By William Tucker
Chief Correspondent for In Homeland Security
“Next to penetrations (moles), defectors are your best weapon against alien intelligence services.” — William R. Johnson, Thwarting Enemies at Home and Abroad (2009)
Last week the Associated Press ran an interesting article on the clandestine war between Hamas and Israel. The article, “Widow of alleged Gaza spy reveals espionage war between Israel, Hamas” was expectedly light on information regarding the actual clandestine activities and only covered Israel’s approach to recruitment of human intelligence (HUMINT) sources in Gaza. Again, this is expected because intelligence conflicts, or secret wars, are by their very nature secret, however observations about the conflict are not necessarily fully opaque. To demonstrate this we can first turn to Hamas. Hamas was initially conceived as a militant organization that eventually gained power through democratic elections only to tear down the very institutions that brought the movement to power. Because of this behavior, and of course the overall complexity of the Israeli-Palestinian issue, Hamas was fully dependent on outside powers for support. Non-state groups often have a varied methodology on how money, weapons, training, etc. are acquired, and intelligence functions are no exception. Hamas built their clandestine services from the ground up, albeit with some outside assistance, in the form of both official and nonofficial consultants from various nation-states that have an interest in keeping pressure on Israel.
Though Hamas is reliant on outside funding, it is an independent organization and is unwilling to fully entrust all intelligence functions to a supporting nation-state or other financier. In other words, Hamas is fully invested in running its own collection and operational activities where it can, but the group does realize its limits. These activities may be limited in quantity, however, because of the isolation imposed by the Israeli-Egyptian blockade. This has created a bifurcated system in which Hamas actors outside of Gaza (barred from reentry into the territory) must coordinate activities with Hamas actors inside Gaza over a significant distance. Even with modern communications systems this distance and separation arrests much of the activities that Hamas would like to engage in. In fact, this further forces Hamas to heavily rely on outside actors to facilitate the smuggling of weapons and money into Gaza. Hamas, with the aid of Iran and formerly Syria, created a sophisticated smuggling operation for moving weapons into Gaza that was rather similar to criminal operations ran by organized crime. Hezbollah, in coordination with Iran’s IRG, has been running smuggling operations of a similar nature worldwide, so this shouldn’t come as a surprise. Naturally, the isolation imposed on Gaza severely limits the options available to Hamas.
Intelligence collection by any non-state actor, even a quasi-state actor such as Hamas, is an inherent challenge, but options are available. These options include accepting unsolicited offers of support or information, or even making direct requests for intelligence from a nation-state supporter, but in the vast majority of cases non-state actors develop and run their own HUMINT operations. Keep in mind that proxy groups, though they are often referred to as non-state actors, are formed and directly run by a nation-state and operate in conjunction with the nations that created them. Perhaps proxies should be categorized differently because of these nation-state relationships, however that is a discussion for another time. HUMINT operations conducted by a non-state actor have many similarities to their nation-state relatives. The recruitment methodology is rather similar, but because of limited funds, non-state actors have been known to rely on ideological sympathies. This isn’t a bulletproof approach, however, as some sympathizers may, for instance, prefer aligning with the Palestinian cause, but not necessarily Hamas. Hamas has used “cutouts” is the past to obfuscate their connection to an operation for the purpose of recruiting an individual, but this appears to be a rare occurrence. Other forms of inducement are possible, though open source reporting on such instances is lacking.
Israel, on the other hand, has more options available for the collection of intelligence in general, and the recruitment of human assets in particular. Inducements for recruitment from any of the categories mentioned in the MICE acronym (money, ideology, compromise, and ego) are all used to great effect, but access to HUMINT assets, especially in a crowded environment such as Gaza, is vital. To accomplish the goal of recruiting people to provide intelligence to a hostile state takes a bit of finesse. In the case of Gaza we don’t see many people engaging in espionage on behalf of Israel for ideological reasons, rather Israel uses a combination of money and compromise as leverage to recruit people to provide intelligence. The article from the AP demonstrates this quite profoundly. The woman interviewed for the article was convicted by Hamas for passing information to Israel, however it was her husband that began their shared career in espionage. Hamas would execute the husband, while the interviewee was eventually released from prison to care for her children. This case in particular was born of financial need. The husband in this case was granted a work permit to pursue employment is Israel proper after it had previously been revoked for vehicle theft, his wife on the other hand, was recruited when the couple needed to take a child into Israel for medical care. What’s interesting about this case is the financial need wasn’t born of greed or careless monetary expenditures such as many espionage cases in the West, but something far more pedestrian given the climate in Gaza.
The AP article does call out one unique case of ideological motivation for betraying Hamas. Mosab Yousef, son of Hamas co-founder Hassan Yousef, passed intelligence to the Israelis for ten years before relocating to the U.S. Given the moniker of “Green Prince,” the younger Yousef began working for his father’s enemies after reportedly becoming disillusioned with Hamas’ activities. Yousef worked for the Israeli security service Shin Bet and his handler publically expressed the importance of the intelligence Yousef provided. Recruiting people from such a high level placement in an organization or nation-state is fraught with risk, but can yield a high reward as demonstrated by the Yousef case. For now the status quo in intelligence collection methodology and operations will remain for both Hamas and Israel, though attempts to recruit high level sources will continue when a opportunity is presented. Granted, a cease-fire has been signed between the two sides bringing the recent bout of violence to a close, however the close proximity of the two sides and the inherent political uncertainty of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will not relieve from either side the demand for timely intelligence. As a result the espionage war in Gaza will continue apace.
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