UPDATE: Ha’aretz reports that Amira Hass has been detained by Sderot police for having entered the Gaza Strip without a permit.

The Free Gaza movement has been - so far at least - silent on the decision of Hamas to eject the Israeli journalist Amira Hass from Gaza. Hass, who is known for her sympathetic coverage of Palestinian affairs, arrived in the Strip recently on one of the boat trips from Cyprus organized by Free Gaza activists.

Hass sent this email to friends and contacts:

From: “amira hass”

To:

Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2008

dear all

i was ordered to leave gaza.

The Hamas security - the branch which insisted in “escorting” me 24 hours a day for almost 3 weeks, ordered me today, (sunday) at noon, to leave immediately. The great efforts of my friends yielded only one gesture: i was allowed to extend my stay by some 20 hours, at most, and leave tomorrow (monday).

the reason, needless to say is “security”. “The circumstances have changed, it is dangerous and we have recieved specific information that there is a danger to your life. specific my foot. just the same things i heard from Arafat’s security back in 1995 and in 1999, only that that ancien regime had some kind of flexibility and disorder - that enabled my (other friends and acquaintances) to reverse the order.

I see no chance for this to happen now.

i am professionally frustrated and personally sad, so sad: i took farewell of some of my friends today - and almost know for sure that we would not be able to see each other for many many years. I was planning to stay till end of January - so many more things to investigate: to learn. I even toyed with the idea of writing a book…

Never mind me. I was allowed a rare visit in prison. Met my friends and was reminded again, more closely, how people, all caged in, are accomodating their life to electricity cuts and threats of imminent israeli incursions, and to the ever-more-loud discourse of istishaad (martyrdom).

amira

The newspaper for whom Hass writes, Ha’aretz, makes an important point that did not surface in her own email:

The danger to Israelis was highlighted after Palestinian militants, including those from Hamas, captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in a cross-border raid in 2006. Shalit remains in captivity, presumably held by Hamas.

Given that Hass cannot apparently bring herself to mention Gilad Shalit’s continued imprisonment, much less unequivocally condemn the decision of Hamas (and Hamas alone) to curb journalistic freedom, it would be unrealistic to expect the Free Gaza movement, which effectively functions as a solidarity organization for Hamas, to do the same.

It all reminds me of a telling remark I heard from an Israeli professor in Belgrade on one of my early visits to the former Yugoslavia at the beginning of the war there: that just as everyone cares about a people that’s being “screwed” by outsiders, so no-one cares when the same is done by their own leaders.