Open-source intelligence is readily available and inexpensive. Hamas collected a lot of information from open sources, mainly the Israeli press. In this case, Hamas exploited the fact that Israel is a democratic state with a relatively free press to get valuable information for its operations. This sort of collection activity became more organized after Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip and was Hamas’s main source for strategic analysis. This chapter describes the intelligence content Hamas gathered from open sources and that content’s contribution to its activities.

Since its founding in 1987, the political and ideological dimensions of the terror organization Hamas have been well discussed by scholars. In contrast, this innovative study takes a new approach by exploring the entire scope of Hamas’s intelligence activity against its state adversary, Israel. Using primary sources in Arabic, Hebrew, and English, the author analyzes the development of Hamas’s various methods for gathering information, its use of this information for operational needs and strategic analysis, and its counterintelligence activity against the Israeli intelligence apparatus. The Hamas Intelligence War against Israel explores how Hamas’s activity has gradually become more sophisticated as its institutions have become more established and the nature of the conflict has changed. As the first full-length study to analyze the intelligence efforts of a violent non-state actor, this book sheds new light on the activities and operations of Hamas, and opens new avenues for intelligence research in the wider field.

Since its founding in 1987, the political and ideological dimensions of the terror organization Hamas have been well discussed by scholars. In contrast, this innovative study takes a new approach by exploring the entire scope of Hamas’s intelligence activity against its state adversary, Israel. Using primary sources in Arabic, Hebrew, and English, the author analyzes the development of Hamas’s various methods for gathering information, its use of this information for operational needs and strategic analysis, and its counterintelligence activity against the Israeli intelligence apparatus. The Hamas Intelligence War against Israel explores how Hamas’s activity has gradually become more sophisticated as its institutions have become more established and the nature of the conflict has changed. As the first full-length study to analyze the intelligence efforts of a violent non-state actor, this book sheds new light on the activities and operations of Hamas, and opens new avenues for intelligence research in the wider field.

The conclusion chapter sums up the contribution of Hamas’s intelligence to the organization’s activities associated with its struggle against Israel. It details the strengths and weaknesses of the organization’s efforts to gather intelligence on Israel, counter Israeli intelligence activity, and assess Israel’s intentions and capabilities. This chapter also examines lessons from the case study of Hamas that may be applied to a general understanding of intelligence warfare by VNSAs.

The chapter analyzes Hamas’s use of intelligence to conduct successful operations against Israel. The combination of intelligence gathering and clandestine activities, as described in the previous chapters, led to several high-quality operations against Israel. For example, in an attack in 2006, Hamas successfully abducted IDF soldier Gilad Shalit and was able to keep him hidden for years, despite Israel’s efforts to find and rescue him in the tiny Gaza Strip. In addition, Hamas created a “bank” of targets through its intelligence-gathering efforts. This structured list of vulnerable quality targets was used to focus rocket attacks against Israel and find locations for suicide attacks.

The chapter explores Hamas’s strategic analysis and study of Israel and the IDF. As part of its intelligence warfare, Hamas strove to increase its knowledge of the enemy. This chapter describes Hamas’s accumulation of intelligence about Israeli weaponry, IDF units, Israeli battlefield tactics, operational training, and so on. The organization particularly sought information about the capabilities of Israeli armored vehicles in order to inform its use of anti-tank weaponry. The chapter also illustrates how Hamas disseminated this knowledge in its ranks. This chapter goes on to analyze Hamas’s operational preparations for war after Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Further, it examines Hamas’s ongoing assessment of the possibility and characteristics of a large-scale Israeli attack, and in particular the analysis of the Israeli political and social situation used by Hamas in order to form such an assessment. In this manner, the chapter discusses the influence of Hamas’s “enemy image” of Israel – an image based on the organization’s Palestinian Islamic ideology as well as its interpretation of events and social processes in Israel – on the organization’s assessment of its enemy. The chapter also sheds light on the organization’s difficulties in strategic analysis of Israel.

After addressing Hamas’s intelligence collection in previous chapters, this chapter focusses on Hamas’s efforts to counter Israeli intelligence efforts against it. To overcome Israel’s attempts to infiltrate its ranks, Hamas went to great lengths to screen those wishing to join it, while diligently acting to detect collaborators with Israel, both within its ranks and in the broader society in which they operate, while applying internal compartmentalization to the organization. To counter Israel’s SIGINT activity, Hamas tried to avoid the use of wireless communications, and also made use of encryption, both in telephone communication and in correspondence; over time, Hamas developed an internal communication system that is separate from the public system. To defeat Israel’s GEOINT efforts, Hamas tried to conceal its activities to the greatest extent possible. This included a range of strategies, including camouflage, the assimilation of military installations in civilian surroundings, and the use of subterranean spaces. Regarding open-source media publications, Hamas developed the awareness of the need to impose censorship to hide certain characteristic signs of its activity.

The chapter deals with Hamas’s human intelligence (HUMINT) activity. Hamas, of course, makes use of the most traditional method of intelligence gathering – information from human sources. This chapter details how Hamas first recruited local sources for short periods and specific missions. Gradually, sources were recruited who could operate outside of Israel; these sources were sent on longer-term and more advanced missions. Hamas also used the internet, i.e., social media and email, to contact and handle potential sources. This chapter also describes how Hamas turned collaborators with Israel into double agents and ran operations using these agents.

This chapter describes how Hamas operatives set up tactical observation posts during the First Intifada, the years after the Oslo Accord, and the Second Intifada, and explores the systematization of this activity after Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Eventually, Hamas established the murabitun, a border patrol force that staffs observation posts and serves as the first responder to any Israeli incursion, and instituted an observation section of the ʿIzz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas. The members of the latter section used more advanced equipment than had previously been deployed and documented their findings for in-depth analysis. This chapter also describes Hamas’s efforts to develop and operate unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for observation missions.

The chapter sheds light on Hamas’s signal intelligence (SIGINT) and cyber warfare. It describes how, in the first decade of the 2000s, Hamas gained SIGINT capabilities that made it possible for Hamas to intercept the camera broadcasts of IDF UAVs, as well as the IDF’s visible tactical communication traffic. In the 2010s, Hamas began to invest in cyber warfare. This chapter also surveys Hamas’s successful use of various hacking methods to penetrate the smartphones of IDF soldiers and officers, extracting information and installing spyware and using social engineering techniques; descriptions of several real-life cases are included for illustration.

In the 1990s, a cultural movement of Israeli Jews began questioning the basic truisms of Zionism and revisited Israel’s history. The narrative they spun was very close to the Palestinian one. But the shift of the Israeli society to the right and the outbreak of the second Intifada have marginalized this critical impulse.

These were the years of Netanyahu’s reign in power. The Hamas took over the Gaza Strip. Israel went to another was in Lebanon in 2006 and assaulted repeatedly the Gaza Strip as a retaliation for the Hamas war of liberation. The West Bank was domiciled; the peace process dead; and the Knesset passed a number of racist laws against the Palestinian minority in Israel. Israel’s international image was damaged, but it still had the support of governments all around the world.

Demographic changes inside the Jewish society produced a new political force in Israel, defeating any chance of a liberal Zionist approach towards the Palestine Question. The last liberal Zionist bid was the Oslo Accord that dismally failed. The occupation after Oslo became much harsher as were the discriminatory policies towards the Palestinian minority inside Israel.

Islamic Jihadism has deep ties to National Socialism, both in its history and in its vision of a world that is “purified of the Jews.” Chapter 8 demonstrates the influences of Nazi exterminationist Jew hatred on modern Islamic Jihadism. It should be noted that I use the term Islamic Jihadism to distinguish Jihadists from other Muslims who are not part of this movement. Tracing the path from Hitler to Hamas, the chapter brings out the connections between the antisemitism of the Muslim Brotherhood and National Socialist Jew hatred, with particular attention to the Nazi war criminal Haj Amin al-Husseini. I incorporate primary texts of Jihadist ideologues such as Hasan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb, Abdullah Azzam, Ruhullah Khomeini, and others. Like the Nazis, but with theological differences, the Jihadists maintain not that all Jews are evil but that all evil is Jewish, to which and that to resolve it there can be only a Final Solution.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, Iran was a victim of a foreign power (Soviet Union) using ethnic groups (Kurds and Azeris) as proxies in efforts to destabilize the country. Ironically, in the 1960s and 1970s, the Shah used the same tactic against Iran’s regional adversaries by cultivating ties with the Kurds in Iraq and the Shia communities of Lebanon. After the 1979 revolution, supporting proxies has become a cornerstone of the Islamic Republic’s security doctrine and its regional policy. Indeed, the republic’s network of proxies is an essential part of Tehran’s asymmetric warfare strategy and has been extensively used for both offensive and defensive purposes.

This chapter examines religious claims and aspects within Palestinian nationalism from the time of the British Mandate to the present. Since such endeavor necessitates an engagement with Zionism, the chapter starts by refuting a common misperception that seeks to equate Palestinian nationalism with Zionism in the latter’s use of religion to attain its political ends. The distinctions between the two regarding their “use” of religion can be conceptualized on the basis of two guiding notions: functionality and centrality of religion and/or religious claims in either respective projects. Each uses religion differently in terms of the purpose (function), and the assigned place (centrality) within the subsequent discourse and practice. The conceptualization of these two notions is offered in this chapter as a framework for analysis in discussing the specific case of Palestinian nationalism. In undertaking the analysis of the Palestinian national movement over more than a century, the chapter is divided into three parts: the decades of the British Mandate; the decades that followed the creation of Israel up through the late 1980s; and finally the decades where Palestinian Islamism has become an integral part of the Palestinian national project – from the emergence of Hamas in December 1987 to the present.

The post-Oslo period in which this study is situated refers both to the buoyancy of a potential reconciliation in the immediate wake of the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords and the subsequent demise of a viable two-state solution. As evidenced in this chapter, perceptions of the formulation of the Oslo Accords and the reasons for the agreement’s key successes and failures remain a subject of narrative dissent. Rather than provide the reconciliatory framework and confidence-building measures to address past grievances, as was intended through the interim nature of the 1993 agreement, the post-Oslo period therefore witnessed an ongoing irreconcilability of key narratives. This chapter offers both a holistic understanding of the political and societal impact of these historic accords and an overview of the key events that were influenced by – and affected – subsequent implementation and interpretations of the Oslo peace agreements. The events and societal trends highlighted in this chapter do not provide an exhaustive analysis of Israeli-Jewish or Palestinian politics in the post-Oslo era; however, they do seek to render formative insights into the societal underpinnings that explain the rise and persistence of exclusionary identity politics that form the main interest of this work.

It was the PLO and the work of its chairman, Yasir Arafat, that made it impossible for the world to ignore the Palestinian issue. The PLO was born in the age of national liberation struggles, when national liberation movements took as their model the struggle for Algerian independence and when violent revolution undertaken by a select group of cadres provided the means to achieve movement goals. Although by the early 1970s the PLO was recognized by most of the world as the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people,” it was never able to fully shed the national liberation model. And although the PLO was recognized as the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people,” two phenomena that came about in the late 1980s called that recognition into question: an uprising in the occupied territories (intifada), during which a local Palestinian leadership emerged; and the emergence of an Islamist movement, Hamas, which would eventually take control of Gaza, leading to a division within the movement.