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Gaza citizens accuse Hamas militants : «They wouldn’t let us leave our homesand they were shooting from there »GAZA
- «Leave, leave now! Do you want the Israelis to kill us all? Do you want tosee our children dying under the bombs? Take away your weapons and missiles fromhere now! », Gaza citizens were begging Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants. The bravest among them got organized and blocked access doors to their courtyards,nailed wooden boards to the gates of apartment buildings, and blocked in a mad rushthe staircases to the highest roofs. But overall, the guerrilla paid attention to no one.«Betrayers, collaborators, spies of Israel and Fatah, cowards. The holy war soldierswill punish you. In any case you will all die like us. By fighting against Zionist Jewswe will all go to paradise, aren’t you happy to die all together? » they were told.Eventually, Hamas militants managed by force to break into Palestinians’ houses, andhide in their apartments, inside hospitals’ rooms, in UN buildings, in schools and theyeven used ambulances to move from one place to another.Sometimes Hamas militants were shooting people who, while trying to save their ownfamilies from the streets, happened to be on their way. Abu Issa, 42 years old, fromTel Awa, claims that «Hamas militants tried intentionally to provoke the Israelis. Itwas often young men of 16 or 17 years old armed with a machine gun. They could notdo anything against tanks and jets. They knew they were weaker. But they wantedthem to shoot at our houses so they could later accuse them of war crimes.» He’sechoed by his cousin, Um Abdallah, 48 years old: «Basically all the highest buildingsthat were targeted in Gaza, as the Dogmoush, Andalous, Jawarah, Siussi hadlaunching pads on the roof and they were used as strategic surveillance points for Hamas. Hamas put Qassam’s launching pads next to the UN building that burned andthey did the same with buildings in villages next to the border which were thensavagely devastated by the mad and punitive fury of the Zionists». The names of Palestinians witnesses that agreed to talk to us are not their real names. It was veryhard to interview them, since everyone is scared of Hamas and their control over the population.Whoever tries to tell a different story from the one told by
 
the «muhamawa» (Theresistance) is immediately accused to be «amil», a collaborationist and therefore he or she pays the prize with his or her own life. Had Israel or Egypt allowed foreign journalists to enter immediately, it would have been easier. Local journalists are oftenthreatened by Hamas: «This is not new, in the Middle East, Arab societies do not havea cultural tradition of human rights. This was true under Arafat, when the press was persecuted and censored. With Hamas the situation is even worse. », claims EyadSarraj, a well known psychiatric from Gaza city. And there’s another matter which is becoming more evident, by visiting clinics, hospitals and the families of victims of Israeli fire. The truth is that their numbers appear to be much lower than theapproximately 1.300 dead, and 5.000 wounded reported by Hamas and repeated byUN officials and the local Red Cross: “the dead could be no more than 500 or 600 andmostly youngsters between the age or 17 and 23 that have been drafted and literallysent by Hamas literally to be massacred”, we are told by a doctor from Shifa Hospital,who categorically refuses to be quoted, his life is at risk. Even local journalistsconfirm this information. “We have flagged this matter to Hamas’ leaders. Why dothey insist on inflating the numbers of victims? It is also strange that NGO’s,
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