The Islamic militant group Hamas has eliminated the last major pocket of armed resistance to 14 months of rule in Gaza, a top security official said on Monday, after Hamas forces seized mortars, mines and grenade launchers from a once powerful Fatah-allied clan.
Dozens of members of the Hilles clan were in Hamas custody, and dozens more, who had fled to Israel to avoid capture, were given asylum in the Fatah-ruled West Bank on Monday.
In a small sign of defiance, a group of Hilles children went outdoors wrapped in yellow Fatah flags, saying they hoped the sight would annoy Hamas troops patrolling the neighborhood on foot and in pickup trucks.
PHOTO: AFP
Saturday’s raid of the Hilles stronghold in Gaza City’s Shijaiyeh neighborhood, which left 11 dead and scores wounded, marked a fresh setback for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the head of Fatah.
Abbas’ leadership in the West Bank had already been weakened by his failure to win concessions from Israel in peace talks. The defeat of the Hilles clan, one of Fatah’s last high-profile bastions in Gaza, underscored Hamas’ tight control, dimming already faint hopes Abbas could ever win back the territory he lost in the bloody Hamas takeover last year.
Abbas still has a base of support in Gaza, including tens of thousands who draw government salaries from the West Bank, but the movement has been stripped of offices, media outlets and, most importantly, its armed forces.
Islam Shahwan, the Hamas police spokesman, said in an interview that the weekend raid — which amounted to the bloodiest Hamas-Fatah fighting since the Gaza takeover — sent a “clear message to all concerned.”
“We do believe this was the last stronghold in Gaza,” he said, referring to potential Hamas opponents among the territory’s myriad clans. “This stronghold had to be uprooted.”
INTERROGATION
Illustrating the extent of Hamas’ control, he said anyone wanted for interrogation from the unruly Dughmush clan, which is frequently involved in street skirmishes, could be summoned with a phone call.
Shahwan said more than 100 Hilles men were in detention and that Hamas forces seized a large weapons stockpile, including mortars, assault rifles, mines and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
The Hilles clan, native to Gaza and one of the largest in the territory, has thousands of members, and about 4,000 live in the Shijaiyeh area, close to Israel’s heavily guarded border with Gaza.
More than 180 clansmen ran toward Israeli positions on Saturday afternoon, when it became clear Hamas was about to take control of the neighborhood. After some delays, in part because of Hamas fire toward the border, Israel let in the Fatah refugees, including wounded men.
A two-day odyssey ensued, with Abbas wavering whether he should allow the refugees to settle in the West Bank. He ruled out the idea on Sunday, arguing that Fatah needs to maintain a presence in Gaza and cannot abandon the territory to Hamas.
As a result, more than 30 Hilles men were sent back to Gaza, and Hamas immediately arrested about half of them. Fearing Hamas retribution, a dozen in that group — still wearing the dark blue coveralls they had been given by Israeli troops — remained in an Israeli-controlled buffer zone just inside Gaza on Monday.
DANGER
The Israeli army decided that those returning to Gaza would face imminent danger and said Hilles men should not be sent back against their will.
In the end, 92 Hilles men, including the 12 who had waited at the border, were taken to the West Bank town of Jericho. Another 60 went back to Gaza voluntarily, 16 remained in Israeli hospitals and 13 were in Israeli custody, the Israeli military said.
After nightfall on Monday, Hilles refugees arrived at an Israeli checkpoint on the outskirts of Jericho. Dressed in training pants and white undershirts, they were searched and then handed over to Palestinian intelligence in Jericho.
Sufian Abu Zaydeh, a Gaza native and former Palestinian Cabinet minister from Fatah, said the forced exile of the Fatah supporters was a sign of Gaza’s desperation.
“When a man stands between two choices: to be killed by his people or to be arrested by his enemy, and he reaches a conclusion that it is better to be arrested by his enemy, it shows you how cruel the situation is in Gaza,” he told Israel’s Army Radio.
POLITICAL PATRIARCHS: Recent clashes between Thailand and Cambodia are driven by an escalating feud between rival political families, analysts say The dispute over Thailand and Cambodia’s contested border, which dates back more than a century to disagreements over colonial-era maps, has broken into conflict before. However, the most recent clashes, which erupted on Thursday, have been fueled by another factor: a bitter feud between two powerful political patriarchs. Cambodian Senate President and former prime minister Hun Sen, 72, and former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, 76, were once such close friends that they reportedly called one another brothers. Hun Sen has, over the years, supported Thaksin’s family during their long-running power struggle with Thailand’s military. Thaksin and his sister Yingluck stayed
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
FOREST SITE: A rescue helicopter spotted the burning fuselage of the plane in a forested area, with rescue personnel saying they saw no evidence of survivors A passenger plane carrying nearly 50 people crashed yesterday in a remote spot in Russia’s far eastern region of Amur, with no immediate signs of survivors, authorities said. The aircraft, a twin-propeller Antonov-24 operated by Angara Airlines, was headed to the town of Tynda from the city of Blagoveshchensk when it disappeared from radar at about 1pm. A rescue helicopter later spotted the burning fuselage of the plane on a forested mountain slope about 16km from Tynda. Videos published by Russian investigators showed what appeared to be columns of smoke billowing from the wreckage of the plane in a dense, forested area. Rescuers in
‘ARBITRARY’ CASE: Former DR Congo president Joseph Kabila has maintained his innocence and called the country’s courts an instrument of oppression Former Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) president Joseph Kabila went on trial in absentia on Friday on charges including treason over alleged support for Rwanda-backed militants, an AFP reporter at the court said. Kabila, who has lived outside the DR Congo for two years, stands accused at a military court of plotting to overthrow the government of Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi — a charge that could yield a death sentence. He also faces charges including homicide, torture and rape linked to the anti-government force M23, the charge sheet said. Other charges include “taking part in an insurrection movement,” “crime against the
RSS