The Hamas files: how terrorists captured Western NGOs in Gaza

Perhaps the most disturbing element exposed in the leaked papers is the mandatory “guarantor” system. The documents describe how each foreign NGO must appoint a Gazan “liaison”, approved by Hamas, typically in a senior role. This may sound like routine local cooperation. In practice, it smacks of back door infiltration and oversight.

According to the NGO Monitor report which first exposed the Hamas documents, 55 guarantors worked across 48 NGOs. Each has a detailed personal file, covering political loyalties, religious practice, sexual activity, alleged transgressions, and whether they could be “pressured or exploited”.

Some guarantors were openly described as Hamas affiliates and supporters. Others were listed with senior ranks within Hamas networks. One NGO administrative head is documented as pledged to Hamas, another as employed within Hamas-linked institutions. One was registered as “affiliated” to the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine), a terror group designated by the US, EU and Canada. The line between “aid worker” and “terror asset” seems not just blurred but effectively erased.

While Western NGOs declare that they “do not engage with Hamas”, Hamas documents list assets in NGO positions of power with full access to emails, internal discussions and more, with regular reports back to their masters in the regime.

The Hamas documents expose a culture of silence, an unwritten code. There are questions that are simply not to be asked, realities that cannot be acknowledged, and consequences never spoken aloud.

Safeguarding civilians becomes secondary to safeguarding the “humanitarian space” and the “important work” NGOs do, as long as it doesn’t interfere with Hamas activity. Well, whatever it takes.

Since Oslo, Palestinians have received over $40 billion in foreign aid. Add the vast operations of UN agencies and NGOs in the territories, and Palestinians are probably the most financially subsidised population on earth. And yet, all that money has not reduced dependency but entrenched it. NGO budgets swelled. Staff numbers grew. Advocacy campaigns expanded. Donor reports thickened.

Had Gaza become more stable, more self-sustaining, less combustible, perish the thought, there would have been fewer positions to justify, and fewer funds available. But aid in Gaza isn’t solving the crisis. It is recycling and exploiting it. In Gaza, prolonging the suffering and international outrage are the business model. Hamas understands this all too well. UNRWA slotted into the machinery seamlessly. An expanding network of international NGOs learned to play ball.

UNRWA remains a particularly telling example of these perverse incentives. The only UN agency dedicated to a single refugee population, UNRWA automatically passes refugee status down in perpetuity, including to millions of Palestinians who hold another citizenship or live in Gaza and the West Bank – the very territories of the supposed Palestinian state from which they are deemed refugees.

The agency tasked with the welfare of Palestinian refugees has no interest in solving the crisis. Its very existence relies on keeping Palestinians dependent and denying them agency. That’s how you turn a temporary solution into a permanent institution, and keep a billion-dollar agency going.

In Lebanon, Fatah Sharif Abu Al-Amin, the Head of Hamas in Lebanon, served simultaneously as head of the UNRWA teachers’ union. In Gaza, Suhail al-Hindi ran a UNRWA school and chaired the UNRWA staff union while holding a senior role in the Hamas leadership.

These were not fringe activists hovering at the edges of “civil society”. They were senior Hamas figures operating from inside the agency responsible for Palestinian classrooms, payrolls and legitimacy.

It’s ordinary Gazans who pay the price. Brutalised, exploited and sacrificed by Hamas. Indoctrinated, conscripted, and surveilled, the people of Gaza are denied any chance of a better future, not because the world abandoned them, but because Hamas has zero interest in the welfare of its people, and the humanitarian sector built an entire business model around the perpetuation of Palestinian victimhood and suffering.

Israel too, pays a hefty price. Not just in more wars and conflict, but in relentless demonisation and delegitimisation from these supposed respected, yet wholly compromised and corrupted “humanitarians”.

What has happened and is still happening in Gaza destroys the credibility of the humanitarian aid sector. Be it through intimidation, ideological alignment, convenience or financial dependency, “respected” humanitarian organisations have crossed a red line. The result is a system where even genuine humanitarian work is tainted by association. There is simply no way of knowing where the influence stops and the intimidation begins.

If humanitarian values still carry weight, the people of Gaza deserve agencies that work for them, their interests and their future, not for their rulers, not for their oppressors, not for terrorist narratives and not for donors’ politics.

And if accountability means anything, the relationship between Hamas and the aid industry must be audited, exposed and prosecuted where necessary.

Gary Cohen is a writer and filmmaker who was born in Scotland and now lives in Israel. substack.com/@garycohen22