Hamas attempted to set up a direct line with the Al Jazeera offices in Doha, according to the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center.
Documents uncovered in Gaza have revealed that Hamas has been issuing instructions to the Qatari state-run media outlet Al Jazeera, according to the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center.
From the documents, the research center found that Hamas’s information officers directed coordinated terminology and stories with Al Jazeera to formulate coverage that would not “harm the image of the resistance.”
One of the documents recovered in 2022 stated that Al Jazeera should avoid using terms such as “massacre” to describe a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket strike in Jabalya as Hamas acknowledged the attacks were not he result of attacks by “the occupation.”
The document also confirmed the request by Hamas was “positively responded to by the network’s newsroom management.”
Another document revealed that Hamas attempted to establish a secure communication line with Al Jazeera, allowing direct coordination between the media giant’s offices in Doha and the terror group.
This line was allegedly intended to push for coverage in emergency situations, and for the military wing to send real-time instructions on what to broadcast and what to leave embargoed.
According to the center, this is rare proof of the existence of systemic coordination between a terrorist organization and an international news network.
The language used in Al Jazeera’s coverage of the war has also mirrored Hamas’s own decriptions, with the network describing Hamas as mujahideen or muqawimin (jihad fighters or resistance fighters), and after their deaths they are called shaheeds (martyrs who died for the sake of Allah).
Meanwhile, the IDF is described as the “occupation army” and IDF soldiers as “occupation soldiers.” Throughout their coverage on the hostage crisis, the network also repeatedly referred to the hostages as prisoners.
As part of the connection between Hamas and Al Jazeera, the reporters were also granted unprecedented access to much of the terror group’s underground network of tunnels.
Al Jazeera reporter Wa’el al-Dahdouh showed Hamas tunnels and included interviews with military wing operatives who confirmed, in a documentary aired in January 2024, that building a tunnel took years.
In another report on Hamas’s tunnels, Al Jazeera was allowed to record operatives rigging a tunnel in a trap set for the IDF, the research center noted.
The April 2024 report claimed that the ambush set for the IDF had been a success and Al Jazeera broadcasted weapons and IDF military equipment allegedly taken from the field by Hamas operatives.
Beyond directly organizing Al Jazeera’s coverage, many of the outlet’s journalists working in the Palestinian organization were doubling as operatives in Hamas military wing and some had even participated in the October 7 invasion into southern Israel in 2023.
The issue of journalists doubling as terrorists has been long recorded by the IDF. Among those the Israeli military has named and targeted was Anas al-Sharif.
Al-Sharif, the network reporter in Gaza who was killed in an IDF attack on August 10, 2025, was named in looted documents as a member of Hamas’ military wing, associated with the East Jabalia Battalion in the Northern Gaza Brigade.
According to the lists, al-Sharif served as a fighter and squad leader in the Talul-Melag firing company, as a fighter in the Nukhaba Company, and as the head of the battalion’s information department.
The documents also named Ismail Abu Ammar, an Al Jazeera correspondent from Khan Yunis who was injured in February 2024, as a member of Hamas’s military wing and a commander in the terror group’s east Khan Yunis Batallion. He was one of the first to cover the October 7 attacks in real time and the center said it presumed he received early information to document the attack in real time.
Another reporter for Al Jazeera named in the documents was Talal Mahmoud Abdel Rahman Al-Arouki, who was seriously injured while covering an Israeli attack on Nussirat on November 28, 2024. In the documents, his name appeared on a list of operatives from 2023, in which he was identified as a group commander with the rank of captain in the Jerusalem Brigade, as well as on another list of wounded belonging to Hamas’ military wing.
Gazan journalist Hussam Shabat, who collaborated with Al Jazeera and was killed in a targeted strike in March 2025, was listed in the documents as a members of the anti-tank company of Hamas’s Beit Hanoun battalion and identified as a snuper operative. In another document, his name appeared among terrorists missing from the group battalion’s military training.
Abdullah al-Jamal, a reporter and editors for Palestine Now who collaborated with Al Jazeera, was killed with his family during Operation Arnon where three hostages were rescued from his home in Nussirat in June 2024.
Al Jazeera has also been responsible for projecting an image that Hamas is popular among the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza and has been seen cutting off Palestinians mid-interview when they say something that is contrary to that narrative, the center highlighted.
On November 5, 2023, during a live Al Jazeera broadcast from al-Aqsa Hospital, an Al Jazeera reporter cut off an interview with a wounded Palestinian man when the interviewee began to criticize Hamas for its operatives hiding among civilians.
In December that same year, an Al Jazeera reporter was filmed pushing a Palestinian interviewee aside when he said “Allah will call Qatar and turkey to account” when he was asked to descrive the “massacre” committed by Israel.
