Even the most optimistic advocates of change in Gaza’s system of governance did not expect the list for the proposed Gaza Administration Committee to include figures long described as among Hamas’s fiercest opponents.
Many Palestinians, across factional and popular lines, were surprised by the emergence of Sami Nasman, one of the most prominent officers in the Palestinian General Intelligence Service since its establishment, as the figure selected to oversee the security file in Gaza.
Nasman has a long record of what has been described as hostility toward, and pursuit by, Hamas, which appeared to have little room to reject the names chosen to join the committee.
Who is Sami Nasman?
Sami Nasman was born in 1967 in the Beach refugee camp west of Gaza City and spent most of his life in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in the city’s north.
During his secondary and university studies, he joined the Fatah Youth Movement and was active in the first Palestinian uprising that erupted in 1987.
He also took part in armed activities that made him a target for Israeli forces after he formed a cell that targeted those accused of collaborating with Israel’s Shin Bet security agency. That forced him, along with several Fatah activists, to flee the Gaza Strip in 1988.
Nasman experienced a brief period of what was described as limited hostility with Hamas activists during the group’s early formation in 1987, a phase that quickly faded after his departure from Gaza.
While in exile, Nasman moved between Cairo, Tunis, and other capitals, where he met the late Palestinian president Yasser Arafat, according to sources close to him cited by Asharq Al-Awsat.
Return to Gaza, return to hostility
In 1994, as the Palestinian Authority began deploying in Gaza and parts of the West Bank under the 1993 Oslo Accords, Nasman returned to the enclave with others and later settled again in Sheikh Radwan.
He became a senior officer in the Palestinian General Intelligence Service and was considered the right hand of Amin al-Hindi, the agency’s first chief.
Nasman wielded significant influence within the intelligence service, across the broader Palestinian security apparatus, and within Fatah’s institutional circles. He was often described as a “hard man to reckon with,” the sources said.
They added that he held several key posts, including serving as the intelligence chief’s private office chief, leading the counterintelligence department, overseeing investigations into foreigners permitted to enter Gaza, and handling other sensitive assignments.
After his return, and amid Palestinian security activity targeting Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad members, Nasman was accused of leading arrest campaigns against them between 1996 and 2000.
In February 1996, Islamic Jihad accused him of responsibility for the killing of two of its senior field operatives who had carried out an attack in Beit Lid inside Israel that killed more than 20 Israelis.
The two men were surrounded in a house in the Beach camp, just tens of meters from the intelligence service’s Mushtal compound and were killed during an attempted arrest after refusing to surrender.
Sources close to Nasman denied his involvement, saying another officer was responsible. That account could not be independently confirmed, although some testimonies at the time placed him at the scene.
The second intifada
Hostility between Nasman and Hamas deepened with the outbreak of the second Palestinian uprising in late 2000 and the escape of Hamas and Islamic Jihad members from Palestinian Authority prisons.
Tensions escalated further after Hamas won the 2006 legislative elections, a year that also saw an assassination attempt on the intelligence service’s second chief, Ahmed Shaniora, known as Tariq Abu Rajab.
That was followed by an attempt on the life of Maj. Gen. Baha Balousha, which killed his wife and children.
The confrontation between Nasman, his security apparatus, and Hamas reached its peak after Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2006, forcing him, like dozens of other officers, to flee for fear of his life amid accusations that he had overseen the arrest and pursuit of Hamas members.
Nasman exited Gaza via Israeli land crossings to Ramallah, where he later became responsible for the Gaza file within the intelligence service and then an adviser to the agency’s chief for the southern governorates.
Accusations and convictions in absentia
The hostility did not end with his departure. In 2015, Hamas accused Nasman of running networks inside Gaza from Ramallah to stir unrest and carry out assassination attempts against its leaders and officials.
In August 2015, Hamas gave him 10 days to turn himself in.
In March 2016, it sentenced him in absentia to 15 years in prison, along with others who received varying terms, after publishing confessions by Palestinian security operatives who said Nasman had recruited them to carry out the alleged plots.
Sources close to Nasman dismissed the accusations as unfounded, describing them as part of the political infighting that accompanied the Palestinian split.
During the most recent war in Gaza, Hamas again accused him of overseeing an intelligence network that monitored the entry of international and Arab aid convoys into the enclave for espionage purposes, an allegation neither Fatah nor the Palestinian Authority commented on.
In recent months, Nasman joined the ranks of officers who were “forcibly retired and marginalized,” according to sources close to him. He subsequently developed new ties with associates working with the camp of exiled Fatah leader Mohammed Dahlan, meeting them frequently in Cairo.
Other sources said he was nominated by the Dahlan-aligned camp to lead the public security file within the new committee.
Hamas’s position
Nasman’s appointment to the security portfolio has sparked widespread debate in Palestinian circles, raising questions about Hamas’s stance, particularly among its grassroots and organizational ranks, given the well-known hostility toward him.
Officially, Hamas welcomed the formation of the technocratic committee in a joint statement with other Palestinian factions, without voicing objections.
However, Hamas sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that the movement was “compelled at this critical stage to set aside differences, as it has done with other Palestinian Authority and Fatah figures, for the sake of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”
Another senior Hamas source said the movement “has little room to maneuver, as it seeks to secure a ceasefire agreement that implements its terms and moves Palestinians into a new political and national phase.”
