According to a variety of news sources, Hamas (the governing entity of the Gaza Strip) has compiled a list of people who are "collaborators" with the Israeli government. True to their "progressive" nature, Hamas has given people on the list have until April 11 to turn themselves in, or they will be pursued without mercy.
To "sweeten" the deal:
anyone on this list of collaborators who hands themselves in to the authorities by 11 April will not be interrogated or imprisoned. (Author's note: Press TV reports that these cases will be "settled quietly"). It also offered a monthly salary to the informer's families.
...
and we will provide them with information to make sure they can make right their mistakes and thus protect resistance fighters.
So
what happens if you don't turn yourself in?
During the fighting in November, Hamas executed seven people in the streets of Gaza, some of them summarily, for collaboration, even though some of them still had appeals of their convictions and death sentences pending in court. Fourteen other people have been convicted of collaboration and executed over the past three years.
According to the family of one of the those accused of collaborating:
ALHELOU: During the eight-day war, six Palestinians who were suspected of spying for Israel were kidnapped from their prison and killed by masked gunmen, who then chained the body of one of the alleged collaborators to a motorcycle and dragged them throughout the main streets of Gaza City. Following the incident, Mousa Abu Marzouq, Hamas's deputy leader, condemned what he described [as] the unlawful killing, adding that punishing collaborators, and especially those involved in the killing of leaders of Palestinian resistance groups, must only be carried out in accordance with the law and through the legal procedures.
...
WIFE OF EXECUTED COLLABORATOR (VOICEOVER TRANSL.): My husband spent three years in prison. The manner in which he was killed and dragged was inhumane. How would his three daughters and two sons feel when they grow up and see the footage?
ABU REBHI BADAWI, FATHER OF EXECUTED COLLABORATOR (VOICEOVER TRANSL.): My son was accused of being a collaborator. We were shocked when we saw the footage of our son along five others executed and dragged in the streets by motorcyclists. We are still waiting to hear the results of the committee that was formed to investigate who killed him in that way and who gave the order.
Last week, Hamas' progressive bona fides were burnished even further by forcing the cancellation of an UN Relief and Works Agency marathon. According to a Hamas spokesman:
Gaza’s Cabinet secretary, Abdul-Salam Siam, said women running in public violated Palestinian customs.
“We don’t want women and men mixing in the same race,” Siam said. “We don’t want any woman running uncovered.”
Siam said girls could join the event, just not grown women (Authors note: "Say what?"). The race, scheduled for April 10, would have been the third annual marathon in Gaza. Siam would not say why Hamas did not ban women from the two previous races in 2012 and 2011.
According to
Al-Jazeera:
"Hamas claims that women have never been allowed to run, which is not true, then they decided that only local women could run. Then they decided not to let any women participate," a diplomatic source in Gaza told AFP.
The UNRWA
ran the marathon:
"The marathon was an annual event to show solidarity with the Palestinian people and to raise funds for summer camps organized by UNRWA which serve at least 250,000 schoolchildren," said Adnan Abu Hasna, the agency's media adviser in Gaza.
This is not the first time that Hamas and the UNRWA have been
at odds:
But Hamas has frequently squabbled with UNRWA in a rivalry for the hearts and minds of Gaza’s people. Hamas has pressed the U.N. not to organize mixed folkloric dancing for boys and girls; to keep Holocaust education out of its curriculum and it has used harsh rhetoric against previous senior U.N. officials.
Hamas progressive
fun fact:
Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip say safety concerns and social traditions, not Islamic religious values, are the main reason behind a decision to ban women from riding motorbikes and scooters.