A Campaign Inciting Against Gaza’s Resistance on X: Who Is Pulling the Strings?

After two years of the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip, a wide network of fake accounts targeting the Palestinian resistance has come into view, after X revealed the real geographical locations of the users behind them.

Throughout the war, these accounts pushed narratives attacking the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, claiming the group was responsible for the suffering of Gaza’s residents, the loss of their homes, and widespread hunger. 

It later became clear that these allegations were coming from people with no connection to Gaza, and who did not live there at all.

The new feature launched by X in November 2025, which discloses users’ geographic locations, has sparked broad controversy, after it revealed major discrepancies between the actual whereabouts of many users and the identities they present on their profiles.

The feature has quickly become an effective tool for exposing coordinated online manipulation, the so-called electronic armies or “electronic flies,” among rival groups across various countries.

Exposing the Fraudsters

X’s decision to display more information about users, such as their join date, geographic location, and the number of times they have changed their account name, has sparked wide debate over the limits of transparency and its impact on digital discourse.

The Palestinian arena was no exception to the repercussions of this move, which the platform said was intended to promote clarity and credibility in the digital space. 

Once the update took effect, significant gaps began to emerge between the declared identities of certain accounts and the real locations of the people behind them.

During the two years of war on Gaza, accounts using names such as Ranim al-Ali, Lama el-Amor, Mais al-Kurd, Razan el-Tawil, Dima al-Hajj, and others gained prominence, playing a central role in leading a digital campaign targeting Hamas through similar narratives and a unified tone.

These accounts all claimed to be based in Gaza, and it was also noted that they were created in February 2024, reinforcing early suspicions that they were part of a coordinated online network operating from outside the Strip.

According to a special review by Al-Estiklal, these accounts were created and managed from Egypt, while consistently promoting the “humanitarian” efforts of the United Arab Emirates, in a pattern seemingly aligned with broader publicity campaigns.

A user operating under the name “Avichai Network” commented on X, saying, “From the start of the war they wouldn’t stop insisting they were in Gaza, spinning endless lies to push political messages hostile to our people’s resistance, and in the end the accounts turned out to be in Egypt.”

These accounts concentrated on demonizing the Palestinian resistance and assigning it blame for Israeli crimes, while entirely ignoring the role of the occupation and refusing to acknowledge it as the party responsible for the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.

The operators of this network used stolen photos of stylish young women taken from across the internet to draw attention and boost engagement, while the accounts relied on a misleading discourse that adopted the occupation’s narrative on the resistance and on aid. 

At the same time, they amplified the roles of Egypt and the United Arab Emirates in efforts to halt the war and provide support, even accusing Hamas of tarnishing the reputations of both countries.

The account “Ranim al-Ali,” which identifies itself as a “Palestinian journalist,” went further still, drawing a link between events in Gaza and the fighting in Sudan between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces militia, blaming Hamas for Israeli crimes and repeating the same pattern by accusing the Sudanese army of killing civilians and placing the blame on the Muslim Brotherhood.

Its posts ignored the well-documented role of the UAE-backed Rapid Support Forces militia in killings, torture, and sexual violence, according to international reports, reinforcing the account’s connection to a media network operating according to an Emirati agenda.

It is worth noting that the UAE condemned the Operation al-Aqsa Flood from the first day, October 7, 2023, and throughout the two years of war continued to stress, according to numerous Western reports, the need to exclude Hamas from Gaza’s future.

Coordinated Strategy

In October 2024, the investigations platform Ekad, which relies on open-source intelligence, published an extensive inquiry into the posting and engagement patterns of the five main accounts, revealing a set of operational traits that raised clear suspicions.

The investigation showed that all the accounts were highly active in the morning hours between 4 a.m. and 10 a.m., with posting peaking at around 5 a.m., before their activity declined in a coordinated manner after 10 a.m. 

This precise alignment in behavior led the platform to conclude that the accounts were likely part of a network run by a single operator, and that the early-morning surge was part of a strategy to flood users’ timelines with content at the start of their day.

The platform noted that, from the moment these accounts appeared, they used an “initial lure” approach, adopting a pro-resistance tone before shifting all at once to attacking Hamas and echoing narratives identical to those of the occupation. 

For example, the accounts “Ranemelali” and “RazanelTawil” initially objected to blaming Hamas for the occupation’s crimes in Gaza, before later describing it as “the enemy” and placing it on the same level as “Israel,” in what the platform saw as the stage of capturing an audience.

The five accounts concentrated on pushing consistent Israeli narratives, including claims that Hamas uses civilians as human shields, that it is responsible for the destruction of the Strip, that its leaders “flee far from the population’s suffering,” and that the movement is a “dictatorial authority,” all of which are staples of traditional Israeli propaganda.

Ekad also analyzed the network of users interacting with these accounts and found a highly active subgroup that was almost constantly linked to them, along with hundreds of accounts functioning as amplifiers. 

It emerged that numerous  accounts were created in 2024, and that around 859 accounts were created after October 7, an indication that organized efforts were at work to boost the central accounts’ content and expand its reach.

The Guard platform, a security outlet affiliated with Hamas, has long warned of the growing activity of hostile fake accounts aimed at inciting against the resistance in the Gaza Strip.

In a brief statement issued in March 2025, the platform asserted that “Israel’s” Unit 8200 oversees the management of fake accounts using Arabic and Palestinian names on social media.

The Guard said the purpose of these accounts is to incite against the resistance and undermine the home front by spreading misleading narratives designed to weaken popular resilience and sow despair.

The platform urged the public not to engage with these fake accounts or share their content, stressing that they are part of an organized psychological warfare effort through which the occupation seeks to pressure Gazans into surrendering.

Local Reactions

The emergence of Egypt and the United Arab Emirates as actors within these coordinated networks sparked a wave of reactions across social media, with activists calling on both states to offer explanations for what was taking place.

The Palestinian journalist Yaser Mohammed said that “Egypt’s and the UAE’s position, along with Saudi Arabia’s, was clear from the early days of the offensive, through direct or indirect condemnation of the Operation al-Aqsa Flood.”

Speaking to Al-Estiklal, Mohammed noted that “it was not surprising that these states might stand behind campaigns aimed at demonizing the resistance, or at the very least remain silent in the face of those inciting against it, even though it is a fighting force seeking liberation from occupation.”

He added, “These states could have exerted pressure to stop the war early, but they cooperated, to varying degrees, with the occupation in carrying out a genocide against civilians under the pretext of getting rid of Hamas, and today they insist on forcing the movement to surrender its weapons.”

“The UAE and Saudi Arabia are conditioning their financial support for reconstruction on the disarmament of the resistance and the exclusion of Hamas from any role in Gaza’s future.”

“It was clear from the beginning that the accounts inciting against the resistance were being run from outside Gaza, in an attempt to shape public opinion and push people to rise up against the resistance, but that did not materialize,” he added.

Mohammed concluded by recalling earlier statements made during the war by senior Hamas official Moussa Abu Marzouk, in which he said that certain Arab states had secretly urged the West to eliminate the movement.

Mohammed concluded by saying that “the fake accounts’ fixation on demonizing the Muslim Brotherhood and linking Hamas to it in every post offers an even clearer indication of the actors behind them, those well known for driving the counter-revolutionary agenda.”

In the same vein, the activist Ezzeldeen Devidar asked, “What interest does the Egyptian regime have in running online committees that spread despair and false news, cast doubt on the resistance, and falsely claim to be Gazan accounts living inside the Strip?” He added, “There is no interest at all… except a paid service to the enemy, part of a long chain of such services.”

The Palestinian activist Mohammed Arafat stressed that “available indicators show that most of the accounts attacking the resistance and operating from Egypt are not affiliated with Egyptian electronic committees, as is often claimed.”

He added in a post on X, “After closer scrutiny, it appears they are committees working for Abu Dhabi, and it is said they are led by Hadeel Oueis of Jusoor News, under the direct supervision of Mohammed Dahlan, the Palestinian politician and adviser to the UAE’s president, Mohammed bin Zayed. The media battlefield is no less dangerous than the front lines.”

The journalist Mohammed al-Shareif described the fake accounts that attacked the resistance during the war, and continue to do so, while claiming to be from Gaza and to share in the suffering of the war, saying, “It turned out they do not know the Strip’s address except on a map! Despicable degenerates.”