Human Rights Violations No One Talks About
by Khaled Abu Toameh • February 5, 2021 at 5:00 am
Last year, the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank revealed that Hamas was planning to confiscate large areas of privately-owned lands in the Gaza Strip. According to the PA, Hamas formed the Palestinian Land Authority in the Gaza Strip to facilitate "land-theft."
A recent report by the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights documented the death in 2020 of at least 30 Palestinians in various "internal violence" incidents in the Gaza Strip, including six children and four women. Another 155 Palestinians were injured, including 17 children and 19 women.
The ongoing human rights violations by Hamas show that the Islamist movement does not care about reports issued by Palestinian human rights groups such as the Al Mezan Center. The Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip know that they can continue doing anything they want there because the international community only pays attention when there is way to blame Israel.
In 2006, the US and European Union made a mistake by allowing Hamas, whose charter openly calls for the annihilation of Israel, to participate in the parliamentary election. If the Americans and Europeans repeat the same mistake, Palestinians in the West Bank will join their brothers in the Gaza Strip and find themselves also living under Hamas's repressive Islamist regime, which has no respect for human rights.
On January 3, 2021, the Hamas-controlled Palestinian Land Authority (PLA) in the Gaza Strip "removed" three houses -- one of which had been inhabited by a family of three -- and bulldozed about 30 dunums (7.4 acres) of agricultural land in the as-Salam neighborhood west of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt.
The decision to bulldoze the houses and fields -- which came on short notice and did not include direct notifications to those affected by it -- inflicted financial damage on farmers and displaced several Palestinians from their houses, according to the Gaza-based Al Mezan Center for Human Rights.
"The decision also sparked public outrage, with some protesters clashing with [Hamas] police," the center said.
