Tamarod movement against Hamas in Gaza fails

Despite official intelligence support from a number of Arab States, including Egypt, the Tamarod movement against the Islamists and Hamas in Gaza has failed.

Tamarod was attempting to replicate in Gaza the experience of the Egyptian Tamarod movement, which with the help of the Egyptian army removed the country’s first democratically elected president in a coup. However the movement has discovered that it is not at all welcome in Gaza.

Tamarod in Gaza chose 11 November, the date marking the ninth anniversary of the death of late Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat, to start its anti-government activities.

Via social media, they called for their supporters to start moving from markets to specially allocated public squares, taking to the streets in protest against, what they called, Hamas oppression in Gaza.

Palestinian police spread along a number of main roundabouts in Gaza, but all day passed without noting any sign of demonstrations anywhere along the whole Gaza Strip.

Hamas spokesperson Salah Al-Bardaweel suggested that the effort had failed because of the “awareness of Palestinians” about the consequences of such an “unethical” movement.

“They saw what happened at the hands of the Tamarod movement in Egypt, which was supported by the army,” he said.

He recalled another Tamarod-like movement against the legitimate government in the Palestinian territories back in 2007. It was supported by the US and Israel, and was carried out by Fatah. They succeeded through violence in the West Bank, but failed in Gaza.

Writer and director of the Future Centre for Studies and Research, Ibrahim Al-Madhoun, remarked that: “Failure was expected because Tamarod had no operators on the ground. All the people who issued the directions were in the West Bank, Egypt and Europe.”