this post was submitted on 13 May 2024
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The Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar has for years overseen a secret police force in Gaza that conducted surveillance on everyday Palestinians and built files on young people, journalists and those who questioned the government, according to intelligence officials and a trove of internal documents reviewed by The New York Times.

The unit, known as the General Security Service, relied on a network of Gaza informants, some of whom reported their own neighbors to the police. People landed in security files for attending protests or publicly criticizing Hamas. In some cases, the records suggest that the authorities followed people to determine if they were carrying on romantic relationships outside marriage.

Hamas has long run an oppressive system of governance in Gaza, and many Palestinians there know that security officials watch them closely. But a 62-slide presentation on the activities of the General Security Service, delivered only weeks before the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, reveals the degree to which the largely unknown unit penetrated the lives of Palestinians.

. . .

Everyday Gazans were stuck — behind the wall of Israel’s crippling blockade and under the thumb and constant watch of a security force. That dilemma continues today, with the added threat of Israeli ground troops and airstrikes.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 months ago (4 children)

I don't know what the solution is either, but I do know that brutalizing and displacing the entire population won't make the average Palestinian friendlier to the Israeli cause. Say what you will about the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but at least they attempted to be more surgical.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (3 children)

Anything else is more surgical than basically unconcentrated carpet bombing of the Gaza cities a few times over. But yeah, at least the U.S. had a bit of "hearts and minds" approach.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (2 children)

The U.S. also had local opposition fighters to help them gain sympathy from the local population, and we were actually trying to nation build.

You can say that Fatah is basically that for Israel, but they aren't fighting in Gaza. If the fighting in Gaza was being done by Fatah, then global perceptions would probably be a lot different.

It would also probably involve less civilian deaths as Fatah would be much less likely just to bomb a neighborhood to get 10 Hamas fighters as opposed to actually fighting for it and taking casualties which is what Israel is currently doing.

Of course, this couldn't happen under the current Israeli government. They barely trust Fatah with enough weapons to be policemen in the West Bank, let alone enough to take a city of 2 million.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

"local" is a relative word their "local" fighters were generally ppl from north who didn't even speak pashto and were looking for a paycheck and required local translators and were seen as foreign us backed fighters themselves. Whatever truely local opposition they managed to create in southern rural areas were an integral but small part of the afghan fighting force . Their english translators required translators themselves in a lot of the rural areas because they didn't speak the language just like the westernerns. . Thats why they folded and lost very easily once us support ended they had very few truly "local" fighting force that were from the areas they were supposed to defend.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Yeahhhh Afghanistan was a shitshow. We were actually nation-building, not just nation rebuilding like we did in Iraq, a lot harder to create a national identity out of several tribes and ethnic groups than it is to change/"modernize" a nation like we did in Iraq.

Even Iraq had that issue with the sectarianism, but atleast almost everyone spoke the same language (sorry Kurds). Iraq had also had a national identity beat into them by the monarchy and then the Baathists, which probably helped as well. Afghanistan never really had that.