by Ephraim D. Tepler and Itamar Marcus
In an article titled "What is Hamas hiding?" published yesterday, the PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida confirmed that Hamas has taken over schools and hospitals to use them for interrogations.
Hamas is again hiding its terror activities in schools and hospitals, as it did before and throughout the Gaza war. It has also redeployed its security forces across most of the regions of the Gaza Strip that are not under Israeli control, the Palestinian Authority official daily has reported. Moreover, Hamas is not only ruling over the Gazans, but it is auditing the activities of international aid agencies and making them pay taxes to Hamas.
In an article titled "What is Hamas hiding?" published yesterday, the PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida confirmed that Hamas has taken over schools and hospitals to use them for interrogations.
"Hamas' internal security has begun summoning opponents for interrogation in schools, tents, and hospitals that Hamas operatives have overtaken, and it recently even summoned employees in the international development and aid agencies in order to obtain information about the amounts [of aid] and distribution methods!"
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Oct. 19, 2025]
The article adds that Hamas has "imposed levies and tariffs on the aid and established a department for those purposes." It further reports that Hamas "has deployed its internal security personnel and the Al-Qassam Brigades in most areas of the Gaza Strip within what is called the 'yellow line.'" Hamas' internal security is for policing Gazans, and the Al-Qassam Brigades is the internationally designated terror organization for Hamas' terror activities against Israelis.
The use in Gaza of civilian institutions, such as hospitals and schools, for terrorist activity was a fundamental part of Hamas' war strategy. It served two purposes—1) It enabled Hamas to hide its terrorists and weapons in places that Israel could not easily detect or fight; and 2) when Israel did attack the terror infrastructures hidden in civilian surroundings, Israel was condemned by the entire world.
Palestinian Media Watch has documented this strategy during the war. For example, in December 2024, PMW reported that Hamas had turned Gaza's Nasser Medical Center into an interrogation center, citing PA sources that confirmed Hamas' takeover of the hospital's facilities. In May 2025, PMW again exposed that Gazan hospitals were being used as centers of control and intimidation.
These PMW reports, along with the new admissions in Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, confirm that the exploitation of schools and hospitals is a systematic and ongoing terror tactic of Hamas' rule in Gaza.
While these supposedly civilian institutions are actually hiding terrorists, they should have never been considered protected spaces under international law. Nevertheless, Israel consistently operated surgically there and elsewhere in its efforts to exclusively target the terrorists.
So, while Israel is prevented from attacking Hamas during the American-coordinated ceasefire, Hamas is taking advantage of Israel's constraints to rebuild its terror infrastructures and rule across the Gaza Strip. In addition to the executions, arrests, and injuring of anti-Hamas forces, which have been widely publicized by Hamas itself in order to terrify any opposition, Hamas is secretly using hospitals and schools to enforce its rule, extorting humanitarian aid, and maintaining its armed presence across most of Gaza — all while protected by the ceasefire.
Ephraim D. Tepler and Itamar Marcus
Source: https://palwatch.org/page/41622
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