A weakened Hamas clings on to the people's support in Gaza

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/02/weakened-hamas-support-gaza

Version 0 of 1.

Amid the glass, twisted metal and shattered concrete lie exercise books and exam papers. An entire wall appears to have been flung 100 metres across a lawn. To one side, someone has placed twisted metal shards – the remains of the Israeli missile which removed almost the entire front of the four-storey administration block of Gaza City's Islamic University in the early hours of Saturday.

"This is simply a place for learning. There is no reason at all for striking it," said Ramir Rahmi, 35, who works in the public relations office of the university, where 22,000 students follow courses ranging from information technology to engineering.

The Israeli military, however, took a different view. "In the past 24 hours, we struck over 200 terror targets in Gaza, including a weapons development centre located in the Islamic University," it said on Twitter.

Such conflicting claims have been a constant feature of this 26-day conflict – and the 27-year history of the Harakat al Muqawama Islamiya (Hamas, "zeal" in Arabic). Though occasionally visible on the ground earlier in the conflict, officials and fighters from Hamas have been underground, figuratively and literally, for weeks now, inhabiting the extensive tunnel system constructed over decades but heavily reinforced since the last war with Israel in 2012.

The result has been an almost invisible enemy well-hidden from Israel's massive armoury. By Saturday night 1,660 people had been killed in the war and more than 8,000 injured. Eighty per cent of these, the UN says, are civilians, and the dead include hundreds of children. The rest are combatants. Three civilians and 61 soldiers have been killed in Israel.

Among other targets, recent Israeli air strikes have systematically hit buildings connected with Hamas, or seen as important to its prestige and power. The Islamic University was founded by Ahmed Yassin, the paraplegic Islamist ideologue who built Hamas out of an earlier Islamist organisation when Palestinians rose up in 1987. The dual military-social function of the group is reflected in its organisation, with its political, social and military wings.

One aim of the Israeli strikes on targets such as the university, some analysts maintain, is to undermine support for the organisation among the general public in Gaza. Even in peacetime the popularity of Hamas, which seized de facto control of Gaza in 2007 after winning a surprise victory in Palestinian elections in 2006, is hard to judge. In war it is almost impossible.

"In Gaza many people are of coursevery angry at Israel for the destruction here [but] some are questioning the armed struggle of Hamas too … but no one is speaking out against Hamas in the middle of a conflict, they would be seen as traitors," said Mukhaima Abu Saada, a Gaza-based analyst.

Despite the devastation, some believe Hamas could gain from the conflict. Indeed, one reason for the war may be the weakness of the organisation, hit economically by the Israeli "siege" of Gaza and by regional realignments that deprived it of long-term support from Damascus and Tehran as well as more recent backing from fellow Islamists in Cairo. A particular problem was its inability to pay 40,000 government employees. Just months ago, Hamas was forced to agree to a Palestinian unity government and cede sole control of Gaza, at least in theory. But the war has changed the situation.

"They have taken the centre stage of Palestinian politics. The US, the UN, other players are trying to convince them to agree a ceasefire. They are the main player," said Abu Saada.

There is evidence that Hamas has gained substantial, if possibly temporary, popularity in the occupied West Bank, historically the stronghold of their rivals, Fatah. Hamas officials deny such political motives.

"We are fighting now because the people want us to do so. And I don't think the stand of our people will change. We have lost a big number of Palestinians but before the war 1.8 million [the population of the Gaza Strip] were dying slowly because of the siege imposed by the Israelis. It is difficult but we have to survive," said Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza.

Since Hamas, regarded as a terrorist group by the US, UK, EU and others, took power in Gaza, Israeli authorities have imposed a tight blockade of its borders with the territory, citing security concerns. Egypt also imposed restrictions. Hamas has a history of brutal attacks within Israel and has fired nearly 3,000 rockets across the border in recent weeks.

Mustafa Sawaf, former editor of a Hamas-affiliated newspaper, said: "The people are ready to stand more and support the resistance. If the people have paid with 1,500 martyrs already why not another 1,500 for our freedom?"

As repeated booms of air strikes and shelling continued to shake Gaza City, most people preferred to voice support for the Islamist movement. "They are the resistance, and there is a war," said George, a grocer. Opposite his shop, ambulances lined up outside the al-Shifa hospital, one of the few medical facilities still functioning, waiting for the next influx of casualties.