https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/22156/hamas-ngos-relationship

Humanitarian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working in the Gaza Strip have been thoroughly infiltrated by Hamas, according to a new report by NGO Monitor: Puppet Regime: Hamas’ Coercive Grip on Aid and NGO Operations in Gaza. The report is based on Arabic-language documents, retrieved by Israel’s military, spanning the years 2018-2022, from Hamas’s Gaza Interior Security Mechanism (ISM), a unit within the Hamas Ministry of Interior and National Security.

“The evidence confirms that NGOs in Gaza do not operate independently or neutrally,” NGO Monitor found. “Rather, they are embedded in an institutionalized framework of coercion, intimidation, and surveillance that serves Hamas’ terror objectives.”

On an everyday basis, NGOs need permission from Hamas to do their work in Gaza.

“All NGOs operating in Gaza are required to adhere to strict Hamas security protocols, which include regular engagement with the terror group’s Ministry of Interior and National Security… and other ministries relevant for specific projects… NGOs – both local and international, including ones operating under the auspices of UN projects – are not permitted to provide services or operate projects in Gaza without Hamas’ approval… NGOs are compelled to comply, ensuring that their activities do not contradict Hamas’ authority and narrative or obstruct its military agenda.”

Hamas also inserted “guarantors” – local Gazans approved by Hamas, or themselves Hamas members or affiliates – into high positions in the respective NGOs to serve as points of contact between Hamas and the NGOs. Hamas required its “guarantors” to be placed at the highest administrative levels of the NGO, such as director, deputy director, or board chair.

This led to ethically questionable dispositions on the part of these NGOs: The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), for instance, an Oslo-based NGO operating in Gaza, among other places, chose to simply ignore concerns from a Gazan that his floor was collapsing because of a terror tunnel being built underneath. According to the NGO Monitor report:

“As part of an NRC program, funded by the UK and EU, to provide cash assistance to families selected by Hamas-controlled Ministry of Social Development, an NRC delegation, including the Gaza head and five other employees, visited a beneficiary’s apartment. The resident was chosen… ‘since he is elderly, weak sighted and his partner has a broken pelvis,’ and the ‘poor shape of his apartment’s floor and one of the walls was about to collapse.’

“During the visit, the beneficiary asked whether ‘the reason that the floor collapsed was that there was a tunnel’ beneath his home. According to the NRC senior official, ‘neither the foreign delegation nor the association’s employees asked whether there was a tunnel under the civilian’s… apartment which caused the floor to collapse, rather it was the apartment’s owner who asked the researchers… nevertheless the researchers did not reply to him'”.

The NRC had a Gazan administrative director, according to NGO Monitor, who “supports the Hamas movement but is not affiliated with the movement,” and “He is employed by the government of Gaza and has the rank of Naqib (Hamas rank for captain)…”