How Hamas’s counter-intelligence is outsmarting Israel
As they battle a barbaric enemy on multiple fronts, Palestinian resistance holds the line — fortified by a counter-intelligence machine that refuses to break, bend, or betray.
Israel’s criminal war of aggression against Iran began with a series of precision strikes that decimated much of Iran’s top military and intelligence leadership, including senior commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and key nuclear scientists.
Among the fatalities were the Chief of Staff of Iran’s Armed Forces, Commander-in-Chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Commander of Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters (Iran’s highest military command and control centre responsible for directing and coordinating joint operations across the country’s armed forces), Commander of the IRGC Aerospace Force (missile and drone chief), IRGC Air Defence Commander (Aerospace Force), Deputy Head of Intelligence, Armed Forces General Staff, Deputy Head of Operations, Armed Forces General Staff, and Commander of the IRGC Intelligence Organisation.
There have been few decapitation strikes as successful as this. Although Iran fought back valiantly and its unceasing strikes ultimately forced the Israelis to ask the United States for a ceasefire, there is no doubt that the strikes of June 13 caught Iran by surprise and caused it a devastating strategic shock — decapitating its military command structure, disrupting early coordination efforts, and briefly blinding its intelligence apparatus at a critical moment in the conflict.
By every measure, June 13 was a colossal counter-intelligence failure for Iran as it was unable to anticipate the attacks and ensure operational security, thereby exposing its top war-time leadership to such a devastating attack.
A similarly devastating blow was dealt to Hezbollah in Lebanon. On September 17–18, the Israelis carried out a series of terrorist attacks, targeting Hezbollah operatives through their rigged communication devices, first pagers and then walkie-talkies.
However, the most devastating blow to the Lebanese was dealt ten days later. On September 27, 2024, the Israelis dropped over 80 precision-guided bombs and missiles targeted at the underground bunker complex in Dahiyeh, Beirut, to take out Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah and several of his close aides. Subsequent Israeli strikes wiped out much of the top Hezbollah leadership through relentless targeted assassinations.
In a February poster, Hezbollah celebrated 36 of its top martyrs since October 7 — almost all of whom were assassinated.
To this day, the Israelis are carrying out drone and missile strikes in various parts of Lebanon nearly every day to kill Hezbollah operatives. Hezbollah, which won the 2006 war against the Israelis largely on the back of its secure internal communication and its success in intercepting Israeli intelligence, has been unable to maintain the same level of counter-intelligence in the latest war. Its failure to secure communication channels — along with possible breaches in human intelligence — has inflicted serious damage on the Lebanese resistance.
The devastating intelligence failures suffered by Iran and Hezbollah stand in sharp contrast to Gaza, where the Palestinian resistance has maintained an impenetrable intelligence shield — frustrating Israeli efforts despite intense surveillance.
Even after nearly two years of non-stop warfare, Israelis have no idea where their prisoners of war are being kept in the tiny 365-square-kilometre area of the Gaza Strip, which they encircle from all sides and surveil 24/7 with the most advanced tech available. Israel’s intelligence failure was best illustrated during the killing of Yahya Sinwar.
On October 16, 2024, the Bislamach Brigade of the occupation forces encountered three resistance fighters in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. A firefight ensued, and the fighters took cover inside a building. Unable to face them head on, the Israelis fired tank shells and drone bombs to kill the fighters. It was only when they sent in a team the next day to identify the fighter who, even in a half-dead state, took on their drone — the last face of the Zionist war machine he ever encountered — that they discovered it was Sinwar himself.
Also read: O Sinwar
More than a year into its genocidal assault on Gaza, the Israelis had zero clue about the whereabouts of its most wanted man.
Although Hamas has lost most of its leadership inside Gaza, it is not because of Israel’s ability to sniff them out due to its superior intelligence. In fact, most of the assassinations in the last two years it has claimed to have carried out in the Gaza Strip have soon been revealed as empty boasts.
Israel’s barbaric, indiscriminate bombings — rather than intelligence-based precision strikes like those used against top Iranian generals and Hezbollah officials — are the more likely reason most resistance leaders inside the besieged enclave have been martyred.
October 7 planning
While the Palestinian resistance fighters are showing unmatched bravery and resilience on the battlefields of Gaza — in stark contrast to the sheer cowardice of Israeli troops who have been caught on camera running away from the fight — what paved the way for the success of the Al-Aqsa Flood operation on October 7 was the quality of intelligence gathering and planning by the Palestinian resistance factions inside Gaza.
One of the first things the Palestinian resistance did on that fateful morning was drop explosive charges from drones on vaunted Israeli remote-controlled weapon stations deployed on the Gaza fence and disable them. It blinded the Israeli military to the activity that was happening on its concentration camp fence as the fighters poured in to execute their mission.
This precise coordination on the battlefield was no accident but the product of long-term intelligence gathering and strategic preparation by Hamas and allied factions.
“Hamas planning documents, videos of the assault and interviews with security officials show that the group had a surprisingly sophisticated understanding of how the Israeli military operated, where it stationed specific units, and even the time it would take for reinforcements to arrive,” The New York Times reported on October 13, 2023.
The NYT article goes on to explain that fighters of the elite units of the resistance had detailed maps with precise coordinates of communication servers, locations of the barracks, and the size of troops at the eight Israeli military bases captured on October 7. Every detail had been accounted for — and the operation unfolded precisely as planned.
“In several bases, they knew exactly where the communications servers were and destroyed them, according to a senior Israeli army officer,” The New York Times report said. “The group had a specific target — a kibbutz — and the attackers were tasked with storming the village from specific angles. They had estimates for how many Israeli troops were stationed in nearby posts, how many vehicles they had at their disposal, and how long it would take those Israeli relief forces to reach them.”
Hamas’s intel capabilities
Contrary to popular perception, October 7 was not a spontaneous outburst of anger. It was a meticulously planned operation, the result of prolonged preparation and extensive resource investment by the Palestinian resistance. No element of modern intelligence gathering was spared.
Hamas, in particular, demonstrated a remarkable level of strategic foresight, intelligence sophistication, and technological adaptability that took even Israel’s vaunted security establishment by surprise. Far from the outdated stereotype of a reactive or disorganised movement, this was a patient, multi-domain intelligence operation carried out by a disciplined and decentralised military apparatus.
Central to this success was Hamas’ Military Intelligence Department (Modatz), a relatively small unit of just over 2,100 operatives, yet impressively organised across cyber warfare, SIGINT (signals intelligence), OSINT (open-source intelligence), and HUMINT (human intelligence). By exploiting open-source intelligence, intercepting signals, and cleverly accessing unsecured civilian surveillance cameras within Israel, Hamas developed a rich, layered understanding of Israeli society, military routines, and vulnerabilities.
While Israeli intelligence remained blinded by complacency and assumptions, Hamas methodically gathered critical information — using everything from IP address scans to psychological honeytrap operations targeting Israeli soldiers. A March 2024 report in Israel Hayom confirmed that Hamas operatives had hacked security cameras inside Israel to monitor live feeds inside Israeli communities, allowing fighters to move with real-time battlefield awareness on the day of the attack. “Hamas personnel could view uninterrupted footage from the cameras, mostly civilian and private ones, broadcasting directly to them from towns, roads, and even homes within Israel,” Israel Hayom reported. “Hamas’s eyes were wide open.”
Furthermore, Hamas deployed drones to glean even more information about the genocidal enemy. “In recent years, the organisation has developed a UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle or drone] industry capable of hovering over the Strip and providing oblique footage of the Israeli heartland,” the Israel Hayom report outlined.
Hamas even compiled technical manuals on Israeli defence systems, studied political trends, and monitored public sentiment in minute detail. In short, the Palestinian resistance left no stone unturned to gauge as much as they could about not just the Israeli military but Israeli society.
October 7 represented the culmination of years of sustained intelligence-gathering, analysis, and planning by a resistance movement fighting under siege. The operation shattered Israel’s myth of invincibility and exposed glaring flaws in its security doctrine. From a strictly military-intelligence standpoint, this was an unprecedented and strategically calibrated achievement by a force operating under extreme material constraint and under constant surveillance from the Israelis with their sophisticated drones and units dedicated to every facet of intelligence gathering from the Gaza concentration camp.
Golden Cup and honey traps
During the 2018 FIFA World Cup, Hamas ran an ingenious intelligence-gathering operation. Purportedly providing the latest scores, photos, and videos from football’s premier event, it was in truth a surveillance app developed by Hamas engineers. By reaching out to Israeli soldiers through fake social media pages, Hamas operatives convinced about a hundred of them to download the app. “It was actually a very good one,” one Israeli official said of the app.
Palestinian resistance also targeted Israeli military personnel through honeytrap apps.
“Hundreds of Israel Defence Forces (IDF) troops were contacted via social media this year and asked to download one of two fake dating apps, WinkChat and GlanceLove, according to an official in the army’s intelligence directorate,” The Guardian reported in 2018. “Once the bogus app was installed, it granted its creators the ability to see the owner’s location and contact list and to use the phone as a listening device and video camera.”
Dossiers on Israeli soldiers
By employing such ingenious means, Hamas has collected extensive data on Israeli military personnel. In July 2024, Haaretz reported that Hamas had compiled detailed dossiers on “more than 2,000 Israel Air Force personnel” as part of intelligence-gathering operations. The dossiers detailed not only the soldiers’ current roles in the Israeli military, but also their employment histories: “The dossiers were leaked online this week, and with them the details of the soldiers’ past and present.”
And more: “Each report includes the soldier’s full name, their base or unit, I.D. number, mobile phone number, email address, social media accounts, names of family members, and in some cases passwords, licence plates, credit card numbers and bank account information.”
Haaretz reported that Hamas used a broad array of intelligence-gathering techniques, combining cyberattacks, social media scraping, and past leaks to build detailed profiles of military personnel.
“The reports were composed of a combination of information that was leaked or taken from a hack, likely into the servers of a non-IDF website, with information also being scraped from social networks, public databases and from previous leaks,” the Haaretz article explained. “They were produced using an automatic tool known as a profiler, which makes it possible to collect, cross-reference and fuse together intelligence from open sources (OSINT) to create a detailed ‘profile’ on intelligence targets. In this way, sensitive personal information was collated on thousands of people who serve or served at various IAF bases.”
Palestinian cyber-warfare units
Although it had been operating discreetly for eight years, Hamas announced the existence of its specialised cyber unit on October 13, 2022.
At the time of its unveiling, Hamas announced that it had deployed its cyber unit to hack electricity grids in Israeli settlements, disrupt transport networks, and target private Zionist companies, including weapons manufacturers. It also claimed to have acquired the capability to trigger missile sirens at will — forcing Israelis into shelters and sowing panic.
Later in 2022, Al-Qassam Brigades — the military wing of Hamas — released a video purporting to show the triggering of missile warning siren systems inside occupied Palestine.
Intelligence capabilities during the genocide
Even during the ongoing genocide, Palestinian resistance’s intelligence capabilities remain fully operational.
Last week, Al Jazeera Arabic published “exclusive footage of spy devices used for eavesdropping and filming, planted by the Israeli occupation and its agents among the rubble, debris, and walls in various areas of the Gaza Strip during the current war.”
From Al Jazeera Arabic report (video linked above):
A Hamas security official revealed to Al Jazeera that the resistance had succeeded in seizing control of these devices and reusing them in its operations. He noted that multi-mission quadcopter drones had planted these devices for espionage and military purposes.
In detail, the occupation forces planted a booby-trapped eavesdropping device, disguised as a worn-out plastic container, on the side of a road near a central shelter in Gaza City.
However, despite the catastrophic situation in the Gaza Strip as it faces annihilation at the hands of Western-funded Israeli genocidaires, the resistance maintains its capacity to sniff out these camouflaged surveillance devices and dismantle them:
According to the security official, resistance engineers dismantled the device and determined its mechanism and purpose. This led to broader operations through which the resistance seized control of additional devices.
The resistance also seized a remote tracking device near a crowded location where the handover ceremony of the occupation's prisoners took place in the second exchange deal.
The security official confirmed to Al Jazeera that the device is operated via an electronic application over Wi-Fi or by sending text messages to the SIM card inside it.
The resistance further recovered a spy device camouflaged inside a concrete block that the occupation had planted through an agent in the courtyard of a hospital in the southern Gaza Strip for the purpose of eavesdropping and gathering information.
The resistance went on to capture more surveillance tools: video transmission and recording devices camouflaged among the rubble of buildings in a vital area. It was supposed to take pictures and record footage whenever any movement was detected in the area, day and night, and then send it over the internet to the collection and analysis bases of the occupation army’s intelligence.
This robust intelligence apparatus inside Gaza is one of the main reasons the Israelis remain far from infiltrating the resistance despite decades of intense surveillance and two years of physical presence inside the besieged enclave. The Israelis are also not helped by their doctrine of never entering the elaborate tunnels in Gaza, which has left them largely unaware of their labyrinthine structure and sheer scale.
They are unable to hack into the communication systems employed by the resistance or find informants who could lead them to the Israeli prisoners of war or Palestinian leaders and fighters. In terms of intelligence, the Zionists are still fighting in the dark in the Gaza Strip.
Much of the credit for keeping the Gaza Strip free of collaborators belongs to Yahya Sinwar himself. Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, one of the founding members of Hamas, entrusted Sinwar and his close aide Rawhi Mushtaha (who was also martyred in Gaza last year) with the task of forming an organisation that would ensure Gaza remained free of collaborators.
“He [Sheikh Yassin] also commissioned Yahya al-Sinwar and Rawhi Mushtaha to form a security organisation to be called Majd (glory), whose principal task was to apprehend, prosecute, and execute Palestinian collaborators working for Israel,” Azzam Tamimi wrote in his book Hamas: Unwritten Chapters.
Led by Sinwar, Majd came into existence in 1986.
Sinwar proved to be the ideal choice for the risky task of rooting out collaborators. He killed several Israeli assets inside the Gaza Strip by strangling them with his bare hands rather than using firearms as a matter of principle, according to one Israeli account. His stellar counter-espionage work ensured the Israelis had no one to pass them critical information about the resistance’s moves inside Gaza.
After Israeli forces apprehended Sinwar in 1988 and uncovered the full extent of Sinwar’s contribution within Hamas, especially his role in eliminating four collaborators, he was sentenced to four life terms in Israeli dungeons. He was ultimately released as part of a prisoner exchange deal in 2011 after serving 23 years. Back on his home turf, Sinwar went on to reinforce the organisation that has dismantled the Israeli military’s aura of invincibility while remaining impervious to sabotage.
As they battle a barbaric enemy on multiple fronts, Palestinian resistance holds the line — fortified by a counter-intelligence machine that refuses to break, bend, or betray.
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