Hamas admits a naval officer spied for Israel

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – A military spokesman for Palestinian terrorist organization, Hamas, has confirmed that one of its commanders had been a spy for Israel and had now defected to the Jewish state, Media Line reported Thursday. Hamas controls the Gaza Strip and is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.

News of the defection was broken by the Saudi news channel Al Arabiya on Saturday and was at first dismissed as “fake news” by Hamas. According to Al Arabiya, the officer had been part of a 72-hour operation conducted by Israel’s Mossad spy agency, and had defected with a laptop and surveillance equipment.

In an interview with Media Line, Hamas military spokesman Abu Mohammed said the spy had been a junior officer in the organization’s naval unit. Mohammed added that there are others in Hamas who are also accused of supplying intelligence to Israel.

Alaa Al-Rimawi, an expert on Hamas politics based in Ramallah in the West Bank, explained to Media Line that Israel and Hamas continually seek to break through each other’s defenses: “Hamas penetrated the mobile devices of Israeli soldiers. On the other hand, the occupation [Israel] managed to penetrate Hamas, and this is not a secret,” Rimawi said.

Commenting on the defection, Gonen Ben-Yitzhak, a former operative for Israel’s Shin Bet security service, told Media Line it was not a good thing for a spy to be exposed: “The intelligence person is the handler,” Ben-Yitzhak explained, “and [as a former intelligence person] I want my source to remain in his position without being exposed or having to defect, because you lose a source and you never know whether… you will be able to recruit someone as good.”

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