The beginning of Hamas’ end?

The natives of Gaza are getting very, very tired of Hamas tyranny and brutality.

As the mourners sat on a long row of plastic chairs in the alley next to Ibrahim’s home, his father was too distraught to join in the increasingly political family discussion raging round him about the meaning of Monday’s events. “He went to the rally and he did not come back,” he said. “He’s a kid. He had no weapons or anything else. I blame the security forces. They’re the ones supposed be in charge of security.”

He meant the uniformed Hamas men who had opened fire. But other relatives were less reticent. “Even the Israelis do not do this,” said Ibrahim’s uncle, Jihad Auda, 52, adding of the rally: “It was like a party, a wedding. They know that these weapons will kill. Why do they use it against their own people?”

Mr Auda was also highly sceptical of the Hamas explanation that its force had been first fired on by Fatah gunmen posted at the nearby al Azhar university – denied both by the rally’s organisers, officials of the Fatah-linked university, and students who had been on the campus at the time. Even if it were true, he said “they should react by shooting at the people who are shooting them, not by shooting at the masses”.

More tales of barbarism:

Khaled al Nouri, 18, his head heavily bandaged, took refuge from the gunfire in the electoral commission building. He said: “When I came out, a policeman hit me. I said, ‘Why are you hitting me? I have no AK-47.’ But he got other policemen and they hit me again. I am not Fatah and Hamas. I just went to support my president who died three years ago. I liked him.”

[…] Dr Walid abu Ramadan, the medical director at the Al Quds hospital, said that apart from a few women suffering from hysteria and shock, almost all the 40 injured had bullet wounds. Nearby, Taher Nasser, 20, was lying on a stretcher as a friend held a drip for him. He said: “We were shouting ‘Abu Ammar, Abu Ammar’ [Yasser Arafat’s nom de guerre] and Hamas started throwing sound grenades. Then I got shot in the back. They were shooting from the Islamic University.”

Hamas may very well have gone one step too far. I don’t think they can continue to keep the populace beaten down. There aren’t any jobs, and the people aren’t fools. They know who’s keeping the crossings closed, and how—because they know the mortars are being fired by Hamas. And then we have this very damning article in Ha’aretz.

“Armed Hamas policemen who were stationed in the streets and watching the masses of people marching toward the square, gazed down at the ground. Out of shame. They saw themselves the way the marchers to the memorial rally for Yasser Arafat saw them – like Israeli policemen on the first Land Day in Israel. It was women whose votes had led to the defeat of Fatah in 2006, so it was significant now that many women came to the rally. I saw one woman go up to an armed policeman and dare him: Kill me, you Shi’ite.”

[…] “The masses who came to the rally did not come for Abu Amar [Arafat] or for Mohammad Dahlan, or because they were promised NIS 200 or a phone card. They came out of hatred for Hamas,” says the former movement activist. A friend of his, who has remained a Hamas activist, agrees: “There has been a consolidation among some of the Fatah activists, because of anger and hatred for Hamas, after mistakes of ours that are impossible to ignore.”

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Palestinians don’t paint giant arrows and signs saying “Hamas this way” when Ehud Barak brings in the IDF to finally clean out the terrorists’ nest.