MIDEAST: Israel Targets Hamas Orphanages

By Peter Hirschberg

JERUSALEM, Jul 15 (IPS) - Shopping malls. Schools. Medical centres. Charities, orphanages. Soup kitchens. These are the latest targets in the campaign the Israeli military is waging against Hamas in the West Bank.

Israeli military officials have identified Hamas's civilian infrastructure in the West Bank as a major source of the Islamic group's popularity, and have begun raiding and shutting down these institutions in cities like Hebron, Nablus and Qalqilyah.

Last week, troops focused their efforts in Nablus, raiding the city hall and confiscating computers. They also stormed into a shopping mall and posted closure notices on the shop windows. A girls' school and a medical centre were shut down in the city, and a charitable association had its computers impounded and documents seized.

This policy, officials say, is meant to deny the Islamic group, which is committed to Israel's destruction, the ability to use these institutions as a pipeline by which money is channelled to finance attacks on the Jewish state. But the main goal of this campaign is to stem Hamas's growing popularity in the West Bank, and ensure it does not seize control of the area as it did in Gaza a year ago, when its forces vanquished the more moderate Fatah movement headed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

In Gaza, Hamas was able to capture the hearts and minds of the residents not just because it offered an alternative to the corruption-tainted Fatah leadership, but also because its network of schools, clinics, summer camps, after-school activities and charitable associations provided impoverished Gazans with the type of institutions and welfare alternatives that the Palestinian Authority failed to.

Continued . . .