Hamas violently suppresses Gaza economic protests

Hamas appears to have forcibly suppressed a rare uptick of public dissent in Gaza, beating and arresting scores of people over the past week who were demonstrating against price rises and dire living conditions across the strip.

A group of activists and civil society figures calling itself “We want to live” had planned for a general strike on Thursday. But following riot police attacks since last week, it was not clear if the strike would go ahead.

Hamas rules Gaza, a 140 sq mile territory, while Israel controls the strip’s air, sea and most of its borders. Israel’s military occupies the West Bank, with small enclaves run under the limited autonomy of the Palestinian Authority.

Hamas, which has backed a year-long protest movement along the frontier with Israel, has not shown similar approval for internal criticism.

Over several days during the past week, Palestinians had gathered in multiple locations to rally. They made clear their demands were economic and not an attempt to overthrow their leaders.

Online videos showed officers clubbing unarmed protesters and firing live rounds into the air. Amnesty International said hundreds of people, including journalists attempting to document the rallies, have been subjected to arbitrary arrest and torture.

The rights group said its Gaza-based researcher, Hind Khoudary, has been questioned by the interior ministry “during which four male interrogators subjected her to ill-treatment”. They used abusive language and threatened to prosecute her for spying and working as a foreign agent, Amnesty said.

Nickolay Mladenov, the United Nations envoy to Israel and the Palestinian territories, has criticised the crackdown. “I condemn the Hamas violence in Gaza against protesters, women, children, journalists and human rights activists,” he said.

Hamas has increased taxes on cigarettes and other goods. Basic foods, including some fruits, have trebled in price.

The World Bank says Gaza’s economy is “in free fall”, with youth unemployment hovering around 70%. It primarily blames a crippling decade-long Israeli-Egyptian blockade that severely limits the movement of people and goods into the strip.

Both countries say the restrictions are for security reasons, but UN experts call it collective punishment for Gaza’s roughly 2 million residents. Donald Trump’s drastic cuts to US-funded Palestinian aid programmes have also left many of Gaza’s poorest without vital medical and financial support.

Israel refuses to deal directly with Hamas, preferring to work through its political rival, the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the occupied West Bank, which is still responsible for some aspects of life in Gaza even as it has very limited power there.

In an attempt to pressure Hamas, the PA has cut civil servant salaries for thousands of its employees in the strip and refused at times to pay to buy electricity from Israel for Gaza.

Hamas has dismissed the recent internal protests as a ploy by the PA. In a statement on Wednesday, the group said the PA had a “comprehensive plan” for “generating chaos and creating insecurity in the strip”.

While it dismissed the movement as a “vicious scheme”, it also said it regretted any harm on Palestinian citizens and called “on the security forces in Gaza to compensate for any material or psychological harm”.

The statement said human rights organisations should continue their work and that Palestinians “enjoy the right to peaceful demonstration and to freedom of expression”.

Authorities in Israel, which has for a year responded with lethal force to anti-Israel protests at the Gaza frontier, have seized on the recent rallies to focus attention on Hamas’s failings.

Last month, UN investigators accused Israeli soldiers of intentionally firing on Palestinian civilians. The independent Commission of Inquiry said Israeli forces had killed 189 people and shot more than 6,100 others, with live ammunition in attacks that may amount to war crimes.

Israel’s military claims its forces opened fire to protect against incursions, although the UN investigators said the rallies were “civilian in nature” and the dead included people not “posing an imminent threat”.

Four Israeli troops have been injured during the protest movement, and one soldier was killed by a bullet fired from Gaza.