"Whoever Speaks Gets Beaten"

More evidence of the reality of life under Hamas governance has emerged this week. On Monday, Palestinian Media Watch posted a short video featuring four Gazan civilians protesting about Hamas stealing the humanitarian aid that is pouring into the Gaza Strip.

While the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court is accusing Israel of using starvation as a tactic, by restricting the flow of aid into the Strip, civilians in Gaza place the blame squarely on Hamas for seizing the aid and refusing to distribute it correctly.

One Gazan woman said that, despite them seeing this abuse of aid every day, they cannot speak up about it because if they do they get beaten.

That accusation corresponds exactly with the report by Human Rights Watch in 2018 into the behaviour of both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority as governing organisations. It is titled, ‘Two Authorities, One Way, Zero Dissent. Arbitrary Arrest and Torture Under the Palestinian Authority and Hamas’

While many in the world claim that the formation of a Palestinian state will solve the conflict in the Middle East, recent Fatah broadcasts reveal that there is ongoing division between the two main factions of the Palestinians.

The Fatah terrorist group recently raised the important question of what Hamas has done with the billions of dollars of aid money that flooded into the Gaza Strip in recent years, accusing Hamas’ leaders and institutions of taking billions for themselves instead of helping the people.

This ongoing hatred between these two rival groups among the Palestinian people reveals the uncomfortable fallacy of any prospect of peace with a Palestinian state.