sector that, in many cases, no longer acts independently or impartially, but instead functions within a terror-controlled system and becomes an integral part of misinformation and disinformation campaigns.”
Even more troubling is that many of these organizations readily issue public condemnations of Israel while overlooking Hamas’s systematic exploitation of humanitarian systems. This imbalance reinforces a one-sided narrative that allows Hamas to act with impunity, obscuring its criminal conduct and skewing international perceptions of the humanitarian situation in Gaza, according to NGO Monitor.
Not all “guarantors” were Hamas-linked. Some were affiliated with other terror groups. The Gaza director of Catholic Relief Services (CRS), the official international humanitarian agency of Catholics in the United States, was associated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), according to the report. PFLP is a faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization and a designated foreign terrorist group in the United States, European Union and Canada.
But a “guarantor” didn’t have to belong to Hamas to prove useful. A March 2020 Interior Ministry document identified 55 “guarantors” across 48 NGOs that “can be exploited for security purposes in order to infiltrate foreign associations, their foreign senior personnel and their movements.”
Not all NGOs wanted to work with Hamas. The organization listed certain NGOs as “not cooperating,” meaning they participated in the guarantor system due to Hamas pressure and intimidation.
Hamas expressed concerns about Jewish employees of the aid groups. A June 15, 2020, Interior Ministry memo lists as one of Oxfam’s “threats and insecurities” that its “media and public relations head is of Jewish descent.”
Hamas also lamented that American associations resisted cooperation. A June 6, 2021, document instructed officials to “strengthen the [intelligence] sources and friends (local workers) inside American associations” to address the problem.
The documents serve as a timely reminder not to repeat the mistakes of the past as the international community gets ready to rebuild Gaza, Steinberg told JNS.
“Now, as plans for Gaza reconstruction advance, and in order to avoid a repetition of the aid-to-terror highway, the publication of these documents is a reminder of the need for every aid provider, without exception, as well as the wider international community, to wake up and take the long overdue measures that will block Hamas abuse and create a robust oversight mechanism,” he said.
David Isaac
Source: https://www.jns.org/declassified-files-expose-hamass-grip-on-ngos-in-gaza/
No comments:
Post a Comment