Life in the Gaza Strip
After two weeks of Hamas, a tense quiet in Gaza.
from the June 28, 2007 edition
Page 3 of 4
Despite Wednesday's violence, Gaza these days can sometimes feel calmer than normal. The shooting between Fatah and Hamas militants has ended. Residents are enjoying visiting large swaths of beachfront that had once been closed off taken over and "privatized" by Fatah kingpins. Some people are returning to work, while students take their makeup exams.
And yet, there has been a sea change here, and many people are still trying to decide which is more troubling: a Gaza Strip wracked not just by Israeli versus Palestinian violence but also Palestinian-on-Palestinian violence, as it was before, or a Gaza under the thumb of Hamas.
Abu Suhayid, a policeman who alternates between untangling traffic jams outside police headquarters and sitting at his guard post reading the Koran, brags that Hamas's ascendency is already bringing stability. There's no imposition of strict sharia law, but subtle changes are evident.
A man his in mid-20s who sports a full beard – unseen on Palestinian policemen in the past but rapidly becoming part of the uniform – says he's also traded in his all-black militants' attire for the blue uniform that Hamas superiors issued him.
"We are here to protect our people. Abbas used to say that we're the 'black militias,' but we are much purer than them," he says. "We haven't killed any of our people. We killed only the corrupt people who hole the peoples' resources and put them in their own bank accounts."
Seeing a reporter, a small group of civilians gather to eavesdrop. One of them shakes his head and interrupts.
"Yeah, but you killed innocent people," charges the young man, yelling at Mr. Suhayid. "People who had nothing to do with Fatah or Hamas." The rest of the crowd looks at him with surprise, but Suhayid brushes it off with a smile and a religious benediction.
"God bless them," he says. "They were not targets, but they were stuck in the crossfire. God keep them," he repeats, in an oft-said praise for the departed, referring to the afterlife.
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