AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said his main goal in the war in Gaza was to eliminate Hamas, the group that launched a deadly attack 16 months ago. Israel included Gaza's police force as a target. But as NPR correspondent Aya Batrawy in Dubai and producer Anas Baba in Gaza report, following a ceasefire, Gaza's police are now back on the streets.
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AYA BATRAWY, BYLINE: This is the sound of life in Gaza these days, without the terrifying boom of deadly Israeli airstrikes. Instead, the mundane sound of traffic police fills the streets.
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BATRAWY: Here's Anas Baba, describing the scene.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Non-English language spoken).
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ANAS BABA, BYLINE: This is the whistle of the traffic police in Khan Younis city after the deployment for the first time ever in the streets of Khan Younis while they are wearing their official uniform. You can see that the police here is totally ready. They are in every roundabout, in every junction.
BATRAWY: This humdrum scene in most corners of the world is anything but in Gaza. That's because police were targeted by Israel in the war. The police say more than 1,400 officers were killed out of a force of around 9,000 before the war. What their presence on the streets now means depends on who you ask.
AHMED AL-ATTAR: (Non-English language spoken).
BATRAWY: Ahmed al-Attar was an accountant in Gaza, but he became an armed merchant during the war, selling contraband cigarettes. He says he was forced to carry a gun and hand grenades to protect himself from armed gangs robbing people and stealing food aid off U.N. trucks. But now...
AL-ATTAR: (Non-English language spoken).
BATRAWY: He says he doesn't even carry a small blade on him, just cash. That's because police are back on the streets in full uniform.
AL-ATTAR: (Non-English language spoken).
BATRAWY: Like other people in Gaza NPR spoke to for this story, al-Attar praises the local police force and says he supports their ongoing crackdown on looters. Israel says it was the police that were stealing aid, in order to benefit Hamas, and acknowledges targeting them across Gaza. Their rank or whether they had direct ties with Hamas seemed to make little difference.
HAITHAM HAMDAN: (Non-English language spoken).
BATRAWY: Lieutenant Colonel Haitham Hamdan is the deputy police chief for Bureij in central Gaza. He says his home was targeted by Israeli airstrikes, killing his father, brother and aunt. He says around a hundred police officers were killed in Israeli attacks in just Bureij alone, but he says neither he nor the police force follow Hamas or any Palestinian faction.
HAMDAN: (Non-English language spoken).
BATRAWY: Hamdan says the Palestinian police come from all corners of society.
HAMDAN: (Non-English language spoken).
BATRAWY: Neomi Neumann, a visiting fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, says Israel sees the police force in Gaza as an arm of Hamas that helps it stay in power. She was the head of the research unit at the Israeli intelligence agency Shin Bet. I asked her what she makes of Gaza's police on the streets again.
NEOMI NEUMANN: It say only one thing - that Hamas still have a foothold in Gaza Strip.
BATRAWY: Hamas militants have also appeared on the streets since the ceasefire. Here's Neumann again.
NEUMANN: We need to show the people that Hamas is not the solution, and this didn't happen.
BATRAWY: She says Israel destroyed much of the group's fighting capabilities and killed its senior leadership but not its influence in Gaza.
MOHAMMED ABDEL NASSER AL-ZARQA: (Non-English language spoken).
BATRAWY: The spokesman for Gaza's police, Colonel Mohammed Abdel Nasser al-Zarqa, says they're a civil institution that has nothing to do with Hamas' militant wing. There's also a dividing line between their work and that of another branch of Gaza's interior ministry, the feared internal security force known as al-Amn al-Dakhili, that goes after Hamas critics and people collaborating with Israel. Al-Zarqa says his officers worked throughout the war in plain clothes, helping families reunite with lost kids, distributing aid in schools where people sheltered and resolving disputes.
Independent political analyst Reham Owda, from Gaza, says policemen who were targeted by Israel are needed now, no matter who governs the territory.
REHAM OWDA: Because you can't leave the Strip empty without any security.
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BATRAWY: And while there are people in Gaza who don't support Hamas, the return of the police appears to have broad public support.
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BATRAWY: Aya Batrawy, NPR News, Dubai, with Anas Baba in Gaza. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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