West Bank Palestinians depicted as a helpless prostitute unable to resist Israeli aggression
Ramallah: A cartoon drawn by a renowned Gazan cartoonist and published by the Hamas-affiliated paper has created an unprecedented uproar in the West Bank and inflamed the rift between the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The cartoon, published in Al Risalah (The Message), has raised tensions between Fatah and Hamas to a new level and has the potential to unite the entire West Bank against the entire Gaza Strip.
West Bank Palestinians demand that Gazans should act in response to the cartoon which depicts a Palestinian woman as a prostitute having an intimate relationship with a Jew who has one hand on her breast and the other on the trigger of a gun targeting her children. The woman, apparently representing West Bank Palestinians, tells a Gazan fighter urging her to resist that she lacks a permit to do so. A Palestinian security official from the West Bank is seen puffing away at a cigarette.
The cartoon shocked West Bank Palestinians, thousands of whom condemned the cartoon and the cartoonist, terming the cartoon a heinous insult to Palestinian women, often depicted as a symbol for the liberation struggle in Palestinian culture.
West Bankers’ harsh criticisms of the cartoon reached the Hamas leadership via members and cadre in the West Bank.
A West Bank official said: “Gazans have not sacrificed much to the Palestinian cause and their sacrifices cannot be compared with those of the West Bank. If Gazans want to be reminded with figures and numbers, we are ready to do it.”
The sources said that Hamas had been struggling to win a long-term truce with Israel and if such a truce was won, Hamas would do whatever it took to preserve it. There is no need to undermine West Bankers and urge them to rise up against the occupation, the sources said. “We are handcuffed in the West Bank. Hamas knows this but what has the free-handed Hamas been doing? Why has there been no resistance in Gaza?” asked the sources and posts on the Facebook pages of angry residents.
The major source of the dispute between Gaza-based Hamas and West Bank-based Fatah is recognition of the Israeli regime. West Bank authorities have recognised Israel and signed security agreements with them in the hope that the regime will one day grant the Palestinians a state. Hamas, however, argues that the agreements have made no progress towards statehood and made the Palestinian National Authority complicit in Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.
Yassin, a Hamas cadre and private photographer of the Deputy of Hamas Political Bureau Esmail Haniya, is wanted in the West Bank and there have been calls to Gazans to act as free people to punish this cartoonist and force him to appear publicly and issue an apology to West Bank Palestinians and the Palestinian woman.
Meanwhile, Hamas’ Interior Ministry spokesman Eyad Al Bazm vowed to impose legal consequences against the cartoonist. “The cartoon humiliates our people and no wise man can ever imagine that the Palestinian people, the pioneers of resistance and struggle against the occupation, be depicted that way,” he said.
West Bank Palestinians said they will wait to see the Hamas response to this issue, pledging that they will ensure that right is done.
