Report: Hamas plans to secretly dominate technocratic Gaza government

Control of civil servants and information flow is key to Hamas’ strategy.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Hamas has drawn up a secret, detailed plan to maintain control over Gaza’s future technocratic administration, Kan News reported Monday.

Under the American-backed plan for Gaza, Hamas is barred from participating in the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), a temporary governing body composed of 15 ostensibly apolitical Palestinian technocrats—14 men and one woman—most of whom previously held senior roles in the Palestinian Authority.

Each NCAG member is slated to oversee a portfolio such as agriculture, finance, security, education or communications. Like any government, however, the ministers will rely heavily on existing civil servants to implement policy.

According to Kan, Hamas leadership recently circulated a confidential directive to its civilian operatives in anticipation of the launch of the NCAG.

It instructs them how to ensure that the technocrats serve merely as figureheads — even without realizing it — while real authority remains firmly in Hamas’ hands.

The document orders Hamas-affiliated civil servants to continue working quietly in their offices “as if nothing has changed” and to avoid public criticism of the new administration, particularly on social media, so as not to expose tensions between the technocrats and the entrenched Hamas bureaucracy.

However, “no personal contact should be made or information or news should be passed on to them except through the relevant authority,” the directive states — a reference understood to mean Hamas itself.

By monopolizing the flow of information, Hamas would retain a decisive lever of control, enabling it to sabotage initiatives meant to improve daily life for Gazans and ensure their failure rather than success.

The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs has estimated that Gaza’s civil administration relies on roughly 40,000 officials who are paid by, and affiliated with, Hamas.

In addition, Hamas continues to exercise open security control over nearly all areas of the Strip not held by Israel, which covers about 47% of Gaza’s territory and roughly 98% of its population.

Israeli officials have repeatedly warned that without Hamas’ complete disarmament, the terror group will remain the true power in Gaza regardless of any new administrative framework.

Jerusalem has therefore insisted that reconstruction cannot move forward until this occurs — a position publicly endorsed by the Trump administration.

But the NCAG itself has no mandate to demilitarize Gaza, and the proposed International Stabilization Force tasked with overseeing that process has yet to be formed amid reluctance by foreign governments to endanger their troops in potential clashes with Hamas.

Such clashes may be unavoidable, since Hamas has repeatedly declared it will not surrender its weapons to any authority short of a sovereign Palestinian state, which is not currently on the horizon.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to destroy Hamas’ military capabilities, saying the terror group can choose whether that outcome comes “the easy way or the hard way.”