Senior members of Hamas are claiming that following the organization's defeat of the Fatah movement in the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections, the United Arab Emirates began shutting down Hamas' sources of funding in the UAE, the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar reported Tuesday.
Hamas officials told the paper that the funds were cut off as a result of intelligence sent from Jerusalem to Abu Dhabi, and claimed that some high-ranking members of Hamas who were arrested in the UAE were subjected to torture.
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Al-Akhbar reported that the most important Hamas operated arrested and tortured by Emirati officials was Musa Abu Marzouk, who was reportedly on the "verge of death" in an Emirati prison before he was released as a result of other Arab countries' intervention.
Later, the Hamas sources told Al-Akhbar, the Emirati intelligence apparatus began operating in the Gaza Strip in an attempt to recruit agents. One of the recruiters said that Abu Dhabi had wanted information about Israeli soldiers Hamas was holding captive in Gaza, the location of Hamas' attack tunnels, sources of Hamas' funding, key players in Hamas' fundraising network, and its plans for rocket attacks.
The Hamas officials accused former top Fatah official Mohammad Dahlan of "working to collect intelligence for the Emiratis and strengthen [their] ties with Israel."
According to the report, the Emiratis continued their intelligence work during Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014. The Hamas officials told the paper that they had exposed an Emirati spy cell that was operating in the Gaza Strip under the guise of a field hospital belonging to the Red Crescent of the UAE. The Hamas officials claimed that they discovered that all the members of that delegation were Emirati spies who had been charged with collecting information about the organization's military wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, as well as the location of the launchers it used to fire rockets at Israel.
The Hamas officials said that the cell was exposed after Palestinians who arrived at the field hospital did not receive any treatment or other medical assistance. The agents were exposed and their eventual release was brokered by unnamed Arab countries.
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