Gazans watch with pride as Hamas strikes Israel
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Israel’s new offensive against the Gaza Strip has turned into a political bonanza for the territory’s Hamas rulers, while sidelining Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, their Western-backed rival in the West Bank.
Gazans feeling unfairly attacked by Israel have been watching with gleeful pride as Hamas militants fire rockets deeper than ever into Israel and Arab leaders flock to previously isolated Gaza to show solidarity. Growing collateral damage from Israel’s massive aerial bombardments of Hamas targets does not appear to have hurt the Islamists’ sudden popularity.
Saed Moaserji, a 19-year-old engineering student from Gaza’s Jebaliya refugee camp, said he felt intense pride after Hamas rocket squads for the first time this week targeted Jerusalem.
“I never liked Hamas, but I wished I could kiss the forehead of the one who fired the rocket on Jerusalem,” Moaserji said Saturday, standing outside a local Hamas commander’s two-story home that had just been flattened in an airstrike.
The support was in sharp contrast to recent months, when the Islamist group seemed to be flailing, riven by internal divisions over the direction of the movement and the refusal of Egypt’s new government to lift a Gaza blockade imposed by Israel and the previous regime in Cairo after Hamas seized the territory in 2007.
Meanwhile, a mention of Abbas — formally the leader of all Palestinians — elicited shrugs or even scorn in Gaza.
Many Palestinians have lost faith in Abbas’ attempt to set up a state through negotiations with Israel, but he appeared particularly marginalized as he tried to exert influence over the latest events in Gaza by calling foreign leaders from his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Abbas, who has not visited Gaza since the Hamas takeover, acknowledged that he also tried to call Gaza’s Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, and the top Hamas leader in exile, Khaled Mashaal, but did not get an immediate response. Mashaal eventually returned Abbas’ call.
Ahmed Hatoum, a Gaza City resident, said Abbas’ approach has been futile, pointing to two decades of intermittent negotiations without results. Hatoum and others in Gaza argued that Israel started the current round of fighting with the assassination of the Hamas military chief Wednesday and that Palestinians have the right to shoot back.
“There is no political solution with the Israelis,” said Hatoum, 60, whose house windows were shattered Saturday by an air attack on Haniyeh’s office. “They only understand the language of force.”