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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| Hamas court halts distribution of major daily in Gaza |
| 2008-02-11 |
| GAZA CITY - A Hamas court has banned the distribution in the Islamist-run Gaza Strip of the Al-Ayyam newspaper, considered close to the rival Palestinian Authority, officials from the daily told AFP on Sunday. “Today I received a letter from a Hamas court, which said that the court decided to ban distribution and publication as of February 10,” said Sami al-Qishawi, director of the paper’s Gaza office. Al-Ayyam, which is sent to the Gaza Strip every day after being published in the West Bank political capital of Ramallah, is considered close to the Palestinian Authority headed by president Mahmud Abbas, who leads Hamas’s secular rival Fatah. Qishawi said the daily only received the copy of the ruling on Sunday afternoon and planned to proceed with distribution as usual on Monday despite the order. “We plan to work normally and will see if Hamas moves to confiscate” the newspaper, he said. No comment on the ruling was immediately available from Hamas. The editor of the daily, Abdelnasser Annajar, said the decision ”proves that Hamas refuses to accept others and that they continue to prevent the freedom of the press, just like we have warned.” He told AFP that the court ruling apparently came in response to a complaint by several Hamas members of parliament after the daily published a cartoon that they said portrayed them in an unflattering light. The cartoon’s author, Paha Bokhari, shrugged off the complaints about his drawing. “They considered that I drew them as monkeys. I didn’t draw them as monkeys. If they see themselves as monkeys, that’s their problem,” he told AFP. |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #1 now if they could just halt Doonesbury |
| Posted by: Frank G 2008-02-11 06:40 |