One o’clock in the morning, and the streets of this Palestinian town near the Gaza-Israeli border appear to be deserted. Then Abu Ahmed, a senior Hamas militant, mutters a few words into his radio and the dark lane is suddenly alive with men in black uniforms and balaclavas, toting guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

The fighters fan out calmly across a junction, apparently unconcerned by the extreme proximity of Israeli forces around the bend in the road. One of them, a lanky young man with three rocket-propelled grenades hanging from a harness on his back, levels his bazooka at the road from which the tanks could come at any minute.

Having seized territorial control of the Gaza Strip in a bloody battle with Fatah, its secular rival, Hamas is now trying to organise its guerrilla forces into a regular army, training its men in various specialisations and preparing to defend its newly won fiefdom from an Israeli invasion that many feel is never far away.

Among the footsoldiers who materialise only a few hundred metres from an Israeli border bristling with snipers, tanks and armoured bulldozers is an expert sapper who places explosives in the likely tracks of raiding tanks, then removes them again in the morning when his unit leaves. Another is a sniper, while the man with the rocket-propelled grenade launcher is in charge of hitting armoured vehicles. Each unit has its own paramedic. There are scores of these cells of six to eight men – called murabetin, or border fighters – dotted along the fence with Israel.

Blockade drains life from Gaza

The movement of goods into Gaza had been intermittent at best since Hamas won Palestinian elections early last year

Multimedia

• Pictures: Johnston is released

• Video: unarmed protester confronts gunman in Gaza

• Pictures: life in Gaza

BACKGROUND

• Israel continues Gaza blitz as 310 dead

• Q&A: Hamas and Gaza

• 97 days and counting for BBC's man in Gaza

• Now war is with the enemy within

• The little girl trapped by a quirk of war

Unnervingly close as we were to the Israelis, Abu Ahmed said that there was another line of Hamas units between this group and the border, waiting to raise the alarm. Behind were reserve units, ready to rush to their aid should an incursion start.

Part of the recalibration of Hamas – from an Islamist militia that sent suicide bombers to Israel into an army of at least 15,000 troops defending Gaza – is a change in philosophy, with less emphasis on a martyr’s death and more on achieving military goals and returning alive to share hard-won combat experience.

“Our men know now it’s more important to keep fighting and not to become a martyr,” said Abu Ahmed, a 40-year-old commander who has spent almost half his life in the ranks of the armed wing of Hamas, the Iz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. “Our motto is ‘victory or death’, but victory comes first. When we would send somebody before, he’d fight to the death. But lately, we send people to ambush Israeli undercover units and we tell them if they can do the job and retreat, then do so.”

The new attitude had allowed Hamas to reduce its casualties and build a more experienced force, he said. But there is also a strange stand-off with Israel on the border. It stages minor incursions every few days to hit other Palestinian factions – mainly the undisciplined and fanatical Islamic Jihad – that fire rockets into southern Israel, but has not ventured deep into Hamas-controlled territory. “They know they would be digging their own graves if they came in,” Abu Nidal, the explosives expert, said.

Hamas has prepared other defences inside the cramped confines of Gaza City, such as tunnels that would allow fighters to move behind advancing Israeli tanks and hit them in the rear. It has other defence tactics that its commanders would not divulge, but they hinted that they would involve infiltrating men into Israeli positions, where superior firepower from tanks and planes would be neutralised.

Before giving us a rare midnight tour of the Hamas front lines, Abu Ahmed took The Times to a training camp in Gaza City, a former Palestinian Authority coastguard base. Paradoxically for a guerrilla force trying to reinvent itself as a regular army, it cannot use the base during the daytime for fear of Israeli airstrikes, nor have any fixed installations.

Instead they train at night, which is also when they do most of their fighting. The courses are not just for the devout young men recruited from mosques, but also for experienced fighters forming specialised units. The commanders do not deny that they have received training in Iran and from Lebanese Hezbollah.

Some of the acquired skills can seem surprisingly high-tech. Abu Bakr, another commander in Gaza City, claims to have hacked into unmanned drones that fly over Gaza with cameras, allowing them to see what the Israelis see. Hamas has a radio network to alert its people whenever Israeli aircraft cross the border, giving them seconds to take cover.

Despite their new emphasis on living to fight another day, all the fighters The Times met were quite willing to die for the cause. “We believe in God, and they can’t harm us unless God approves,” Abu Nidal, the explosives expert, said.

How the new regime has changed

— Hamas has converted its paramilitary Executive Force into a police force, with specialist departments including a drugs squad, criminal investigation unit, traffic police and a military police department

— It has cracked down on price rises that threatened to develop in markets after Israel closed the border crossings to all but essential goods

— It has banned weapons being carried in the street or fired in celebration at weddings. Gazans can still keep guns in their homes. Hamas checkpoints on the streets late at night check vehicles for unauthorised weapons

— It is about to ban any vehicles travelling without registration plates, a common phenomenon in Gaza, in an effort to fight crime and vehicle theft

— It will create a legal committee as a temporary replacement for Gaza’s defunct courts but does not intend to impose Sharia

— On the diplomatic front it has repeatedly called for talks with the Fatah-led administration to discuss reconciliation between the two divided Palestinian entities. Fatah has publicly refused to talk, although Hamas West Bank officials say that backdoor channels have been opened

Source: James Hider

Times Recommends

• Please help: maimed children of war want their lives back
• Cabal seizes diamond riches to buy power
• White House gatecrashers got to the president