Hamas Dismayed After Assassination Revealed To Be Work Of Teenage Palestinian Hacker

“This of course does not mean all Zionist assassinations are the work of this one hacker,” cautioned a Hamas official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Gaza City, March 26 – The militant Islamist movement that governs the Gaza Strip went silent today on the Friday assassination of a senior commander following a full-throated two days of blaming Israel, after it came to light that the killing was the work of an eighteen-year-old Palestinian-American hacker.

Mazan Fuqha, a high-ranking militant who had previously been imprisoned in Israel and was released as part of the Gilad Shalit deal, was shot to death on Friday in Gaza by an unknown assailant. Before, during, and after his funeral yesterday, Hamas leaders insisted “the Zionist enemy” was behind the assassination, telling the thousands of attendees that the movement would not remain silent in the face of this “aggression.” However, this morning (Sunday) investigators discovered that a disgruntled Gaza teenager was instead to blame.

The teen, whose identity has been withheld for his and his family’s safety – in a departure from typical Palestinian practice – allegedly engineered the assassination after facing rejection by Izzedin al-Kassam, Hamas’s military wing. Determined to show both his prowess and anger, the youth exploited his technological skills to set up the killing of Fuqha. Investigators disclosed they were able to track him down because of a slip-up in covering his tracks, while officials in the Gaza Strip ceased public discussion of the episode.

“This of course does not mean all Zionist assassinations are the work of this one hacker,” cautioned a Hamas official who spoke on condition of anonymity. “It is not some hacker who stands behind the blockade of this territory, or who occupies our land from the River to the Sea. But it does place obstacles before our efforts to show the world our untainted moral superiority, as indicted by our higher death toll.”

Prior to the discovery of the youth’s activities, experts noted that while Israel was of course the prime suspect, other entities might have stood to gain – or to wreak vengeance – through Fuqha’s death. While the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah echoed the Hamas party line accusing Israel, analysts pointed to rival Salafist militias in the Gaza Strip itself bristling under Hamas’s control, while others posited that the Hamas leadership itself may have ordered the assassination of a loose cannon who refused to submit to the authority of his higher-ups in the organization. Following the disclosure of the teen’s arrest this morning, several of the experts noted that the charges against the youth could still be a cover-up, with any of the alleged perpetrators still ultimately responsible.

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