Gaza City - No victory parade, no jubilation and no great
words: The radical Islamist Hamas movement ruling Gaza this week
marked the second anniversary of its take-over of the coastal
salient, quietly and without much fuss.
Despite the growing anger, despair and hopelessness of many
Palestinians from Rafah in the south to Beit Hanoun in the north, the
Islamists, who rule with heavy hand, appear more firmly in the saddle
than ever.
It was mid-June two years ago when Hamas fighters violently
overpowered the secular Fatah movement of Mahmoud Abbas, by storming
their security headquarters throughout the strip.
'Not everything deserves to be celebrated,' says Ahmed Yousef, the
de-facto deputy foreign minister of the internationally unrecognized
Hamas government in Gaza.
'It was a surgical operation, otherwise the system would have
collapsed. We defended moral authority. We are not proud of having
killed each other,' is how Yousef describes the bloody clashes that
left hundreds dead.
The grey-bearded politician represents Hamas' more moderate
voice towards the West. But Hamas - depending on one's perspective -
is like a mask with 100 different faces.
The nationalist-religious movement has more than half a million
members and supporters, who include not only its radical politicians
and 20,000 armed fighters, but also intellectuals, devoutly religious
citizens - and people who ride the Hamas coattails, going along with
it for personal benefit, whether profit or power.
Gaza in June 2009 looks like a police state. Armed Hamas men keep
each residential block under their scrutiny. A photographer has
hardly clicked the shutter to take a photograph of the Gaza City
security headquarters destroyed by Israel, when a vehicle pulls up on
the side of the road.
A Hamas brigadier demands he delete the photograph. 'What an
idiot. He's probably illiterate,' comments the taxi-driver. 'Anyway,
his rank is only based on the number of Fatah fighters he has
killed.'
In a utility store two old friends argue about politics. Store
owner Bassam Batrassawi openly portrays himself as a Hamas friend.
'They gave us back security and religion. And they backed up the talk
against Israel with force,' says the 37-year-old.
'They (Hamas) have destroyed everything,' on the other hand
mutters Adah Shawa. The butchery owner is a millionaire, but
everything is relative in the face of Israel's stringent blockade of
the strip. Gaza with its 1,5 million inhabitants is often described
as the 'world's biggest open-air prison.' 'What use is money, when
you can't leave this place. I want to go to France, to Germany,'
sighs the 33-year-old.
Seja'eyah, a western Gaza City suburb, is only a stone's throw
from the Israeli border. Part of the land belongs to the al-Dabba
clan, which cultivated 350 olive trees here, some of them more than
300 years old. The Israeli military destroyed them all. 'Hamas
fighters fired rockets at Israel from them,' explains a family
member.
'When we told them to stop this nonsense, they pointed their guns
at us and asked if we were traitors of the resistance.'
Complaints about unscrupulous behaviour by Hamas people can fill
pages. A young man reports how Hamas first beat him up and
then shot apart all four tyres of his car, because he was listening
to a Fatah song.
A common intimidation method used by Hamas is knee-capping, where
victims are shot from close range in the knees, crippling them.
Unapproved demonstrations are sometimes dispersed with live
ammunition. In the neat Gaza City headquarters of President Abbas,
dozens of Fatah supporters are
allegedly still being held.
'We have restored law and order,' says Yousef, the de-facto Hamas
deputy foreign minister, when asked to sum up his movement's biggest
achievement in the last two years. 'Gaza is safe and secure. We never
enjoyed safety and security like that. We protect the values of
society.'
He denies reports that Hamas now wants to forbid unmarried
couples to sit together in public at cafe or restaurant tables. He
nonetheless admits that youths who meet in hotels or on the beach are
troublesome to Hamas. 'That does not reflect the amount of suffering
under the siege,' he says.
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