CAIRO: A Hamas-organized demonstration to protest the closure of the Rafah crossing went sour Saturday when a 17-year-old Palestinian was shot dead as protestors attempted to rush the border.
Hamas had organized the demonstration where tens of thousands of people marched to the closed Rafah crossing. Chaos ensued when some of the protestors attempted to reach the crossing itself. At that point, Hamas gunmen fired shots into the air to repel them.
The Arabic web portal AlBawaba.com quoted Hamas security spokesman Ihab Al-Ghusain as saying, “A child was injured and he is in critical condition. We are investigating the incident to determine where the shot came from.
The previous day, an Egyptian in Rafah, Eissa Said Attiya, was shot by a stray bullet from Gaza when Hamas and Fatah gunmen clashed.
Attiya, 27, was wounded while walking down a street near his house on the Egyptian side of the border. He was wounded as a result of Fatah protestors who gathered after Friday prayers in Gaza to protest against Hamas practices in the Strip.
Hamas remains isolated since its takeover of Gaza two months ago, with Rafah – the only crossing point that does not involve Israel – closed since Hamas wrestled control of the Strip from Fatah.
CEO of the Palestinian Ramattan News Agency Bureau in Cairo Qassem Ali does not believe that this isolation has weakened Hamas in any way.
He told Daily News Egypt that “the only ones suffering from isolation are the Palestinian people. Hamas is in a better position than it ever was. It has everything, the institutions, the government framework, the weapons . many things it did not posses when it was an opposition group.
“It is the Palestinians living in poverty who are losing in Gaza, they are the ones who are paying the price, he added.
Despite the rise of Fatah opposition in Gaza, Ali did not believe that Hamas was in danger of being toppled.
“Hamas still controls Gaza; it has the military might to do so. There might be opposition within its territory but is that an indication that it is losing control? I think not. It is an exaggeration to believe otherwise, he said.
Ahmed Abdel-Rahman, spokesman for Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas, stated after the most recent Fatah-Hamas clashes that the people of Gaza protested “to topple the Hamas movement and will not stop before doing so.
Speaking on Saturday, Abdel-Rahman said, “Yesterday was a new era in the Palestinian national struggle to clean the homeland from Hamas gangs who are not more than agents of the Israeli occupation.
“Hamas and Fatah are dragging the Palestinians to their doom, Ali said, “they are fighting for power, not for the benefit of the Palestinian people.
Ali added, “they are like two tribes that cannot get along. Yet the only solution is that they must learn to live together.
