Showing posts with label Gaza. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gaza. Show all posts
Saturday, March 15, 2014
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Gaza militants fire barrage of rockets into southern Israel
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Gaza militants fire barrage of rockets into southern Israel
Friday, February 14, 2014
Eva Bartlett: An Eyewitnesses Account About How Israel Has Constructed a Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza
Eva Bartlett: An Eyewitnesses Account About How Israel Has Constructed a Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza
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Sunday, January 26, 2014
New Yorkers urge Israel to end war on Gaza
New Yorkers urge Israel to end war on Gaza
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Tuesday, December 24, 2013
Two Palestinian Civilians in Gaza, Including 3-Year-Old Girl, and Israeli Soldier Killed, in Attacks
Two Palestinian Civilians in Gaza, Including 3-Year-Old Girl, and Israeli Soldier Killed, in Attacks
December 24, 2013
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Two Palestinian Civilians in Gaza, Including 3-Year-Old Girl, and Israeli Soldier Killed, in Attacks, December 24, 2013 | Two Palestinian Civilians in Gaza, Including 3-Year-Old Girl, and Israeli Soldier Killed, in Attacks, December 24, 2013 |
Including A Child, Two Killed By Israeli Shells In Gaza
Tuesday December 24, 2013 17:44 by Saed Bannoura – IMEMC & Agencies
Medical sources said that Hala Ahmad Al-Boheiry, 3 years old, was killed by an Israeli missile in central Gaza, and four were wounded in the shelling, one of them in a critical condition.
The sources added that Hala’s mother, her brothers Bilal, 3, and Mohammad, 6, were injured when the army bombarded a house near a chicken farm east of the Al-Maghazy refugee camp, in central Gaza.
Furthermore, a young man was also killed when the Israeli Air Force fired missiles into Beit Lahiya town, in northern Gaza. Another Palestinian was moderately in the attack, the Palestine News Network (PNN) has reported.
Dr. Ahmad Al-Bohairy, spokesperson of the Ministry Of Health In Gaza, has reported that an 18-year-old young man was shot in the leg, and was moved to a local hospital.
Furthermore, several Israeli military vehicles invaded, on Tuesday at noon, a Palestinian area, close to the Nahal Oz military base, and another area east of the Shuja’iya area, and opened fire at open areas; no injuries were reported.
Israeli Military Engineer Killed Near Gaza Border
Tuesday December 24, 2013 17:37 by IMEMC & Agencies
Israeli sources said the engineer is employed by the Israeli Defense Ministry, and that the shot that killed him came from Gaza.
Israeli daily Haaretz has reported the no Palestinian armed group claimed responsibility for the attack that killed the engineer, near the Nahal Oz settlement. The engineer is from Rahat, south of the country, a town mainly inhabited by Bedouin Palestinian Arabs.
The Israeli army said it appears a sharpshooter carried out the attack and fled the scene, and that no clashes took place following the shooting.
The military engineer was moved to the Soroka Medical Center in Be’er Al-Saba’a (Be’er Sheva), where he died of his serious wounds.
Baby girl killed in series of Israeli airstrikes on Gaza
[ 24/12/2013 - 03:58 PM ]
GAZA, (PIC)–
Israeli warplanes launched on Tuesday afternoon several air raids on different areas in the Gaza Strip killing a baby girl and wounding several others.
Three-year-old Hala Abu Sbaikha was killed while her mother and sister were injured in the ongoing aerial raids, medical sources said.
Dr. Ashraf Al-Qudra, the health ministry spokesman in Gaza, told the PIC reporter that the air raids so far killed a three-year-old baby girl and wounded seven others.
According to earlier statistics, four citizens were injured by the Israeli shelling on east of Maghazi in central Gaza, while another citizen was seriously wounded after being shot by Israeli gunfire north of the town of Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza and was transferred to Shifa Hospital.
The Israeli airstrikes had reportedly hit two bases of the Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, in Khan Younis and Bureij, while the IOF artillery targeted citizens in the neighborhood of Shaja’ia east of Gaza City.
The attacks came hours after the death of an Israeli soldier who was shot in the heart by a Palestinian sniper near the border area east of Gaza.
Palestinian sources said that a Palestinian sniper on Tuesday afternoon opened fire at an Israeli soldier near the border fence between the Gaza Strip and the 1948 occupied Palestinian land.
They added that after the shooting, the occupation troops and military vehicles were deployed in the area and launched a search.
Meanwhile, local sources said that IOF warplanes bombed a deserted land west of the city of Rafah in southern Gaza Strip.
They said that the IOF artillery shelled citizens’ lands east of Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza and areas east of Gaza City.
Gaza Gov’t: Israel’s aggression on Gaza proves its confusion
[ 24/12/2013 - 05:22 PM ]
GAZA, (PIC)–
Palestinian government in Gaza Strip said that the Israeli occupation’s airstrikes on the enclave Tuesday evening prove its weakness and confusion, holding the occupation full responsibility for consequences of its aggression.
In a brief statement, the government’s spokesman Ihab al-Ghussain held the Israeli occupation authority (IOA) fully responsible for its continued crimes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, calling on the international community to bridle the IOA and to prosecute it for its crimes and aggressions against the unarmed Palestinian people.
The Palestinian government stressed the Palestinian resistance’s readiness to defend the people of Gaza in face of any aggression, and praised the media’s role in covering the events.
Israeli warplanes launched on Tuesday afternoon several air raids on different areas in the Gaza Strip killing a baby girl and wounding several others.
Seven Palestinians kidnapped in IOF campaign in Nablus
[ 24/12/2013 - 03:14 PM ]
NABLUS, (PIC)–
The Israeli occupation forces (IOF) on Monday evening kidnapped seven Palestinians in Nablus city.
Eyewitnesses told the Palestinian information center (PIC) reporter in the city that the IOF raided several homes and kidnapped five Palestinian citizens.
According to the reporter, sounds of explosions and gunfire were heard in different neighborhoods of the city during the Israeli campaign.
Meanwhile, IOF soldiers tightened their security measures last night at checkpoints around Nablus and kidnapped two young men. The IOF also intercepted Palestinian vehicles and searched them at Za’atara checkpoint, especially those travelling from Nablus to Ramallah.
In a separate incident, the IOF placed notices on some walls in Al-Aroub refugee camp threatening to take action against specified fathers if they did not stop their sons’ activities against the occupation.
The wall warnings were sealed by the Israeli army and contained pictures and names of nine Palestinian parents whose sons were accused of carrying out attacks against Israeli settlers.
Israeli police assault al-Aqsa Mosque guard
[ 24/12/2013 - 03:10 PM ]
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)–
Israeli police forces assaulted Monday night one of Al-Aqsa Mosque guards in Jerusalem as part of their brutal assaults and attacks against Jerusalemites.
Eyewitnesses confirmed that Israeli police have provoked al-Aqsa Mosque guard Murad Hamad, who was on his duty at the Mosque, before attacking and beating him severely.
They added, however, that his colleagues intervened and managed to prevent the police from arresting him.
Following the attack, large numbers of worshipers gathered inside and outside al-Aqsa Mosque.
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Two Palestinian Civilians in Gaza, Including 3-Year-Old Girl, and Israeli Soldier Killed, in Attacks
Thursday, December 5, 2013
Will the Pope insist on seeing Gaza this time?
Will the Pope insist on seeing Gaza this time?
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Pope Francis
After the humiliation of the last papal visit,
Will the Pope insist on seeing Gaza this time?
Or should he, too, boycott Israel until Jerusalem and the Christian and Muslim communities are freed from occupation?
CNN reports on Israeli PM Netanyahu’s reception at the Vatican and plans for the Pope to visit Israel in May.
Recalling the shabby treatment of religious leaders on previous visits to the Holy Land, let us hope Pope Francis takes a firmer line than his predecessor and insists on seeing Gaza and ministering to his terrorized flock there.
Pope Benedict
In May 2009, when Benedict was Pope, the Vatican told the Israeli press that the Holy Father would refrain from visiting Gaza. The word ‘refrain’ was a peculiar one in the circumstances. “The Pope will refrain from visiting Gaza….” smacks of abstinence, as in refraining from sexual intercourse. Setting foot in Gaza was as sinful as sneaking into a brothel, it seems. Israel’s hoodlums of course were keen to prevent him seeing how the tiny, overcrowded enclave had been devastated 16 months earlier by their murderous blitzkrieg codenamed Cast Lead. And the Pope went along with it.
Gaza’s isolated and besieged Catholic community were none too happy with the Pope’s attitude, judging by the reaction of their redoubtable old priest Fr Manuel Mussallam. “We will ask him why he came, what he intends saying to the Christians, the Jews, the Muslims and why he isn’t coming to Gaza,” said Fr Manuel. “We’ll tell him that this is not the right moment to come and visit the holy places, while Jerusalem is occupied.”
Time for the Pope to join BDS?
Having decided to go to Palestine (via Israel) it was imperative for the Pope to include Gaza or it would look like he didn’t give a damn about the appalling persecution in the very land where Christianity was born. He might as well hammer one more nail into Christendom’s coffin. Then again, should he be going to Israel at all while Jerusalem, Bethlehem and many other places dear to Christian and Muslim religious belief are under the jackboot?
Indeed, has it finally come to the point where the Pope ought to do the decent thing and boycott Israel… join the BDS movement? Admittedly, it’s a tough call given the Catholic Church’s considerable interests out there.
Archbishop Rowan Williams and British Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks at Birkenau
But we have seen enough wimpish conduct by Christian leaders while Israel defiles the Holy Land. The previous November, while the regime was planning its vicious assault, codename Operation Cast Lead, on Gaza’s Muslims and Christians after softening them up with two years of blockade and starvation, we were treated to the spectacle of the Archbishop of Canterbury joining the Chief Rabbi on a visit to Auschwitz to show joint solidarity against extreme hostility and genocide. The Archbishop called it “a place of utter profanity” and spoke of the collective corruption and moral sickness that made the Holocaust possible.
Would the pair show the same spirit of righteous solidarity by visiting Gaza? The scale of horror might be different but the moral sickness is just as obscene. And this being the Holy Land the profanity is many times worse.
The Pope too had been to Auschwitz to pray for the people murdered there. “I had to come here as a duty to truth and to those that suffered,” he said and spoke of the Nazis’ mania for destruction and domination.
Gaza. Palestinians at the Rafah Crossing into Egypt.
Very commendable. But he wasn’t so keen to come and pray for those suffering in Gaza, victims of much the same kind of criminal insanity.
Nevertheless, he turned up at Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and the Western (Wailing) Wall, and hobnobbed with the chief rabbis… but not with his brave priest and the shattered congregation in Gaza.
What had happened to his ‘duty to truth’?
After my visit to Gaza in late 2007, 18 months after Israel’s merciless squeeze began, I wrote:
Fuel is running out, so are basics like washing powder. Shattered infrastructure and food shortages mean serious public health problems. Power cuts disrupt hospitals and vital drugs cannot be kept refrigerated. Thousands look death in the face as medicare collapses.
A friend emailed: “Today in Gaza we have no cement to build graves for those who die.”
The subjugation and dispossession of Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land continues. It remains a mystery to me why our largely Christian democracy in Britain slavishly supports the Middle East ethnocracy that’s doing this…
The last six years have seen things go from bad to worse – much worse. Palestinians in the Holy Land, and especially Gaza, need to be shown that the Christian Church cares about them even if nobody else does. So where are these extravagantly robed and mitred Men of God when needed?
No repetition of the Benedict debacle, please
Archbishop Rowan Williams, visiting in 2010, did manage to get into Gaza. But as far as I could discover he made no public statement about the wretched conditions there, nor did he reveal his findings to the House of Lords where he had the support of a large gaggle of bishops. This despite his claim to be “in a unique position to bring the needs and voices of those fighting poverty, disease and the effects of conflict, to the attention of national and international policy makers”.
And despite his declaration that “Christians need to witness boldly and clearly”.
And despite his urging greater awareness of the humanitarian crisis to ensure that the people of Gaza were not forgotten.
The Israelis, I heard, refused him access to Gaza from the start and only at the last minute allowed the Archbishop an hour or so, just enough for a quick visit to the Ahli Hospital and nowhere else. For that concession one wonders if he had to sign a gagging order.
Gaza under siege. Operation Cast Lead, 22 Days: December 2008 – January 2009
His website, however, described how he, like the Pope, hobnobbed with the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and paid respects to Yad Vashem and the Holocaust. He also talked with the President of Israel, who no doubt enjoyed his guest’s frustration at being prevented from seeing the horrors that had been inflicted on Gaza.
And news of any get-together with senior Islamic figures on the ground was conspicuously absent, leaving a question-mark over his commitment to inter-faith engagement.
Why on earth did he agree to fraternize with Jewish political and religious dignitaries when it was clear that his wish to carry out his Christian duty in Gaza would be obstructed? Does Lambeth Palace not realize that meekly accepting such insults only serves to legitimize the Israelis’ illegal occupation and gives a stamp of approval to the brutal siege of Gaza, the daily death-dealing air strikes against civilians, the persecution of Muslim and Christian communities and the regime’s utter contempt for international law and human rights?
One can only hope the Vatican realizes it too and avoids a repetition of the Benedict debacle.
The Israelis walk all over fawning sycophants masquerading as Western political leaders. Our spiritual leaders, however, are supposed to be made of sterner stuff and to have the moral backbone to face down evil.
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Stuart Littlewood is writer-photographer in the UK. His articles are published widely on the web. He is author of the book Radio Free Palestine. Stuart’s book Radio Free Palestine, with Foreword by Jeff Halper, tells the plight of the Palestinians under brutal occupation. “Radio Free Palestine is a cry form the heart, written in moral anger by a person who bothered to leave his comfortable surroundings far from the suffering of another people, the Palestinians, and share, witness, expose and protest in the strongest voice he could find at what he saw and heard, what so few others have even cared to see or hear.” It can now be read on the internet by visiting www.radiofreepalestine.org.uk.
Radio Free Palestine series:
A Wake-up Call — Stuart Littlewood
A Story of Betrayal – 1
A Story of Betrayal – 2
A Story of Betrayal – 3
One Land, Two Peoples, Three Religions – 1
One Land, Two Peoples, Three Religions – 2
One Land, Two Peoples, Three Religions – 3
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Posted by Stuart Littlewood on Dec 5 2013, With 0 Reads, Filed under Editors’ Picks, Europe, Global, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, United Kingdom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
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Read more about Will the Pope insist on seeing Gaza this time? and other interesting subjects concerning World News at TheDailyNewsReport.com
Monday, October 28, 2013
Egypt tunnel closure costs Gaza millions
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Egypt tunnel closure costs Gaza millions
Friday, October 11, 2013
Israeli commandos fired from air in 2010 Gaza flotilla raid – former US Marine
Published time: October 11, 2013 10:36
A former US Marine-turned activist told a Turkish court on Thursday that Israeli commandos had opened fire from a helicopter on a Gaza-bound aid ship three years ago. The claim contradicts Israeli’s claim that the soldiers had acted in self-defense.
On May 31, 2010, Israeli naval commandos using speedboats and helicopters boarded the Turkish-owned Mavi Marmara, part of the ‘Gaza Freedom Flotilla’ that was attempting to break the Israeli-Egyptian blockade of the Gaza Strip and deliver humanitarian relief.
In the ensuing melee, eight Turkish nationals and one Turkish American were killed, and many were wounded. Ten Israeli commandos were also wounded, one of them seriously.
The incident sparked a deep diplomatic crisis between Israel and Turkey – the former a committed ally of the United States, the latter a full-fledged NATO member waiting for membership in the European Union. Today, relations between the two remain tense.
Now, a trial being held in absentia in Istanbul against Israel’s former Chief-of-Staff Gabi Ashkenazi and three other senior commanders may aggravate bilateral relations even more between the two former allies.
Kenneth O’Keefe, an Irish-Palestinian and former US marine who was aboard the humanitarian vessel during the conflict, told the Turkish hearing, which convened in June of last year, that Israeli soldiers had started shooting from the helicopter while it was still in the air.
“Within five to 10 minutes after the Israeli helicopter approached the ship, I ran into Cevdet Kiliclar’s dead body on the deck, before any Israeli commando had boarded the vessel,” O’Keefe said, referring to one of the Turkish activists.
“He must have been shot from the air. After seeing Kiliclar’s dead body, I went upstairs to the top of the deck and saw several people lying on the ground, wounded or dead.”
Israel has dismissed the Turkish proceedings as a political “show trial” of four former IDF commanders.
The 144-page indictment lists “inciting murder through cruelty or torture” and “inciting injury with firearms” among the charges against the now-retired Israeli officers and seeks life sentences for the commandos.
O’Keefe’s testimony supports Turkey’s official findings of the incident, described in a September 2011 UN report, which said Israeli commandos had fired upon the activists before boarding the ship.
“IDF personnel began firing on the Mavi Marmara from both the speedboats and helicopters before boarding had commenced….Two passengers were killed by shots from the helicopters before the first soldiers had boarded the vessel,” the Turkish Commission report said.
Turkey’s version of events, however, clashes with that of Israel’s version, also summarized in the UN report.
“Three ‘flash bang’ stun grenades were thrown from the helicopter before and during the descent, but no shots were fired. The soldiers from the first helicopter were met with an extreme level of violence from a group of passengers on the vessel,” according to the Israeli position.
Turkey expelled Israel’s ambassador after the 2011 UN report, which concluded, seemingly in favor of the Israeli position, that while Israel had used “unreasonable force” during its raid on the Turkish ship in international waters, its blockade on Gaza was legal.
Ankara announced its demands for normalizing bilateral relations with its neighbor – an apology, compensation and Israel ending its embargo on Gaza.
In March, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu phoned Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and apologized for the deaths of the nine activists, pledging to reach an agreement on compensation for their families.
The hearing has been adjourned until March 27, 2014.
Israeli commandos fired from air in 2010 Gaza flotilla raid – former US Marine
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Israel Strikes 2 Gaza Sites Hours Before Talks Start
JERUSALEM — In the hours before Israeli-Palestinian peace talks were to start here on Wednesday, Israeli warplanes struck two sites in Gaza in response to rocket fire from the Palestinian coastal territory against southern Israel the night before, according to the Israeli military.
There were no casualties on either side, but the events underlined the continued potential for confrontation in the volatile area after weeks of relative quiet.
The military said it hit concealed rocket launchers in the northern Gaza Strip overnight after a rocket fired from Gaza, which is controlled by the Islamic militant group Hamas, landed in an open area across the border.
“This is an absurd situation that would not be tolerated anywhere else in the world,” Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the military, said in a statement. He said that the military “is charged with, and will continue to operate in order to safeguard Israel’s civilians and combat terror and its infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.”
Israel is conducting peace negotiations with Hamas’s rivals, the leaders of the Palestinian Authority, who exercise limited self-rule in the West Bank. The goal is to reach a final settlement in the form of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. But many Israelis and Palestinians are skeptical about the outcome. Among other things, Israelis point to the fact that the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, has no control over what happens in Gaza.
Hamas has been seen to make efforts to enforce a cease-fire along the Israel-Gaza border that was brokered by Egypt after a fierce round of cross-border fighting last November. But some smaller, more radical groups in Gaza sometimes operate against Israel, with or without permission from Hamas.
Many Palestinians have, meanwhile, expressed skepticism about the peace talks, not least because they are starting out in the shadow of several recent announcements by Israel of more settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
In a new affront to the Palestinians on the eve of the talks, the Israeli Interior Ministry’s final approval of nearly 900 new apartments in a contested part of Jerusalem was officially published this week, Israeli news media reported Tuesday. It was Israel’s second move since Sunday to advance housing construction in areas sought by the Palestinians for a future state.
The new apartments, in an area known as Gilo, were approved by an Interior Ministry panel in December and later endorsed with some revisions by the full ministry. Official approval was published on Monday, as required under Israeli law. That news came as the Palestinians continued to react to the announcement on Sunday by the Israeli government of new construction tenders for other parts of Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank.
An Interior Ministry official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak about the issue, characterized the publication of the ministry’s final approval of the Gilo units as “just a procedure.” In addition, the Housing Ministry and the Israel Lands Administration must still evaluate construction tenders for the Gilo housing, and groundbreaking could be months or more away.
But the timing of the news inflamed Palestinian passions.
Arrangements for the peace talks have been a preoccupation of Secretary of State John Kerry, who has sought to persuade Mr. Abbas, the Palestinian president, that continued Israeli housing development in areas occupied by Israel after the 1967 war should not be a deal breaker.
Yasser Abed Rabbo, an aide to Mr. Abbas, was quoted by Agence France-Presse as saying the news of Israeli housing expansion in areas occupied or annexed by Israel “threatens to make talks fail even before they’ve started.” Other critics said the housing expansion reflected what they regarded as Israeli intransigence on a fundamental issue.
“Israel continues illegal construction in settlements throughout the occupied West Bank in all the major settlement blocs and has attempted to justify this by saying they intend to keep all those settlement blocs in any agreement anyway,” said Yousef Munayyer, executive director of the Jerusalem Fund for Education and Community Development, a Palestinian advocacy group in Washington. “If Israel has already decided what the map is going to look like, what is the point of negotiating over territory?”
The Gilo news came as Israel was releasing a group of long-held Palestinian prisoners as part of a deal to restart the talks, which have basically been stalled for three years over the issue of Israeli settlements and their impact on the viability of a future Palestinian state.
Mr. Kerry, who was traveling in Brazil, said he called Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, on Tuesday and discussed the settlement issue. He said that Mr. Netanyahu had been “completely upfront with me and with President Abbas that he would be announcing some additional building that would take place in places that will not affect the peace map.”
“He has specifically agreed not to disturb what might be the potential for peace going forward,” Mr. Kerry added, saying he planned to call Mr. Abbas later.
Israel Strikes 2 Gaza Sites Hours Before Talks Start
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
In Gaza, Hamas Targets Palestinian Informants In Crackdown
Palestinian gunmen drag a man from a motorcycle in Gaza City on Nov. 20. He was one of six men killed that day on suspicion of collaborating with Israel. The Hamas government in the Gaza Strip denied responsibility, though it has executed others judged to be working with Israel’s security forces.
Hatem Moussa/AP
Palestinian gunmen drag a man from a motorcycle in Gaza City on Nov. 20. He was one of six men killed that day on suspicion of collaborating with Israel. The Hamas government in the Gaza Strip denied responsibility, though it has executed others judged to be working with Israel’s security forces.
Hatem Moussa/AP
Life was already grim in the Gaza Strip when fighting raged between Israel and Hamas last November. Then Khulud Badawi got unexpected bad news about her husband.
“I was at home when my son came in and said, ‘Mom, they killed Dad.’ I said, ‘Who?’ He said, ‘Hamas.’ I asked him, ‘Where?’ He said, ‘Next to the gas station,’” she recalls.
Badawi’s husband, Ribhi Badawi, was in prison in Gaza City. He was supposed to go to court that day for a final appeal of charges that he had collaborated with Israel against Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip.
But Ribhi Badawi was taken from prison and executed in public, along with five other inmates. They were all accused of being collaborators, or informants, working for Israel.
“In this case, what was remarkable was that these men were not executed in anything resembling legislative authority or the penal authority of the Hamas government, but by armed men,” says Sarah Leah Whitson, who directs the Middle East division of Human Rights Watch.
“How they managed to get these men out of prison, and then how they managed to shoot them dead in broad daylight and drag their corpses around the street is a very big question mark,” she adds.
Israel’s Informant Network
For decades, Israel’s security forces has relied heavily on Palestinian informants to track and keep tabs on wanted Palestinians. The standard practice is for Israel to pay the informants in exchange for the information. But if uncovered, the informants are treated as traitors to the Palestinian cause and can expect to face harsh judgment in the Palestinian courts, or in some cases, through vigilante justice.
Hamas, which has been in control of Gaza since 2007, has executed people judged to be collaborators. But in the six deaths last Nov. 20, the Hamas-run government said it was not responsible.
“What happened was against the law,” Islam Shawan, a spokesman for Gaza’s Interior Ministry, says. “We had a high-level committee investigate, and it handed down tough punishments to security officials who failed to do their jobs.”
Shawan won’t name names, give ranks or offer any other information, but he claims that four people working in the prison system were punished. One was fired, one was transferred, one was jailed and one lost any chance at promotions.
He has no progress to report on tracking down the people who actually did the killings, but he does claim progress in cracking down on collaboration.
Hamas’ Campaign Against Collaborators
Three months after those accused collaborators were killed, Hamas started an anti-collaboration campaign in Gaza.
TV ads played scary music with pictures of a young man being dragged to the gallows by Hamas security forces. The video storyline shows he was coerced into collaboration by doing things that could set him up for blackmail — drinking, taking drugs, searching for sex online.
Shawan says this campaign was aimed at everyone in Gaza.
“This was a national campaign — not just directed at collaborators,” he says. “It was designed to educate and protect society by showing people how Israelis recruit.”
People were offered a chance to turn themselves in. Shawan won’t say how many did, but claimed one example: an engineering student who allegedly gave Israel information about his neighbors, his professors and student politicians. The young man wasn’t punished, Shawan says, but quietly re-educated.
There was no “re-education” offered by Hamas in the case of Khulud Badawi’s husband, who was a member of a rival militant group.
“I don’t believe in this campaign,” she says. “My husband used to tell me that people who were collaborators would confess immediately, but people who weren’t would be tortured for months and never confess because they were innocent.”
Just last week, two accused spies were given death sentences, suggesting that tough punishment is just as important in Hamas’ efforts to crack down on collaboration as education and amnesty.
In Gaza, Hamas Targets Palestinian Informants In Crackdown
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