Maybe Thirteen Years of Hamas Rule is Why Gazans are Committing Suicide - by Khaled Abu Toameh

Hamas, after 13 years of criminal negligence, rejects responsibility for the wellbeing of its people. Astoundingly, it continues to succeed in convincing the world that Israel is to blame for the misery of its own people. This convenient and toxic lie enables it to continue receiving money and weapons from its friends in Iran and Hezbollah to tighten its death grip on the Gaza Strip. For Hamas, jihad (holy war), not a decent life for its people, is what matters. Tragically, it seems that young Palestinians in Gaza are getting the message -- loud and clear.

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
08 July '20..

The Palestinian terror group Hamas is making a serious effort to prevent journalists from reporting about a surge in suicide rates in the Gaza Strip. Hamas does not want the world to know that young men and women living under its rule in the Gaza Strip, have, as a result of economic hardship and oppression, been taking their own lives.

In the past week alone, four Palestinians from the Gaza Strip reportedly committed suicide in separate incidents -- by gunfire, pills, self-immolation, and jumping from a tall building. The suicides have embarrassed Hamas, whose leaders decided to take strict measures to stop the news from leaking to the media.

Thirteen years after its violent takeover of the Gaza Strip, Hamas is still seeking to present a rosy picture of the situation there. Hamas wants to show the world that life for many Palestinians under its Islamic rule and repressive measures is wonderful.

The reality, however, is a bit different. Under Hamas control, the Gaza Strip has suffered from rising unemployment, elevated poverty rates, and a sharp contraction of the private sector.

Since 2017, the Palestinian Authority government in the West Bank has reduced payments for electricity supplied by Israel to the Gaza Strip and cut salaries for its employees, exacerbating the local economic crisis. Since 2014, Egypt's crackdown on the Gaza Strip's extensive tunnel smuggling network has exacerbated fuel, construction material, and consumer goods shortages.

Last year, Palestinian activists took to the streets of the Gaza Strip to protest economic hardship and demand that Hamas provide solutions for soaring unemployment and poverty rates. The protests, held under the banner "We want to live!," were brutally suppressed by Hamas's security forces and militiamen. Hundreds of activists were detained by Hamas, which saw the economic protests as part of a "conspiracy" to "create instability and anarchy" and undermine its dictatorial regime in the Gaza Strip.

One of the organizers of the protests was Sleman Alajoury, a 24-year-old activist and unemployed university graduate from the northern Gaza Strip. Alajoury was detained several times by Hamas for his role in the widespread protests, described as the worst since Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip after toppling the government of PA President Mahmoud Abbas in 2007.

On July 4, one year after the protests were crushed by Hamas, Alajoury's body was discovered inside his home in the Sheikh Zayed suburb in the northern Gaza Strip. His friends and family members said that the young man had committed suicide with a single shot to the head.

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