Miad

🚨URGENT: Hamas militias in Gaza barred engineer Ahmed Al-Talouli from working with the Palestinian Ministry of Public Works and Housing to help provide tents for displaced families during the winter storm. They forced him to sign a pledge not to carry out any ministry-related work in Gaza. After being threatened today, he deleted his post. The Palestinian Authority, through its Ministry of Public Works and Housing and in partnership with UNDP, launched a project to establish camps using durable fiberglass shelter units. Yet just one day before the rainstorm, Hamas arrested the ministry’s engineers and crews, forced them to sign pledges not to work in Gaza except through Hamas, and confiscated the tents. Hamas is not only failing to help Gaza’s people face the winter storm; it is actively preventing others from helping them. This story has been completely ignored by pro-Palestinian activists and media in the West. Because Hamas is responsible for this abuse, they have chosen to stay silent.

For more than three years, much of the pro-Palestinian movement in the West has refused to say a word about Hamas’s abuses against Palestinians in Gaza: killings, shootings in the legs, broken limbs, extortionate taxes, kidnappings, and a reign of fear. Those abuses were met with silence. Worse, anyone who dared to speak out was smeared, threatened, and intimidated. Too often, it worked. People went quiet. Now, as rainstorms batter Gaza, displaced families are suffering without adequate tents or shelter, and with no relief in sight. Israel bears responsibility for the devastation in Gaza. But Hamas bears responsibility too, and it wants the world to look only at Israel. Hamas is detaining ministry engineers and others trying to help displaced families, then forcing them to sign pledges that they will work only through Hamas. The goal is simple: to control who helps, how they help, and who gets the credit, tightening its grip on people’s lives even as they drown in mud and floodwater. More than three years of devastation have passed, and Hamas has yet to acknowledge its role or apologize for what Palestinians have endured. Instead, it keeps terrorizing people, exploiting their suffering, and crushing anyone who dares to challenge its rule. Even Palestinians in Gaza are not spared these attacks and labels. When people inside Gaza speak out about how Hamas is deepening and exploiting their suffering, they are attacked, branded traitors and collaborators, and put in danger. Those leading the attacks are the same voices who stayed silent about Hamas’s crimes. They claim to stand with Palestinians, yet they turn on the very Palestinians who live under Hamas and tell the truth about it.