Role reversal: Hamas orders Israeli hackette to get outta Gaza

Hat tip to Dion at Checkpoint Jerusalem for the following:

December 01, 2008

It has been more than two years since an Israeli reporter was officially allowed into Gaza.

The Israeli government barred Israeli reporters from going in after Hamas won control of the PA.

Last month, Israeli journalist Amira Hass defied the ban by hitching a ride on a Free Gaza boat from Cypress to Gaza, where she has been reporting on life there for the past two weeks.

Today, Amira wrote to friends to say that she is being kicked out of Gaza - by Hamas.

Hamas, which apparently had minders escort Hass 24-hours-a-day, told her that there were threats to her life and that she had to get out immediately.

Hass scoffed at the Hamas warnings, but has apparently been unable to change their minds.

Hass lived in Gaza for four years, from 1993 to 1997, and wrote about her time there in "Drinking the Sea at Gaza," a pioneering Israeli book about life in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip.

Below is her e-mail to friends:

From: "amira hass"

To:

Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2008

dear all

i was ordered to leave gaza.

The Hamas security - the branch which insisted in "escorting" me 24 hours a day for almost 3 weeks, ordered me today, (sunday) at noon, to leave immediately. The great efforts of my friends yielded only one gesture: i was allowed to extend my stay by some 20 hours, at most, and leave tomorrow (monday).

the reason, needless to say is "security". "The circumstances have changed, it is dangerous and we have recieved specific information that there is a danger to your life. specific my foot. just the same things i heard from Arafat's security back in 1995 and in 1999, only that that ancien regime had some kind of flexibility and disorder - that enabled my (other friends and acquaintances) to reverse the order.

I see no chance for this to happen now.

i am professionally frustrated and personally sad, so sad: i took farewell of some of my friends today - and almost know for sure that we would not be able to see each other for many many years. I was planning to stay till end of January - so many more things to investigate: to learn. I even toyed with the idea of writing a book...

Never mind me. I was allowed a rare visit in prison. Met my friends and was reminded again, more closely, how people, all caged in, are accomodating their life to electricity cuts and threats of imminent israeli incursions, and to the ever-more-loud discourse of istishaad (martyrdom).

amira