Desperate Palestinians have begun attacking Hamas security forces as tensions grow in Gaza over chronic shortages of food, water and medicine.
In rare acts of defiance, Gazans hurled rocks at Hamas police who tried to jump a queue for water, and openly insulted Hamas officials, witnesses said.
The clashes suggest that Hamas’s authoritarian rule is beginning to crumble and that locals hold it at least partly to blame for the humanitarian crisis brought about by the Israeli invasion.
The signs of mounting dissent were revealed by Gazans who spoke to the Associated Press news agency.
They described a breakdown in law and order brought on by food shortages, with fights breaking out in bread queues. People were carrying knives and sticks to protect themselves, they said.
One Gazan who was scolded by a Hamas officer for trying to jump a bread queue hit the accuser over the head with a chair, according to an aid worker standing in the line.
“You can tell they are at a breaking point.”
Some Gazans have lost their fear of Hamas, whose security forces normally police the territory with an iron fist.
Over the past few nights in Gaza City, hundreds of residents at one UN shelter decried Hamas each time the group fired salvoes of rockets overhead towards Israel.
They said they wanted the war to end, according to a witness sheltering there with his family.
During a televised press conference on Tuesday, a young man with a bandaged wrist pushed his way through the crowd to disrupt a speech by Iyad Bozum, a spokesman for the Hamas-run interior ministry.
“May God hold you to account, Hamas!” he yelled, shaking his wounded hand.
Approved ~ FS
Arthur Julien
Article URL : https://www.yahoo.com/news/gazans-turn-hamas-food-shortage-120846775.html