Veiled policewomen of Hamas's Gaza security forces Gaza – Mohammed Habib The move to recruit women in Hamas's Gaza security forces has surprised some of its residents. Since the government announced it had been recruiting policewomen in 2008, hundreds of women were accepted, working mostly on cases that involved dealing with women, like drugs and prostitution, and helping out at police headquarters and the central jail.
Although many religious women refuse to do police work because it involves working closely with men and requires working nights, growing economic hardship intensified by the isolation of the strip has pushed more women to leave the house for work. Hamas began recruiting women for the police through its television and radio stations and calling on women in mosques to consider the job a religious duty. Soon, hundreds applied and were succesful.
Many are often highly qualified, with more than two-thirds having studied civil and criminal law at Al Azhar University, the only institution in Gaza that teaches law. But, according to Fatma (27) who works in the security forces and studied law at Al Azhar, “nothing in school can quite prepare a young woman for a drug raid.”
When raiding the house of a suspected dealer, four policewomen are typically assigned to join 30 men. The policewomen search female suspects who may be hiding drugs on their bodies and go into family bedrooms, Fatma added.
Unlike most of her female colleagues who wear veils, Fatma wears only a head scarf, which leaves her face exposed. She however complained that it was hard to run in her long Islamic robe the  (jilbab). She stated that her bosses were thinking of designing a new uniform for easier movement. “They are talking about pants, and a jilbab that is open on both sides,” she said.
Meanwhile, Rania, 26, the leader of the women’s force, who refused to give her full name, wears the niqab, a full veil that leaves only a slit for the eyes.
Rania had been working on the case of an unmarried female university student who had been photographed having sex. It was unclear whether she was engaged in prostitution (which is a crime). Either way, she had put herself in a compromising position that, in Rania’s view, could harm the Palestinian cause. Drugs and prostitution lead to “collaboration with Israel,” she said.
However, Nermin Eddwan, the women police’s director in the Gaza Interior Ministry said the women's police’s department was not an exclusive invention of Hamas as it existed before Hamas began governing Gaza.