Hamas defends crackdown
HAMAS has justified its brutal crackdown on Fatah activists in Gaza, saying that recent anti-government protests in the coastal enclave were a result of deliberate plans by the Fatah-affiliated Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank to undermine Hamas’s leadership in Gaza.
“Security in Gaza has arrested a number of employees affiliated with the PA in Ramallah, where they were blackmailed to go down to the streets and provoke chaos in order to return their salaries,” Iyad Al Bazm told Al Jazeera.
As the political and geographical divide between the PA, which nominally controls the Israeli-occupied Palestinian West Bank, and Hamas continues the PA has cut aid to the Gaza Strip including reducing the salaries of PA employees in Gaza, thereby seriously aggravating the coastal territory’s decimated economy which is already subject to a joint Israeli-Egyptian siege.
And as a result of the siege Hamas has tried to boost its revenue by forcing Gazans to pay exorbitant taxes on goods and services. Previously the group earned significant income from smuggling goods in through the formerly ubiquitous underground tunnels between Gaza and the Egyptian Sinai until those were closed or destroyed by the Egyptians and Israelis.
As the economic privation continues to bite hard, angry and desperate Gazans took to the streets of refugee camps and towns in the Gaza Strip last week, burning tyres and denouncing the Hamas leadership.
The response of Hamas security forces was swift and brutal and included beatings, shooting protesters with live ammunition and mass arrests. Those arrested and assaulted included the employees of human rights organisations.
The Director of the Independent Commission of Human Rights (ICHR), lawyer Jamil Sarhan, and ICHR lawyer,Baker Al Turkmani, were two of those beaten up and arrested as they followed events.
The crackdown was denounced by The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR).
The PCHR said it was following with “deep concern the security services’ attacks against participants in the peaceful protests as the security services attacked protesters by beating and arresting them in addition to raiding houses”. |