Palestinian fundamentalist and “jihadist" groups, which are growing like mushrooms in the Gaza Strip as a result of Hamas' policy of guidance in running the area, are providing a number of services to Israel, which claims to be engaged in resistance against these groups. After the Palestinians were successful in attracting international sympathy for the issue of their detainees, forcing Israel to retreat on several occasions, it was difficult for “al-Qaeda in Palestine" to see this battle waged through diplomacy alone, as it remained sidelined. This group offered up the launching of rockets from Gaza, giving Israel the opportunity it had been waiting for, to re-launch its air strikes after a truce that had lasted several months. It gave Israel the pretext to threaten even stronger responses, which might not be long in coming, to distract people from the hunger strike being staged by Palestinian detainees. The rockets were launched by the Consultative Council of Mujahidin, organizationally and intellectually linked to al-Qaeda, and failed to hit their targets or cause the casualties desired. Nonetheless, the incident gave the new Israeli defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, the chance to flex his muscles, hold Hamas responsible for the escalation, and threaten a new war against Gaza, as the Palestinians continue to suffer from the loss of lives and property incurred during the last aggression. However, Hamas is busier with matters that are infinitely more important than bringing the “jihadists" under control, than Israel, and even than the detainees issue. The party's thinkers have discovered a flagrant gap that is apparently hampering the battle to liberate Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, namely co-ed schools. In a bid to avoid the negative impact of such schooling on future generations of Palestinians, which it is preparing to wage the final battle of liberation, Hamas has decided to separate the sexes, beginning at the age of nine. It has also decided to ban male teachers from teaching at girls' schools, even if there is a shortage of female instructors. The decision did not exempt private schools from the move, or those run by Christian groups, or UNRWA. This latter organization was obliged to cancel an annual fund-raising event - an international marathon in Gaza that it was organizing this month - after Hamas insisted on banning women from the race because of this same issue, namely the “immoral" mixing of the sexes. Earlier, Hamas, an outgrowth of the Muslim Brotherhood, imposed Islamic dress codes on female lawyers and students, while banning men from the profession of women's hairdressers. It also empowered its own vice squad to question men and women who walk together in the streets of Gaza and banned women from smoking water pipes, not because such smoking is harmful, but because this habit is the province of men alone. In all of these moves, Hamas believes that the education of young generations is an extremely demanding task, and even more so when it one day tasks these young people with eliminating Israel and building a “modern" Palestinian state. Some believe that the deluge of confrontational fatwas on people in Arab states being ravaged by the Arab “Spring" are mere bubbles that will quickly disappear after Brotherhood-led regimes catch their breath and begin to pay attention to economic, social and political problems, and their relations with the world around them. But what is taking place in Gaza indicates the complete opposite of this. Who knows? Perhaps the Gaza Strip might see a fatwa that bans Palestinian Christians from fighting Israel, because they are “infidels" who believe in the mixing of the sexes. George Habash will probably turn in his grave.
