Nov 23, 2018

The Nov. 11 clash between Hamas and an Israeli Special Forces unit operating within the Gaza Strip is not really over. The firefight that almost resulted in war has been replaced by a digitalized campaign and battle of wits that peaked Nov. 22 in an absurd incident. Hamas invested tremendous efforts in collecting information and publishing photos of those it claimed had taken part in the botched undercover operation in southern Gaza.

In an unprecedented move, Israel’s military censor urged Israeli media outlets and the public not to share the photos Hamas posted online, not to react to them online and not to disseminate them so as not to help the Hamas crowdsourcing effort that could be harmful to Israel’s national security. As of now, the Israeli public is displaying surprising self-control and the social media buzz that Hamas Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar and his people had hoped to create has fallen flat.

Hamas and Israel are engaged in a protracted war. The organization does not recognize Israel, its charter calls for Israel’s annihilation; Israel also does not recognize Hamas and tries to avoid any direct contacts with its people. That state of play, however, belongs in the past. Nowadays, in this new era, the military wing of Hamas, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, has Hebrew-language Telegram and Twitter accounts, and even a “tattle” hotline of the type provided by authorities to catch tax evaders, which Israelis can call anonymously to report information. Hamas fires rockets at the Israeli power station that supplies Gaza with electricity and funds a multipronged, complex terror network with millions of dollars in cash delivered to the Gaza Strip in armored trucks under Israeli supervision. What a crazy world.

Now Hamas is trying to do to Israel what Dhahi Khalfan Tamim, head of General Security for the Emirate of Dubai, did in 2010 when he exposed an undercover Israeli team sent to kill senior Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. Israel is still traumatized by the affair, in which Khalfan’s agency used digital surveillance and Israeli-developed security cameras to expose the 11-member team it claimed was working for the Mossad. For days, Khalfan embarrassed Israel — which has never admitted to the operation — by publishing more and more photos of the operatives of Kidon, the Mossad’s mythological assassinations department, and portrayed Israel in a ridiculous light.

The clandestine Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip revealed almost two weeks ago is still shrouded in secrecy. Hamas claims it has managed to reconstruct the activity of the Israeli commandos, to find the house they rented near the town of Khan Yunis and the two vehicles they used. At the end of the firefight between the Israeli force and Hamas, Israel’s air force bombed these vehicles and destroyed them, albeit not totally. It now turns out that a gun with a silencer was left intact at the scene, which Sinwar held up proudly last week, as well as quite a few items that enabled Hamas to figure out what the Israeli force had been doing undercover for quite some time deep inside Gaza.