Palestinian Civil Police Force (Hamas)
law enforcement agency
Since the takeover of the Gaza Strip by the Hamas militant group in 2007, the Palestinian Civil Police in the territory, also known as the Palestinian Police or the Gazan Police, has been under the control of a de facto Hamas-led administration rather than the de jure Palestinian Authority based in the West Bank.
History
Establishment of a Palestinian Civil Police Force
Following the 1993 Oslo Accords, which lead to the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, a Palestinian Civil Police Force assumed responsibility for policing in the Gaza Strip.
Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip
Hamas won a majority of seats in the 2006 Palestinian legislative election, and Ismail Haniyeh was appointed prime minister of the Palestinian Authority. A conflict between forces loyal to Hamas and forces loyal to Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement resulted in Hamas gaining control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007.
In 2007, the Hamas militant group took over the Gaza Strip and assumed control over its police force. On 16 June 2007, Haniyeh declared Said Fanuna (officially a Fatah general who, in reality, distanced himself from Abbas) as the new security chief in the Gaza Strip, stating him as a "higher police command" than the West Bank-based police chief Kamal el-Sheikh of the Fatah.
2023 Gaza War
Hamas and several other Palestinian militant groups carried out a series of coordinated armed attacks in southern Israel on 7 October 2023, leading to the start of the Gaza War.
During the Gaza war, Hamas members assigned in the civilian police force in the Gaza Strip were systemically targeted and killed by the Israeli military. The attacks impacted the ability for humanitarian aid to be delivered, as well as the rise of other armed gangs who would frequently raid humanitarian aid trucks in absence of Hamas forces.
Israel and Hamas accepted a Gaza peace plan in October 2025, which was endorsed by the United Nations through the adoption of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2803 on 17 November 2025.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Palestinian Civil Police Force (Hamas)” is law enforcement agency. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Palestinian, Civil and Police, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “law enforcement agency” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q137360063. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2007, 1993, 2006 and 2023.
Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Palestinian Civil Police Force (Hamas)”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Palestinian Civil Police Force (Hamas) primary sources, Palestinian Civil Police Force (Hamas) archive and Palestinian research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Palestinian Civil Police Force (Hamas)”?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Palestinian Civil Police Force (Hamas)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.