Who's restricting Gaza egress?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/20/world/middleeast/20gaza.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=hamas%20girl%20exchange&st=cse

The Islamist group that governs Gaza barred a group of students this week from traveling to the United States for a year of study, officials of the group, Hamas, said.

The seven high school students were selected for the Youth Study and Exchange program sponsored by Amideast, an American nonprofit group engaged in international education, training and development activities in the Middle East and North Africa.

The students had won scholarships to attend school in the United States, where they were to stay with host families.

“A 15-year-old girl cannot spend a year in America without a supervisor,” said Mohammed Awad, the Hamas foreign minister, explaining the decision. “We are worried about our sons and daughters.”

The Hamas authorities said they were also “surprised” that Amideast had not contacted them to arrange for the departure of the students. “We will not accept this way of dealing with us,” Mr. Awad added.

Amideast, like most American organizations, does not deal directly with Hamas, which the State Department classifies as a terrorist organization.

For years, Hamas has criticized Israel and Egypt for imposing a blockade on the Palestinian enclave and restricting the movement of its residents. So the students and their families greeted the Hamas decision with disappointment and bewilderment.

“How can we call on Israel to respect human rights while we do not respect those rights?” the father of one of the students said. Another student said, “In front of the world, Hamas says we are under siege, but in fact Hamas is also putting us under siege.”

They spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid further friction with Hamas.

-snip-

In May, Hamas allowed the students to visit the United States Consulate General in Jerusalem to obtain visas. Some of the students did not register for the school year here, hoping that they would get a chance to leave. The explanation their parents got from the Education Ministry was that the travel was barred for social and cultural reasons.

One of the girls wears a hijab. Her father said he had no problem with her going to the United States. According to the arrangement, girls would stay at host families that had no boys around the same age and host families would monitor Web browsing, among other restrictions. She said that she would keep wearing the hijab in the United States, and that the point of the program was cultural exchange. She said she was “going to introduce our culture to the Americans.”

Originally posted by sh76
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/20/world/middleeast/20gaza.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=hamas%20girl%20exchange&st=cse

[quote]The Islamist group that governs Gaza barred a group of students this week from traveling to the United States for a year of study, officials of the group, Hamas, said.

The seven high school students were selected for the Youth Study and Excha r strict following of Sharia.

In any other context, virtually nobody here would defend them.

Originally posted by sh76
[Hamas] is an organization of fundamentalist theocratic repressive backwards extremists here, folks.[/b]

Originally posted by adam warlock
Oy Vey!

Too bad that Israel catered to them in the late 80's, early 90's in order to disrupt the unity and secular character of most of the Palestinian society.
Who would think that funding a group of religious fundamentalists would come back to haunt them.

🙄🙄🙄

Originally posted by sh76
Oh, right. The "well, you helped them 20/30 years ago defense we see regarding the US-Taliban and US-Saddam relationship all the time. The problem is that's utterly irrelevant. First, that might have been the best strategy at the time to avert a greater evil. Second, even if it wasn't, that you make a mistake doesn't mean you have to be prevented from doing something correctly 25 years later.

Originally posted by adam warlock
You're missing the point. Everybody with their eyes open that was sympathetic to the Palestinian cause correctly pointed out to Israel that catering to Hamas, a religious fundamentalist group, would be bad for everybody in the region in the long run. I really don't know of a Palestinian supporter that supported Israel's decision of supporting Hamas.

...[text shortened]... ying out extrajudicial assassinations (that more often than not end up targeting civilians)?

I read that when seeing the Isrealis and Hamas taliking with each other that Fatah issued a warning to the effect that they can either be an ally with Isreal or Fatah, but not both. Wish I could find the quote but to be a friend to Isreal is to be an enemy of Fatah.

Originally posted by sh76
Are you saying that Israel is responsible for Hamas' control over Gaza when it was the Palestinians who elected them clearly against Israel's wishes and it was Hamas that forcibly took over Gaza a few years ago? Based on something that happened a few decades ago?

I don't understand that point at all.