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Tuesday’s report details firsthand accounts of several Gazans who say they are doing everything they can to protect themselves and their families from becoming human shields for Hamas militants.

Nasser al-Zaanin, for example, was forced to flee his home in northern Gaza in October, and relocated to a school that had been turned into a shelter in the town of Deir al-Balah, along with his adult sons and grandchildren. When al-Zaanin arrived at the shelter, he helped set up a system of committees to improve life for families who had taken refuge by overseeing the distribution of food, water and medical needs. They also established one hard and fast rule: no armed men allowed in the compound.

“All the families agreed,” said al-Zaanin, who once worked as a civil servant for the Palestinian Authority in Gaza. “We simply want to save all families, women and children and not let there be any potential threat against us because of the existence of police and members of the Hamas government.”

  • @fukhueson
    18•3 months ago

    This is a rather significant move on their part. Hamas has a proclivity to quash dissent and the civilians must know what kind of risk this puts them in.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Gaza_economic_protests

    In July and August 2023, thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip took to the streets to protest chronic power outages, poor economic conditions in the territory, and Hamas’s taxation of stipends to the poor paid by Qatar. The rallies, organized by a grassroots online movement called “Alvirus Alsakher” (The mocking virus), were a rare public display of discontent against the ruling Hamas government. Hamas bars most demonstrations and public displays of discontent.

    https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2019/03/gaza-hamas-must-end-brutal-crackdown-against-protesters-and-rights-defenders/

    Hamas security forces’ violent crackdown against peaceful Palestinian protesters, activists, human rights workers – including an Amnesty International worker – and local journalists must be immediately halted and investigated, said Amnesty International.

    Hundreds of protesters have been subjected to beatings, arbitrary arrest and detentions, and torture and other forms of ill-treatment since 14 March, when Palestinians took to the streets across the Gaza Strip to protest against the rising cost of living and deteriorating economic conditions under the Hamas de facto administration.