Grant me martyrdom but not yet: Hamas leaders go underground By MATTHEW GUTMAN
Top leaders of Hamas were nowhere to be found Monday amid the Green Hamas flags and gunmen marching in black baklavas to commemorate the funeral of the group's military wing leader Ahmed Aishtawi.
Hamas leaders including Abdel Aziz Rantisi, Mahmud Al Zahar, and Ismail Hania were not however ducking the Palestinian Authority's much-anticipated crackdown on terrorist organizations, but the far more terrifying hellfire missiles of Israel's Apache helicopters.
The PA reported on Sunday that it was launching a series of crackdowns on militant activity in the Gaza Strip, that it intended to shutter several Hamas-linked institutions, prevent arms smuggling, and arrest a limited number of militants. But there was little evidence of such anti-terror activity on the ground Monday aside from Sunday's photo-op in which PA police blocked three smugglers tunnels.
Despite declarations to the contrary, PA security chiefs in Gaza on Monday said they had no orders to arrest, subdue or fight Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders who threaten the PA's own authority.
In an effort to deflect criticism that the PA is doing nothing to clamp down on groups like Hamas, one officer in the Preventive Security Apparatus recounted that his forces have worked lately to arrest "several drug dealers, who harm the Palestinian economy."
The official, Yusef Aisa Abu Khaled, the Director of the Analysis Administration, effectively the head of doctrine and planning for Preventive security, added that the PA had intended to close Hamas charities, but following Israel's assassination of popular Hamas leader Ismail Abu Shanab, public opinion on the streets had turned against the PA, rendering such an endeavor "impossible."
Both Abu Khalid and Maj. Gen, Sa'eb Ajez, the Commander of the Northern Gaza Strip's PA National Security Service, acknowledged that the PA understands that groups like Hamas present an existential threat to its government. "Palestinian security views Hamas and Israel in the same way," as a security threat, said Ajez.
Yet both officers noted that the PA is unwilling to move against Hamas because the it is neither physically ready nor willing to engage the terrorist organizations in an open battle, though PA National Security officers are "trying to stop mortar and Kassam fire into Israel."
Instead, Ajez and Abu Khaled noted that the PA hopes to transform "militant organizations into political organizations," which they believe might willingly dismantle themselves.
Israeli security sources have long condemned the plan, the only one the PA has proffered, arguing that the chances of Hamas dismantling itself are "zero".
The Gaza street is meanwhile being sucked further into a power vacuum; about the only mark of authority in the 340 sq. km. Strip is the thudding sound of IDF helicopter rotors, which sends militants scurrying into alleyways. Less than a kilometer from Aisa's office on Muhafaza Street sit the charred remains of Abu Shanabs station wagon a monument to Israel's promise to take out the terrorists if the PA does not.
According to Ajez, the PA's critical problem arises from its chronic "lack of proper organization." Ajez' National Security forces continues to be ruled by PA Chairman Yasser Arafat, while Muhammed Dahlan ostensibly holds the reigns over the PA's Preventive Security service. There is little if any cooperation between the two and what little cooperation exists often founders over competition for funds and materiel, as well as ideology.
Hamas leaders, who, like Rantisi, are almost ubiquitous on Arabic Satellite channels, have fled into hiding all save for the group's spiritual leader Shiekh Ahmed Yassin, an ailing paraplegic. With the knowledge that the IDF tracks them through their cellphone use, most have change their numbers. When asked at the rally by a Palestinian journalist for Ismail Hania's new phone number, the Hamas leader's son simply shrugged, replying, "even I don't know it."
Looking haggard, Ajez worried that the PA was rapidly losing its youth to Hamas, and its grip on power. "Do you know," he said, "that there is not one public [swimming] pool in all of Gaza. There are no fields for our kids to play in." He added that many Gazans, a population of which almost 50% is under the age of 18, are turning to Hamas to "make their living."
When asked why the PA has not built institutions to keep the youth busy, Ajez, unusually critical of his own government, stated that "the PA has always consumed and not produced. The PA provides security and law and it collects taxes," while Hamas provides destitute locals with badly needed social services. And a chance to become martyrs.
The PA dared not disrupt the funeral ceremony, attended partially by gunmen who totted mortar shells with their fins poking out the top of their backpacks. In the background the funeral chant leader boasted that revenge will come to Israel through the group's "improved efficiency in Kassam rockets and explosives."
The masked gunmen carrying the mortars had only one sentence for the press: "Death and Allah are one, we will keep fighting Israel until martyrdom
