In recent weeks, Hamas has managed to reorganize its personnel and began paying partial salaries to civil service workers on its behalf in the areas of Gaza which the IDF has withdrawn from. This was reported by the AP news agency, which cited reports from four eyewitnesses who were present at the scene.
According to eyewitness reports, the activity of Hamas members centered around government offices and the Shifa Hospital. Four residents of Gaza City told the AP that in recent days, police officers in uniform and civilian clothes have been deployed near the police headquarters and other government offices, as well as at Shifa Hospital.
Israeli strikes renewed?
The residents said they saw the return of civil servants, but noted that they witnessed IDF airstrikes in the area of the makeshift offices. "In recent days, Israeli forces renewed the attacks in the western and northwestern parts of Gaza City, including in the areas where salaries were distributed," the sources claimed.
"The return of the police marks an attempt to restore order in the devastated city after the Israeli forces withdrew from northern Gaza last month," a Hamas official told AP. He noted that the group's leaders gave instructions to restore order in the parts of the north where the Israeli forces had retreated, including by helping to prevent the looting of shops and houses abandoned by residents who responded to repeated Israeli evacuation orders on their way to southern Gaza.
Said Abdel Bar, a resident of Gaza City, told the AP that his cousin received funds from a makeshift Hamas office set up to distribute $200 payments to government employees, including police and municipal workers. Ahmed Abu Hadros, another resident of Gaza City, said that Israeli warplanes attacked the area where the makeshift office is located several times earlier this week, including on Saturday.
Israel maintaining pressure
In spite of reports of Hamas's attempts to regroup, on Sunday, Reuters reported that some Gazans maintained the Israeli pressure throughout the enclave continued to persist.
"There is no safe place in Gaza, from the wire fence to the wire fence (borders from north to south), there is no safe place," one Gazan, Mohammed Kaloub told Reuters.
"Gaza City is being wiped out," another Gaza resident told Reuters. "The (Israeli) pull-out was a ruse."
Reuters added that IDF troops have been completing operations in areas where Israeli forces had conducted partial pullouts in what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had dubbed "mopping-up operations."
Reuters also cited the prime minister as saying that 17 of Hamas's 24 combat battalions had been destroyed. The remaining, the Israeli head of state added, were predominately located in southern Gaza, such as the Gaza Egyptian border city of Rafah.