World
Gazan Hamas critic hospitalised after machete attack
Amin Abed was assualted with ‘sticks, clubs and knives’, his father said
July 10, 2024 11:33
Amin Abed was assualted with ‘sticks, clubs and knives’, his father said
July 10, 2024 11:33A Palestinian activist and “outspoken” Hamas critic has insisted that he will not be silenced after he was attacked by a group of men wielding guns and machetes.
Amin Abed, 35, is a well known opponent of the terror group within Gaza.
Earlier this week, he claimed on Facebook that Hamas had created the grounds for Israel’s invasion of the Palestinian territory.
"It was possible for Hamas to say frankly: ‘We are ready to give up the rule of Gaza and withdraw from the scene, in favour of a Palestinian party capable of managing the Strip,’ and thus it could have saved the remaining people and property, and removed the pretexts for this bloodthirsty and devastated occupation,” Abed wrote in a post seen by the JC.
“But it has grown arrogant and arrogant and is fighting with us until the last child amongst us.
"What is important [for Hamas] is that it remains in power in Gaza, and that the authority that has the legal right to rule Gaza does not return.”
Abed added: “Man was destroyed in Gaza and his humanity was violated. 100,000 people died in Gaza and the war has not ended yet. Gaza was destroyed with all its landmarks, economy, buildings and memories.”
On Monday, the activist was kidnapped near his house by a group of five men.
Writing on Facebook, his father, Salah Abed, said “unidentified persons” had taken his son.
"While he was walking towards our house and they assaulted him with sticks, clubs and knives?” he said.
"He is now lying in Al Awda Hospital in the intensive care unit in a difficult health condition. This is the tax of the truth and those who try to uncover the facts and win for the homeland and the oppressed citizen. Silencing policy.”
Speaking to the BBC from hospital after his release from captivity, Abed said taken to a semi-demolished house where he was beaten and called "an agent for Israel" and a "traitor".
The attackers threatened to break his fingers to prevent him from criticising Hamas or the “heroic” October 7 attack online.
Abed said a group of passers-by tried to intervene to prevent the assualt, but were driven away when shots were fired in the air.
Abed told the BBC: “I will not stop using my right to express my rejection of the October 7 attack."
The attackers reportedly claimed they were from Hamas’s security forces.
Hamas’s fascist militias in Gaza kidnapped, beat, and tortured a dear friend and ally, Ameen Abed, a political activist who has long opposed the Islamist group and has been an outspoken critic against October 7 from inside Gaza. That he lost several of his close family members in… pic.twitter.com/a6PSyWVjho
— Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib (@afalkhatib) July 8, 2024
Palestinian human rights activist Ihab Hassan wrote on social media that Abed had suffered fractures in his hands and feet, wounds across his body, and a skull fracture following the brutal attack.
Video footage posted online showss Abed lying on the ground with open wounds on his body and, in a seperate clip, wrapped in bandages and being carried on a stretcher.
"This is what happens when people speak out against Hamas; this is how the group has enforced its ‘resistance’ upon the people of Gaza, who have been hostages to a rotten, violent ideology that cares little for the well-being and interests of the Palestinian people,” said Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, an Atlantic Council fellow who was raised in Gaza City.
"Political violence, oppression, and repression are central pillars of Hamas's rule in Gaza and key foundations upon which the group's ‘resistance’ agenda is built.”
He added: “That [Abed] lost several of his close family members in Israeli airstrikes during the current war, including his beloved cousin whom he helped raise, Shams, did not make a difference for Hamas’s thugs, who were furious that he was escalating attacks against the group’s decision to keep the war going.”
Abed previously organised protests in 2019 against Hamas’s management of Gaza’s economy.
In a statement, Fatah, which governs the West Bank condemned, “the blatant assault on activist Amin Abed in Gaza.”
The "de facto authorities in Gaza" had allowed "criminality" to spread in the territory and are fully responsible for Abed's security, they added.
As the IDF has laid waste to much of Gaza during its campaign against Hamas, civil authority has broken down within the enclave.
The terror group, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, has ruled the territory after seizing power and expelling Fatah in 2007.