Hamas arrests journalists to "protect against rumors"

CAIRO – 15 May 2017: Hamas arrested 17 Palestinian journalists and activists in April in an unprecedented move to protect against rumors aiming to create chaos in the Gaza Strip, Al-Monitor reported.

They were detained for several hours, and released after pledging not to publish news about internal Palestinian affairs unless it is verified with official sources.

On April 25, Hamas-affiliated al-Majd website, which mainly focuses on security issues, reported that the Hamas security services unveiled a dangerous plan thought up by security and intelligence agencies — without specifying which — to flood Gaza with rumors in order to create a state of confusion and chaos, and disturb security in the Strip, Al-Monitor said.

It’s not the first crackdown campaign launched by Hamas against journalists and activists in Gaza. In 2014, the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate denounced Hamas’s suppressive procedures against journalist Arouba Ayoub Osman. Arouba had written a report about the militarization of mosques in a Lebanese newspaper. Her report angered Hamas and she was summoned to the organization’s media office.

On April 29, Amer Baalousheh, a journalist for Egyptian al-Badil newspaper from Gaza Strip, was abducted from the streets of Beit Lahia. “At approximately 6:30 p.m. on Saturday [April 29], two civilians started following me as soon as I left my home in Beit Lahia. Suddenly, a bus approached me. Gunmen opened the doors and pounced on me along with the two walking behind me. They forced me into the bus and took me to the headquarters of the Internal Security in Jabaliya camp,” Baalousheh told Al-Monitor.

It seems that Journalists and activists pay the price of the Hamas-Fatah political conflict. Of 180 countries surveyed, Palestine came in at 135 in the 2017 World Press Freedom Index, according to Reporters Without Borders.