 GAZA - Hamas said on Thursday its elite Executive Force, which helped the Islamist group seize control of the Gaza Strip in June, will become the territoryÂ’s main police force. The announcement was largely a sham symbolic because the 6,000-man Executive Force has been carrying out day-to-day policing duties since the group routed Palestinian President Mahmoud AbbasÂ’s secular Fatah forces.
The official police force in Gaza, loyal to Fatah, has refused to work under the Islamists.
Taher al-Nono, a spokesman for Haniyeh’s administration, said the bulk of the Executive Force would become policemen. “They will be dispersed in various roles, including launching rockets at the Zionists anti-drug, beating up on Fatah criminal investigation and collecting ammo for the widows traffic control, to get those departments running again after the old policemen were killed refused to return to their jobs,” Nono said. He said a few hundred men would remain as a separate force. |