The Hamas organization in the Gaza Strip is increasing its attempts to carry out attacks on Israeli territory and also its intelligence efforts to obtain sensitive information about Israel that will help it in its terrorist operations.
Shin Bet announced that it has uncovered attempts to seduce and attract Israelis by impersonating to Israeli women on the Internet.
The seduction attempts are made through the publication of fictitious profiles on social networks run by terrorist operatives from the Gaza Strip who are trying to convince Israeli citizens to contact them with the aim of harming them.
The policy of Defense Minister Beni Gantz to grant humanitarian concessions to the residents of the Gaza Strip and allow several thousand of them to work in Israel is a boomerang.
On the one hand, this helps the relative calm in the Gaza Strip and brings several tens of millions of shekels into the Gaza Strip’s economy every month, but on the other hand, the terrorist organizations Hamas and Islamic Jihad see approximately 17 thousand workers who enter Israel every day from the Gaza Strip as a human pool from which terrorists can be recruited to carry out attacks in Israel and also spies to gather intelligence on strategic targets within Israel itself.
Senior security officials in Israel say that the Hamas and Islamic Jihad organizations in the Gaza Strip are not satisfied with the extensive campaign of incitement against Israel through their media and on social networks, but operationally activate terrorist squads and individual terrorists to carry out attacks in the West Bank and in Israel itself.
The Shin Bet recently foiled an attack in Israel by a resident of the Gaza Strip who has a work permit in Israel.
He was caught with an explosive device that he planned to detonate on a bus in the south of the country.
The terrorist is Pathi Zakout, 31, a resident of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. He underwent training in the preparation of explosive charges in the Gaza Strip and was operated by a senior Islamic Jihad operative in the Gaza Strip named Jihad Ranem.
Last week, the Shin Bet published an official announcement about how it arrested a 28-year-old resident of the Gaza Strip, Saber Abu Thabet, from the Gaza Strip, who worked in Israel but spied for the benefit of the military wing of Hamas.
He is now on trial at the District Court in Be’er Sheva on charges of membership in a terrorist organization and passing information to the enemy.
He tried to mislead the Shin Bet officer who recruited him at the Erez crossing so that he would pass on information about what was happening in the Gaza Strip, but the Shin Bet officer suspected him, assigned him tasks, and when he went to work in Israel on one occasion, he was arrested by the Shin Bet who followed him while he was trying to take pictures for Hamas of a hotel in Tel Aviv that he thought was used as a secret Israeli facility.
He actually took advantage of the approval he received to work in Israel and the trust placed in him to harm the security of the country and for that he is on trial and is expected to be severely punished.
There is no doubt that the Israeli Shin Bet’s intelligence and operational capabilities are dozens of times greater than the intelligence operated by the military arm of Hamas from the Gaza Strip.
However, one must never underestimate the enemy and his capabilities and become complacent, the military arm of Hamas is improving greatly in its cyber capabilities and also in the operation of its agents within Israel and recruiting residents of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem to carry out terrorist attacks inside Israel.
The military wing of Hamas succeeded in recruiting double agents that it claims it planted within Israeli intelligence and who killied their Israeli operatives.
For example, an IDF officer, Lt. Col. Yehuda Edri from Unit 504 of the Intelligence Corps , was murdered in 2001
by a Palestinian agent whom he recruited by the name of Hassan Abu Shaira from the al-Iza refugee camp in the Bethlehem area in 2001 during the second intifada.
In 1994, Shin Bet officer Noam Cohen was assassinated by a Palestinian agent he operated named Abdel Munenem Abu Hamed from the al-Amari refugee camp in the Ramallah area.
To this must be added claims by the military wing of Hamas that in 2018 and 2019 it managed to mislead the Israeli Shin Bet in two intelligence operations it initiated to convey to Israel misleading information about its medium-range and long-range rockets.
Hamas also tries to attribute to it the failure of a special IDF unit operation in the Khan Yunis area in November 2018 during which Lt. Col. Mahmoud Khair al-Din was killed.
The IDF force that was on a secret mission made a few mistakes in the field without anything to do with the intelligence of the military wing of Hamas which did not know about the operation, but Hamas presents it as its success.
The battle of wits between the Israeli Shin Bet and the military wing of Hamas is expected to escalate and Israel needs to show great creativity to win it.
There is no doubt that the Shin Bet needs to increase the supervision on the identity of residents of the Gaza Strip who receive work permits in Israel, Hamas puts heavy pressure on them to spy for it and even carry out terrorist attacks At the same time, the Israeli security establishment must send a warning to Hamas in the Gaza Strip that if this phenomenon continues, it will stop issuing work permits in Israel to the residents of the Gaza Strip.
Political officials in Jerusalem say that in any case the new defense minister will re-examine the policy regarding the entry of workers from the Gaza Strip to work in Israel.
