Israel Matzav

Hope and change? Gazans tiring of Hamas

Is the average Gazan starting to understand that Hamas is responsible for his miserable existence?

In the next-door tent, bitterness against Hamas is brewing. Many Gazans do not accept the party’s official view that the war was a great victory. Instead, many now blame Hamas for recklessly dragging them into a futile war that devastated their already beleaguered territory. “Where is Ismail Haniyeh?” cries a Gazan, referring to Hamas’s prime minister. “Why hasn’t he come here to see how we live? I lost my home. Why? For Hamas to succeed! It has destroyed Gaza. That’s a fact.”

Now Jabaliya’s homeless people seem to pin their hopes on a Palestinian unity government. If it were formed, they say Israel would be forced to lift its siege. But the rival parties have yet to make a reconciliation agreement stick, after nearly two years of fierce division.

Israel’s new government continues to link the ending of the blockade not only to the removal of Hamas as Gaza’s government but also to the release of Gilad Shalit, an abducted Israeli soldier who has spent nearly three years in captivity in Gaza. The new government sounds even less likely than the previous one to make the concessions, including the freeing of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, that might clinch a deal. A Palestinian painter in Jabaliya has painted a mural of Corporal Shalit as a young man next to images of how he would look, grey and grizzled, after another 30 years in captivity. “If I saw Shalit,” says a Jabaliya resident, “I would just tell him to go back home to his country!”

I wonder how widespread these feelings of disgust with Hamas are in Gaza.

I haven't seen too many moonbat-laden yachts trying to get there lately.

Heh.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:43 AM