|
Trending Topics
|
Hamas Faces a Crisis
(Washington Post) Erin Cunningham - The Islamist Hamas movement, which rules the Gaza Strip, is facing its worst crisis in years as it confronts a severe cash shortage, a loss of regional allies, and no obvious way to ease a blockade that is crippling local living conditions and stoking popular discontent. As it wrestles with this predicament, Hamas is trying to turn up the pressure on Israel by encouraging weekly mass protests along the Gaza border fence. But as the Palestinian death toll in the protests has mounted with each passing week, so has public dismay with the militant group. Some Gazans have complained bitterly that the Hamas-backed protests have produced so many deaths and that living conditions ultimately have not improved. The decline of Hamas's power has marked a stunning turn of fortunes for a movement once seen as an irresistible force in Gaza.