A review of reports on a series of arrests in the Gaza Strip shows that the Saudi Al-Arabiya network relied on a Palestinian opposition website hostile to the terrorist organization • Commentary

• Commando fighters in Hamas

In recent days, we have been flooded with reports from the Saudi Al-Arabiya network. Hamas' announcement a week and a half ago that a squad of Israeli-led aides had been arrested in the Gaza Strip did not fall on deaf ears in Dubai, the network's headquarters. And the Saudis, who were waiting for an opportunity to take revenge on Hamas, made good use of it. 

The city of Dubai in the UAE is the seat of the network that belongs to the media monster MBC. Since 2018, the Saudi corporation has controlled 60% of the shares. The remaining 40% is still controlled by Saudi businessman Walid bin Ibrahim al-Ibrahim. Quite coincidentally, about a year before the deal, Walid was one of the businessmen arrested on the orders of Regent Muhammad bin Salman. Before the parties reached an understanding, Walid was released. So it can be said that even 40% of the company's shares that are not controlled by Riyadh are subject to its control.

The kingdom's hold on the net is not limited to stocks. For example, between 2014 and 2015, Adel al-Turifi served as CEO of the news channel. His next position was, well, Minister of Culture and Information in the Saudi government. 

Some order in the reports. On the night of July 3, a statement was issued by the Hamas Interior Ministry. The statement claimed that after an ongoing investigation, several assistants who had been targeted by Israel and confiscated money and technical equipment were exposed. Less than a week later, the Lebanese Hezbollah-affiliated Al-Akhbar newspaper reported that these were ISIS operatives. It has already been alleged that the head of the cell admitted in his investigations that there is contact with Israel. Both reports speak of an attempt to carry out attacks against Hamas targets. The Ministry of the Interior in Gaza and al-Akhbar did not publish any photos, but it must be assumed that if these suspects were arrested, they were at most Salafi activists accused of having ties with Israel in order to trample on their image. 

This past weekend ostensibly heralded a turnaround in the story. The Amad news agency more or less repeated the reports of the Interior Ministry and the Lebanese Al-Akhbar. 

But Amad was not satisfied with that. Their report said that the series of investigations conducted by the military wing of Hamas among its members, especially in East Gaza, was conducted after the connection of a cooperating district commander - a senior member of the naval commando unit named Izz a-Din al-Hajj Ali Bader, who left by boat to Israel. According to anonymous sources, who allegedly spoke to Amad, the senior escaped with a laptop carrying secret information about the naval commando, cash and technical equipment. Following this, the report said, the same squad of aides led by a commander in the Shaja'iya neighborhood, named Muhammad Abu Ajawa, was arrested. It was further alleged that the same commander was responsible for the electronic array in the area, including security cameras and internal communication networks. And according to the report, he has admitted contact with Israel since 2009. 

Since the beginning of this week, this report in the news agency has been repeated in similar versions on the Al-Arabiya network and even in the Saudi newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat. Both are media outlets controlled by the Saudi government. But who is the Amad agency? The Arabic-language website states that the founders' dream was to publish a newspaper in Gaza City. Circumstances, they say, did not allow this and so it was decided to establish a news portal that is "more than a website and less than a newspaper". The founder of the site in 2007 (the year of the Hamas coup) is none other than Hassan Asfur, a native of Khan Yunis who runs an opposition site for the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. 

The bird from Khan Yunis

Aspur as its name implies - a bird - has migrated for years in Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and Tunisia. This was partly due to his membership in communist parties. In Lebanon he began working as a journalist until he left for Syria following the war with Israel. He later worked under Mahmoud Abbas at the PLO headquarters in Tunis, and later played a key role in the Oslo process. He previously served as secretary general of the Palestinian Negotiating Committee of the 1993 Madrid delegation.

Until 2006, Asfur served as Khan Yunis' representative in the Palestinian parliament, and today he is considered a critical spokesman for the Palestinian Authority and especially for Abu Mazen. During an extensive series of interviews with the Al-Arabiya network, the same Saudi media outlet from Dubai, Asfur claimed that he resigned due in part to Abu Mazen's inheritance of Arafat in 2005. The veteran journalist is not only considered a sharp critic of the PA chairman, he also despises Hamas, whose victory in the Palestinian elections in 2006 was described as a conspiracy. 

So back to our stories again. This past weekend, Amed published a report according to which a commander of Hamas' naval commando, no less, defected to Israel. Earlier this week, a remarkably similar article appeared on the Al-Arabiya network. How similar is it? The wording of the article reveals that al-Arabiya's main source "He is no other than the" Amad "website.  

The reports became sources

The report states that secret documents were smuggled by a Hamas commander by sea using an Israeli vessel, and that the identity of the fugitive has not been confirmed so far, "but Palestinian sources say he was the head of a naval commando unit in the a-Zadin al-Qassem Brigades." That is, not sources who gave the information to Al-Arabiya, otherwise this would have been highlighted. The same news item repeated information that following the arrest, Hamas arrested several suspects on charges of conspiracy with Israel, including a commander in the Shaja'iya neighborhood and his brother. 

The network also notes that media reports in the Gaza Strip said that Muhammad Abu Ajawa, who is under arrest by the internal security apparatus, is accused of having ties with Israel. And just like a report in Amad, it was said that he was a senior figure in Hamas' electronic system in Shaja'iya, which has maintained ties with Israel since 2009. Al-Arabiya attributes all this information to articles in the Gaza media. Although "Amad" does not operate from the Gaza Strip for understandable reasons. The site's Facebook page shows, for example, that five of its managers work in Egypt, one manager works in "Palestine" and another manager works from a secret location.

By the way, the Hamas Interior Ministry denied the reports. And the terrorist organization claimed yesterday that Israel is the one that feeds the Al-Arabiya network with false information. 

Why did the Al-Arabiya network not mention the source of the news? There can be many reasons for this. From laziness, through fear of undermining the already shaky credibility of the report to direct coordination with Asfur. His phone number, however, is in the system. But it is worth dwelling on another statistic. According to the Lebanese Recife 22 website, the Amad agency is considered a media outlet close to the United Arab Emirates, where "Al-Arabiya" is located. The Lebanese website, which identifies as independent, also learned that Saudi Twitter accounts identified with Regent Muhammad bin Salman echoed the report on the Hamas defector.

So why did the Saudis thunder? Arab commentators have estimated that it all started with a hug from Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the political bureau of the terrorist organization, to the Houthi militia in Yemen, which is at war with Saudi Arabia. This is due to what Haniyeh described as support for the Palestinian issue. Commentators who are not affiliated with Hamas have been able to tell that this is not the first time that the terrorist organization has discovered an attempted intrusion by Israel. After all, targeted assassinations require sources close to the target. And maybe someone in the UAE, just happy to get their hands on a good story.