Since the first day of the Gaza war, Israel has declared that its primary goal is to eliminate Hamas and end its rule in the coastal enclave, which has been under blockade for more than 17 years.
Over the course of 14 months, Israel has destroyed more than 98 per cent of the Hamas-run government’s headquarters in Gaza, including civilian police stations, and killed thousands of government and police personnel.
An estimated 45,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel since the war began, the vast majority women and children, with rights groups stating that Israel has committed acts of genocide.
Although the Hamas government has not specified the number of security personnel, police officers, or government employees killed during the war, it recently announced that the Israeli army had killed 736 people who were responsible for securing and distributing aid in Gaza.
On 2 January, Israel escalated this campaign against Hamas’s civilian governance capabilities, killing the director-general of the Palestinian police in Gaza, Mahmoud Salah, in an airstrike.
His deputy, Major General Hussam Shahwan, was also killed in the attack, which targeted their forces in the Al-Mawasi district, a so-called ‘humanitarian zone’ for civilians.
Gaza’s Interior Ministry said the two police officers had been “performing their humanitarian and national duty in serving our people”.
Undermining security and public order
Ismail Thawabta, head of the government media office in Gaza, told The New Arab that since Israel’s war began the military has been pursuing a dangerous policy of undermining public order and systematically dismantling the security and justice systems in the Gaza Strip.
He added that this escalation is part of a plan to create an administrative and governmental vacuum and spread chaos in the Gaza Strip to destabilise society.
“The police are a civilian body protected under international law, and the occupation’s assassination of its officers and members comes without any justification,” Thawabta added.
He explained that Israel’s targeting of civilian forces escalates whenever they begin implementing plans to control the security situation, part of a deliberate strategy to dismantle any semblance of order in Gaza by targeting leaders, officers, and members of the police force.
To create an environment that facilitates the theft of aid, the Israeli army has deliberately targeted police personnel while they secure food and medical aid vehicles entering Gaza, according to Thawabta.
Israel’s policy has “led to the spread of chaos in some places and exposed citizens to danger due to some internal security incidents,” the media official said.
Israeli attacks have greatly hindered the work of the police, forcing them to implement alternative emergency plans such as not wearing military uniforms and asking security personnel to cover their faces.
Despite the continued “criminal” Israeli targeting, Thawabta stressed that the police force will continue its work in controlling the security situation, preventing its deterioration, and combating chaos.
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said in a recent statement that the Israeli army has sought, since the beginning of the ongoing war, to spread a state of chaos and insecurity and “create disastrous conditions that will result in the destruction of Palestinians in the Strip as a whole”.
On 2 January, the same day Gaza’s police chiefs were killed, Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz chaired a ministerial group to discuss how best to destroy Hamas’s governing capacity and its ability to conduct military and civilian activities.
Spreading chaos
Talal Okal, a Palestinian political expert, says that Israel’s targeting of the police force is part of a declared plan to eliminate Hamas and its civil governance apparatus.
“Israel is continuing its attempts to eliminate the police apparatus in Gaza, although targeting it is a violation of international law and the Geneva Convention, which considers it a civil apparatus,” he told The New Arab.
“The police are a civilian apparatus whose members are not fighters. They are individuals who maintain the rule of law and maintain security. What Israel is doing is contrary to international law, which calls for their protection, not their killing,” he added.
By striking the police, Israel seeks to “create a state of chaos and security chaos” in an attempt to push the population to accept an alternative to Hamas after the war, according to Mustafa Ibrahim, a Gaza-based political expert.
“The state of chaos that Israel seeks is dangerous and threatens the Palestinian social fabric and may lead to its fragmentation, the spread of crime, and the creation of negative phenomena that did not exist before,” he told TNA.
The same opinion is shared by Iyad Al-Qara, another Gaza-based Palestinian expert, who says that the Israeli army focuses its attacks on the police apparatus whenever campaigns are launched to maintain security and combat chaos.
“This has happened more than once, the most recent of which was the assassination of Mahmoud Salah and Hussam Shahwan while they were working to secure aid trucks that were coming to the Gaza Strip,” Al-Qara told TNA.
He added that Israel has launched multiple attacks on police officers throughout the Gaza Strip in recent months to prevent them from organising their affairs and maintaining security.
“It is clear that the occupation is monitoring and following up and is very keen to block the way for any attempt to control security, to deepen the crisis of the people in Gaza,” Al-Qara added.
No Hamas in post-war Gaza
For his part, Palestinian writer and political analyst Adnan Samara believes that Israel is deliberately targeting police leaders and security personnel to end Hamas’s civilian power in Gaza and to prepare conditions for the ‘day after’ without Hamas.
“The situation is not easy in the Gaza Strip, and Hamas was greatly affected by the war, and Israel will not allow any ceasefire in Gaza as long as Hamas has military and civilian power in the region,” Samara told TNA.
“There is an Israeli-American plan with the help of some Arab countries to end the existence of Hamas rule to pass the deal of the century and create the ‘new Middle East’, and this will not happen as long as Hamas runs the Gaza Strip,” he added.
Sally Ibrahim is a Palestinian reporter with The New Arab based in the Gaza Strip
