Al-Quds al-Arabi reports on the Gaza intelligence bonanza

Hamas sources told Al-Quds al-Arabi that the treasure-trove of intelligence documents that fell into their hands, with the takeover of the Gaza headquarters of Palestinian Preventive Security and General Intelligence, are in the custody of the Izzedin al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas. But Hamid al-Raqt, Hamas spokesman in Khan Yunis, said there is an agreement with the Hamas political leadership not to use these in any way that would denigrate any Palestinian official or Arab or foreign intelligence agency, so as not to worsen tensions with the outside world. However:

He stressed that it will be possible to disclose some of this to specific sectors of the Palestinian people in order to give them a clear picture of what was going on in the preventive security and the intelligence operations in Gaza... And in spite of his insistence that these documents would not be used to denigrate any Palestinian official or foreign agency, so as to avoid increasing tensions with the outside world, he did say that the documents in the control of Hamas show conclusively that the Palestinian security [organizations] were not subordinated to the [Palestinian] Authority in the way that they were subordinated to foreign Mukhabarat agencies. He refused to name the foreign agencies except to mention British intelligence.

The Al-Quds al-Arabi reporter then refers to the Debkafile article (scroll to June 17) for a description of the scope of the foreign connections, noting they referred to cooperation with US, British and Israeli intelligence. The reporter notes that the connection of that website to Israeli intelligence, and the fact that the article appeared 48 hours after Hamas had taken control of all of the Gaza Strip. And he conveys to his Arab readers the gist of the Debkafile cry of alarm over this intelligence "debacle", stressing its unprecedented scope, and the fact that in major turnovers like this in history, for instance at the end of WWII and the fall of Communism, at least there was some attempt by the custodians of the files to destroy some of them, while in this case it appears that no such attempt was made, and the whole archive is in the hands of Hamas, thus potentially in the hands of Iran and Syria too.

And apart from the Debka article, this Al-Quds reporter says,

...people are talking about the capture by Hamas of an advanced American setup for wiretapping and surveillance operating out of those two headquarters in Gaza, and it is possible that Hamas will be able to use this in the very near future. And they could transfer it to Syria or Iran who are prepared to buy it for a lot of money in order to understand what has gone on in the past and what is going on at the present time. And in addition to that, Hamas took possession of an advanced American-British intelligence-apparatus system that Palestinian intelligence was using, in addition to millions of documents...

And so on and so forth. I think the significance of this Al-Quds al-Arabi piece is that first of all it provides some confirmation from the Hamas side that there was in fact a very significant intelligence coup for Hamas; secondly that Hamas apparently intends to make very selective use of it (the Hamas person talked about using it to educate Palestinians about what was going on; the reference to possible marketing to Syria or Iran is apparently from the Debka side of the story); and finally that this involves not only documents but also sophisticated electronic surveillance equipment and systems.