Author: Iyad Abuheweila and Isabel Kershner / Source: New York Times
Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters
GAZA CITY — The young tea and coffee vendor from northern Gaza said he was not asking for much. He just wanted to get by.
So the vendor, Amir Abu Oun, 19, joined the peaceful protests in the Jabaliya refugee camp this month against the daily hardships in the impoverished Palestinian coastal enclave.
The first day, he said, security forces from Hamas, the militant Islamist movement that controls the Gaza Strip, beat and punched him. The second day, he was detained and held for five days, during which he said he was slapped, beaten and deprived of food.
“Injustice will not last,” he told the security officers.
According to Mr. Abu Oun, they replied, “We will show you how injustice will last.”
Hamas security forces moved quickly to quell the protests that brought hundreds of people into the streets in at least four camps and towns across Gaza this month to demand better living conditions.
The security forces beat demonstrators, raided homes and detained organizers, journalists and participants, about 1,000 people in all. Along with the uniformed officers, masked, plainclothes Hamas enforcers armed with pistols, batons and wooden rods attacked the protesters, according to witnesses, and prevented journalists and human rights workers from documenting the events.
Since then, many Gazans say they have been living under a pall of fear — not of Israel this time but of Hamas.
“As a young man, my hope of making a future has been killed,” said one of the organizers, Amin Abed, 30, from Jabaliya.
Hamas has since responded to the widespread criticism of its crackdown with statements blaming rival political forces for the unrest and apologizing for its heavy-handed response. In a statement last week, Hamas expressed “regret for any psychological or material harm inflicted on any Palestinian citizens” and called for its security forces to compensate victims.
The protest movement appears to have sprung out of frustration with new taxes imposed by Hamas on food and cigarettes, compounding the usual misery of electricity cuts, poverty and unemployment. Gaza’s economy was already crippled by more than a decade of tough restrictions on the movement of people and goods imposed by Israel, with Egypt’s help, citing security grounds.
Hamas’s rival, the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, has also taken punitive measures against Gaza, including slashing the salaries of its employees there. As conditions in Gaza have become desperate for many, Hamas has been seemingly more focused on its military buildup and fight against Israel than on the bread-and-butter needs of its…
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