by erica silverman
jta
Ibrahim al Najar used to operate an egg distribution business in Gaza City until about a year ago, when he was beaten and robbed at gunpoint.
“Masked gunmen surrounded our truck, forced us to the ground and stole our profits,” said the 21-year-old, who is married with two children.
He said he had enough. Politically independent until then, he sold his business and joined Hamas’ security forces.
“At least now I know that my family is safe,” he said while on patrol at the closed presidential compound in the Gaza Strip.
Since Hamas violently ousted the Palestinian Fatah faction from Gaza in June 2007, the Islamist group has established a security presence that has brought residents a level of security unseen during the days of Fatah, despite the strip’s crumbling judicial system.
This helps account for the popularity in Gaza of Hamas — designated as terrorists by Israel, the United States and the European Union.
“Before the coup, I kept an automatic weapon in the shop. Now I feel safer,” said a grocer in Gaza City. “The security is also psychological because when Israel attacks, Hamas fights back.”
For many Gazans, however, the security has come at a heavy price: limits on individual rights and an international embargo of Gaza, which has shattered the area’s economy.
“We have lost our freedom of speech and the press,” said Hythem Abu Thaher, 20, a student at al Aqsa University.
Women and young people feel pressured by the police presence to conform to Hamas’ religious norms. While arrests are uncommon, aggressive questioning and monitoring are de rigueur, particularly when unmarried men and women try to socialize with each other.
“We can move freely, but as women we can’t socialize freely,” said Sanna al Louh, 23, who owns an art shop in Dier al Balah. “People are afraid, so they keep silent.”
“Security has been achieved through fear,” said political analyst Talal Okal, a member of the board of trustees at al Azhar University, a Fatah bastion in Gaza. “But we do not want the corrupt leaders back.”
Many Gazans, particularly Fatah supporters, feel threatened by the police and say their procedures are invasive.
Gaza’s courts also have suffered under Hamas.
“After Hamas took control, the attorney general in Ramallah ordered all district attorneys and administrative staff in Gaza to stay at home, threatening to withhold their salaries if they returned to work,” said Hamdi Shaqqura, the director of democratic development at the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza. “The criminal court system stopped.”
Hamas has struggled to fill the slots with attorneys and judges who observers say are less qualified.
Yet under Hamas, residents say, lawlessness in Gaza has declined significantly.
“Now you can go to the police for help,” said Abdel-Rahman Abu Ada, 27, an accountant from Gaza City. “Beforehand, people had to seek help from factions, like al Aksa Brigades” — Fatah’s military wing. “The armed militants in the streets were terrifying.”
Hamas has adopted a number of measures over the past few months that have reduced the type of gang-style violence that was typical of Gaza when it was ruled by Fatah. Police are deployed across this city, civilians are forbidden from carrying arms in the street, face masks are banned and Hamas police are quick to respond to complaints.
Carjackings, kidnappings and violent family disputes, common under Fatah, have declined significantly under Hamas. Shops that used to close early in the evening now stay open past midnight. And though they are still being trained, Hamas’ approximately 8,000 police officers have a more visible presence in Gaza than did Fatah’s 15,000-member security police.
The blockade of Gaza, in place since Hamas took over last June, has brought the strip to the verge of economic collapse. The World Bank says the unemployment rate in Gaza is 30 percent and the United Nations says about 80 percent of Gazans live below the poverty line.
Enrollment in U.N. food programs has risen to nearly 1.2 million people, according to John Ging, the head of the U.N. relief agency’s operations in Gaza.
Israel has heralded the embargo as part of a strategy to weaken Hamas, whose military units regularly fire Kassam rockets at Israeli civilian population centers.
But the blockade, which has support from the United States and the European Union, has had little impact on reducing attacks from Gaza against Israelis. And in Gaza, support for Hamas has grown, not declined, according to polls.
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California