Middle East Madness > "De Facto Authorities" - read 'Hamas', still doing what Hamas does in Gaza

 

Hamas Not Only Didn’t Dissolve Its Government,

It’s Stealing UN Supplies

Jul 17, 2026 1:00 pm By Daniel Greenfield8 Comments

And the UN is too afraid to tell the truth.

UNRWA Projekt – Dijabetes medu Izbjeglicama by Tugac888, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0

There’s a code phrase that it helps to know when monitoring the UN and various NGOs use when operating in Islamic terrorist areas.

“De Facto Authorities”.

Using the phrase “De Facto Authorities” allows the UN and NGOs to avoid directly stating that they have ties to the Taliban, Al Qaeda, Hamas, or the Houthis. And when things go wrong, it allows them to issue passive aggressive press releases like this one from the UN about Hamas once again stealing supplies. But of course the UN doesn’t mention Hamas, it uses the code phrase.

“I strongly condemn the recent obstruction of humanitarian operations in Gaza by the de facto authorities, which endangered humanitarian personnel, intimidated workers delivering lifesaving food assistance and disrupted life-saving humanitarian operations.

Yesterday, humanitarian workers were forced to halt food distributions after armed personnel affiliated with the de facto authorities forcibly entered the Abu Rashid food distribution point in Jabalia, North Gaza. The forces also entered a WFP warehouse and reportedly assaulted two truck drivers who were delivering humanitarian supplies.

These incidents are not isolated. They are completely unacceptable and reflect an increasingly dangerous pattern of intimidation, violence and obstruction, including smuggling attempts, targeting and abusing humanitarian operations. They are placing humanitarian workers at risk, disrupting the delivery of life-saving assistance, and further constraining the ability of humanitarian organizations to operate at a time when civilians across Gaza continue to face immense and pressing humanitarian conditions.

“De Facto Authorities” is an obscure and deliberately vague phrase that evades accountability. Most media won’t even report on it because it requires decoding. The New York Times in this case does.

“These incidents are not isolated. They are completely unacceptable and reflect an increasingly dangerous pattern of intimidation, violence and obstruction,” said Mr. Alakbarov. He did not name Hamas but referred to it as the “de facto authorities” in Gaza. Nor did he say what other incidents he was referring to.

Ismail Thawabteh, a spokesman for the Hamas-controlled government, said that Gaza police had raided the warehouse. But he said it was part of an anti-smuggling operation, adding that Mr. Alakbarov “should have expressed appreciation and gratitude to the government authorities” for preventing the misuse of aid to bring in illicit goods.

And if that doesn't cause you to break out and laugh out loud, you have no sense of humour at all.

 

Ismail Thawabteh is the same spokesman whom the media recently quoted as saying that Hamas would dissolve its ‘government’. Not only isn’t the government dissolved, but it’s continuing to loot UN supplies. And Thawabteh is crediting the Hamas ‘Gaza police’, the same entity that the UN and the media insisted should be protecting the supplies. None of this of course will stop the farce from continuing. At its peak, the UN was losing most of its supplies or refusing to deliver them, and blaming Israel.

But maybe if Hamas really misbehaves, it’ll be downgraded from “de facto authorities” to “relevant authorities”.

Nasir Andisha, Afghanistan’s permanent representative to the UN, says a draft resolution extending UNAMA’s mandate has replaced the term “de facto rulers” of Afghanistan for the Taliban with “relevant authorities” at the proposal of the US, UK and France.

The UN Security Council had previously used the term “de facto authorities” of Afghanistan when referring to the Taliban in its official texts.

He said reducing the Taliban’s status from “de facto authorities” to “relevant authorities” deprives the group of the gradual legal legitimacy it seeks to obtain.

Or, and hear me out here, we could go back to calling them Islamic terrorists and maintaining zero relations with them.

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