Hamas were supposed to take over the security services after their 2006 election victory, but under US pressure Abu Mazen didn’t do so.
Now that Hamas are finally responsible for Gaza’s security, they seem to be doing a bang-up job of cracking down on crime. Mahmoud Abbas’s police couldn’t free Alan Johnston in nearly 4 months; Hamas freed him within a month of taking over the police. In dramatic style too, with Hamas police arresting key members of the kidnapping group, interrogating them to find the location of the hostage, and then taking decisive action by surrounding the place he was being held and forcing the release.
There have been a lot of other stories about Hamas police bringing the type of laq and order that Mahmoud Abbas was unwilling to bring his people. Hamas raids on unlicenced arms, Hamas raids on drugs, Hamas raids on criminal gangs.
Hamas seem to be successfuly playing their cards the only way they can to win out in the long-run : aware that while they control Gaza, it will be cut off from development, they are gambling that Palestinians prefer stagnation but with the peace & security that Hamas bring, instead the development but with chaos and crime that Mahmoud Abbas and his international supporters would prefer to inflict.
Five days after the release of the BBC journalist Alan Johnston, another high-profile hostage was freed today from the Gaza Strip - a lioness called Sabrina.
She was found malnourished and with four missing teeth during a Hamas raid on the hideout of a criminal gang. Sabrina was returned to Gaza zoo - from where she was seized in November 2005 - and was being fed on minced meat to restore her strength.
Sabrina was only a few months old when she was kidnapped along with two Arabic-speaking parrots. The director of the zoo offered a reward for her return, but there had been little word about her whereabouts and growing concern about her safety.
Sabrina’s captors were reported to be charging people 50p to be photographed beside her.
The animal’s kidnapping was a story that Johnston himself covered before he was seized in March.
It was thought Sabrina was taken as a show of strength by the gang. Her brother Sakher fought off the kidnappers.
At the time of her capture, Johnston told the BBC’s website that human abductions in the Gaza Strip usually ended with the victim being freed quickly and unharmed.
Johnston was released last week in good health after 114 days. Sabrina was held for more than 20 months, and recovered only after an exchange of fire between Hamas militiamen and the gang.
As well as the two-year-old lioness, Hamas seized drugs and a weapons cache that had been the target of the raid. There was no word on the Arabic-speaking parrots.
The releases of both Johnston and Sabrina have been credited to Hamas taking control of Gaza.
Sabrina was reunited today with Sakher at Gaza zoo. “We will start a long, arduous treatment to ensure she can survive,” said the zoo’s vet, Soud al-Shawaa. “She will only eat minced meat from now on so we feel sorry for her … They should punish the criminals who did this to her.”
Zoos have repeatedly been caught up in unrest in Gaza. In 2004 several animals were killed when Gaza’s previous zoo, in the border town of Rafah, was destroyed by the Israeli army.
In the West Bank town of Qalqiliya in 2002, three zebras died of tear gas inhalation and a giraffe was killed during a riot against Israeli security forces.