Gaza native Mohammed Assaf has become the first Palestinian
to qualify for ‘Arab Idol’, a TV talent show staged in Beirut,
in which singers perform for judges and voting viewers.

He is now one of the last 10 contestants – largely thanks to
his potent mix of good looks and emotional lyrics about
ancestral Palestinian lands.

“He is the pride of Palestine. He broke the siege with his
voice,” said fan Rehaf al-Batniji, referring to Israel’s
blockade of Gaza, seized by the Jewish state, along with the
West Bank, during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

She stood in front of a large mural of Assaf at a Gaza
restaurant, one of hundreds of posters covering buildings and
walls usually marked with political slogans.

Assaf’s songs blare out of radios – a counter-balance to
their usual broadcasts of bleak economic and political news.

Politicians have raced to endorse him and Palestinian mobile
phone company Jawwal has cut the price of text messages to make
it easier for supporters to vote.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, from the Fatah movement
that holds sway in the West Bank, phoned the singer in Beirut
and urged all Arabs to vote for him.

“The president stressed his support and backing to artist
Assaf, whose talent represented pride to Palestine,” said a
statement by the Palestinian official news agency WAFA.

The Gaza Strip is ruled by the rival Islamist Hamas faction
- a group that disapproves of non-Islamic songs and the kind of
Western-style excess on full display in TV talent shows.

But even Hamas has come as close as it possibly can to
showing support.

“He comes from a good, respected and known family,” Hamas
spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said on Facebook.

Assaf first made his name inside Gaza at the age of 11, when
he recorded a song in 2001 called “O Town be Strong”, at the
height of Israeli incursions in the enclave during a Palestinian
uprising.

On Arab Idol, broadcast by Saudi-owned MBC Group, he has
performed with a traditional black-and-white Palestinian scarf
around his shoulders.

His performances have included “Flying Bird” which lists the
cities of historical Palestine and another song urging
Palestinians to unite.

The programme’s celebrity judges from across the Arab world
- where the Palestinian cause reverberates – have piled praise
on the singer.

“I see the Arab idol standing before my eyes,” said Egyptian
composer Hassan El Shafei.

“Your voice is made of diamond,” added Ahlam, a famous
singer from the United Arab Emirates.

Listening in was Assaf’s mother, Umm Shadi Assaf, watching
the show in a restaurant near her home in Gaza’s Khan Younis
refugee camp.

Her son had only one wish, she told Reuters, beaming with
pride, “to go out and make the world listen to his voice”.

(Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Andrew Heavens)

Qaradawi, chairman of the International Federation of Muslim Clerics, is based in Qatar and has been a vociferous supporter of the revolutions that have shaken the Arab world in the last two years, bringing new governments to Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.

Soon after arriving in the Gaza Strip, the 87-year-old Egyptian-born cleric called on Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims to work together to bring about the downfall of Israel.

“Our wish should be that we carry out Jihad to death,” said Qaradawi, who has gained a large following in the Muslim world thanks to regular appearances on Al Jazeera television.

“We should seek to liberate Palestine, all of Palestine, inch by inch,” he said, backing the position of Hamas, which refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist.

Qaradawi was greeted by Ismail Haniyeh, prime minister of Gaza’s Hamas government, which has worked hard to bolster its international standing by inviting senior figures to the tiny territory sandwiched between Israel and Egypt.

“Palestine today welcomes the Sheikh of the Arab Spring, the Sheikh of the revolution and the Sheikh of Jihad in Palestine,” Haniyeh said in a welcome speech.

The emir of Qatar made an historic visit to Gaza last year and Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has promised to travel to Gaza this month.

Hamas fought a brief civil war against Abbas’s Fatah faction in 2007 and swiftly gained full control of Gaza. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who holds sway over parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, argues that foreign visits to Gaza undermine his own position as leader of the Palestinian people.

Mahmoud al-Habbash, the Palestinian minister of religious affairs, based in the West Bank, said Qaradawi’s visit would reinforce internal divisions and support the “separatist entity” Hamas had established in Gaza.

Fatah supporters shunned the reception thrown for Qaradawi.

Israel, which has imposed a blockade on Gaza in a stated attempt to prevent weapons reaching Hamas, had no immediate comment on Qaradawi’s arrival. He is due to leave Gaza on Saturday.

The cleric gained notoriety in the West when he came out firmly in support of suicide attacks carried out by Palestinian groups against Israeli targets during an intifada, or uprising, that began in 2000 and petered out in 2005.

(Reporting by Nidal Almughrabi; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

“My handlers in Israel called me and told me that collaborators in Gaza don’t know one another and that each worked alone, so hide and stay as you are,” the man told visiting reporters, under the watchful eye of a plainclothed Hamas security officer.

“I should have turned myself in. This is my problem now. Maybe if I had, you wouldn’t find me here,” he said.

The Islamist Hamas government, which is pledged to Israel’s destruction by force of arms, is lauding a recent campaign to root out informants in its midst, which it hopes will deprive Israel of a subtle but effective tool.

The muscular 41-year-old, who did not give his name, missed the deadline to turn himself in and will not receive leniency when his case goes to trial, Hamas says. Fellow prisoners listened to his anguish over his unknown fate through metal windows in the concrete corridor.

The Hamas Interior Ministry says the month-long campaign which ended on April 11 was a policy shift away from harsher tactics against spies accused of passing on vital information, such as the whereabouts of arms’ depots or top militants.

These tip-offs are believed to have helped Israel plan its air strikes during the eight-day conflict with Hamas last November, when Israeli jets hit some 1,450 targets, killing more than 170 Palestinians, including many civilians.

The militant group used to broadcast chilling confessions of collaborators and put the worst offenders to death.

In scenes that shocked the world, seven suspected spies were yanked from Hamas custody in Gaza during the November conflict and shot dead in the street. One corpse was dragged by motorbike through Gaza city by pistol-waving men shouting, “God is Great.”

But in this latest campaign, publicized through billboards and mosque sermons, Hamas’s Internal Security Service (ISS) promised to treat those who surrendered of their own volition gently.

The campaign, Hamas says, was meant to bring wayward citizens back into the fold and counter through persuasion the espionage it says Israel gains through manipulation.

“We’ve made a media and educational effort to inform the Palestinian public about collaboration…the worst and most dangerous tool the occupation (Israel) uses against our people,” said Mohammed Lafi, the deputy ISS chief who led the campaign.

He declined to reveal how many Gazans had stepped forward, saying such information would benefit Israel. In all, Hamas says only “tens” of spies are languishing behind bars.

ISRAEL RECRUITS

Collaboration with Israel is widely reviled by Palestinians, who see spies as traitors to their people.

“Do they feel mercy for the kids who get torn into pieces and to leaders whose bodies are burnt to death? Why should I feel mercy for him?” said Huda Adel, an office secretary, voicing sentiments shared by many Gaza residents.

Locals often refuse to marry their sons or daughters to relatives of convicted or dead collaborators.

“It’s horrifying how your life can turn into hell in a blink of an eye,” the brother of a jailed alleged spy told Reuters, taking deep drags from his cigarette.

Sitting nervously in a Gaza cafe, the man said many people shunned his brother’s family when rumours of his deeds spread.

“Will his daughter marry? Will anyone accept to marry his boy?” the brother worried.

Minister of Interior Fathy Hammad said Hamas’s new policy aimed to emphasize that spying was an individual act and offered anonymity to anyone who handed themselves in to avoid the inevitable backlash from their neighbours.

“As a community we should support the family whose household fell to the devil,” Hammad told Reuters.

Many confessed spies say they were offered coveted Israeli permits to move in and out of the crowded coastal enclave, which struggles under tight restrictions from neighbouring Israel and Egypt. Others were in Israeli custody and agreed to become spies in exchange for commuted sentences.

Rights groups say Israel also tries to force Gazans in need of outside medical treatment to become spies.

Others simply sought cash, feeding information via secret cell phone chips or coded emails.

A senior Israeli official told Reuters the informants were necessary because “Israel faces a very real threat from Gaza, as Hamas regards every Israeli civilian as a legitimate target”.

Israel pulled its troops and settlers from the territory in 2005 but has come under regular rocket attack since then. In response, it imposed a stringent blockade on Gaza and has waged two short wars in a stated effort to stop the missiles.

The official called the Hamas government a “Stalinist authoritarian regime” whose measures against suspected spies amounts to “brutal and arbitrary violence against the people of Gaza, using collaboration charges as an excuse”.

FEAR AND FAVOUR

Since taking power in 2007, Hamas authorities have executed 14 people, including six convicted spies. Hammad said his ministry reserved the right to execute more spies in future.

Hamas’s political rival, the Palestinian Authority which has partial control over the nearby, occupied West Bank, also comes down heavily on alleged spies. Last week, a member of the Palestinian security forces was condemned to death for being a collaborator, although his sentence will almost certainly be commuted to life in jail.

Human Rights Watch said the amnesty plan was an improvement to Hamas’s usual legal practice, which it says often involves incommunicado detention and evidence extracted through torture.

“Steps by Hamas to provide an alternative to the detention and trial of alleged collaborators should be encouraged given the severe problems with its justice system,” senior HRW researcher Bill Van Esveld told Reuters.

ISS deputy head Lafi, for the first time disclosing details on its jailing policy on convicted spies, said most of those already in jail whose crimes were not serious would be freed after serving two-thirds of their sentences.

The offer will not spare veteran spies, and those whose work led to the killings in Israeli bombing raids or assassinations of militant leaders, Hamas said.

But with almost one third of Gazans unemployed and 80 percent of households living below the poverty line, local NGOs believe some young Gazans will continue to be drawn to espionage in return for Israeli cash, regardless of Hamas crackdowns.

“The Gaza government should treat some of the reasons why Israel’s security forces manage to get through to victims, such as poverty,” said Samir Zaqout of the al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, which is based in Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp.

(Additional reporting by Noah Browning; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

“My handlers in Israel called me and told me that collaborators in Gaza don’t know one another and that each worked alone, so hide and stay as you are,” the man told visiting reporters, under the watchful eye of a plainclothed Hamas security officer.

“I should have turned myself in. This is my problem now. Maybe if I had, you wouldn’t find me here,” he said.

The Islamist Hamas government, which is pledged to Israel’s destruction by force of arms, is lauding a recent campaign to root out informants in its midst, which it hopes will deprive Israel of a subtle but effective tool.

The muscular 41-year-old, who did not give his name, missed the deadline to turn himself in and will not receive leniency when his case goes to trial, Hamas says. Fellow prisoners listened to his anguish over his unknown fate through metal windows in the concrete corridor.

The Hamas Interior Ministry says the month-long campaign which ended on April 11 was a policy shift away from harsher tactics against spies accused of passing on vital information, such as the whereabouts of arms’ depots or top militants.

These tip-offs are believed to have helped Israel plan its air strikes during the eight-day conflict with Hamas last November, when Israeli jets hit some 1,450 targets, killing more than 170 Palestinians, including many civilians.

The militant group used to broadcast chilling confessions of collaborators and put the worst offenders to death.

In scenes that shocked the world, seven suspected spies were yanked from Hamas custody in Gaza during the November conflict and shot dead in the street. One corpse was dragged by motorbike through Gaza city by pistol-waving men shouting, “God is Great.”

But in this latest campaign, publicized through billboards and mosque sermons, Hamas’s Internal Security Service (ISS) promised to treat those who surrendered of their own volition gently.

The campaign, Hamas says, was meant to bring wayward citizens back into the fold and counter through persuasion the espionage it says Israel gains through manipulation.

“We’ve made a media and educational effort to inform the Palestinian public about collaboration…the worst and most dangerous tool the occupation (Israel) uses against our people,” said Mohammed Lafi, the deputy ISS chief who led the campaign.

He declined to reveal how many Gazans had stepped forward, saying such information would benefit Israel. In all, Hamas says only “tens” of spies are languishing behind bars.

ISRAEL RECRUITS

Collaboration with Israel is widely reviled by Palestinians, who see spies as traitors to their people.

“Do they feel mercy for the kids who get torn into pieces and to leaders whose bodies are burnt to death? Why should I feel mercy for him?” said Huda Adel, an office secretary, voicing sentiments shared by many Gaza residents.

Locals often refuse to marry their sons or daughters to relatives of convicted or dead collaborators.

“It’s horrifying how your life can turn into hell in a blink of an eye,” the brother of a jailed alleged spy told Reuters, taking deep drags from his cigarette.

Sitting nervously in a Gaza cafe, the man said many people shunned his brother’s family when rumors of his deeds spread.

“Will his daughter marry? Will anyone accept to marry his boy?” the brother worried.

Minister of Interior Fathy Hammad said Hamas’s new policy aimed to emphasize that spying was an individual act and offered anonymity to anyone who handed themselves in to avoid the inevitable backlash from their neighbors.

“As a community we should support the family whose household fell to the devil,” Hammad told Reuters.

Many confessed spies say they were offered coveted Israeli permits to move in and out of the crowded coastal enclave, which struggles under tight restrictions from neighboring Israel and Egypt. Others were in Israeli custody and agreed to become spies in exchange for commuted sentences.

Rights groups say Israel also tries to force Gazans in need of outside medical treatment to become spies.

Others simply sought cash, feeding information via secret cell phone chips or coded emails.

A senior Israeli official told Reuters the informants were necessary because “Israel faces a very real threat from Gaza, as Hamas regards every Israeli civilian as a legitimate target”.

Israel pulled its troops and settlers from the territory in 2005 but has come under regular rocket attack since then. In response, it imposed a stringent blockade on Gaza and has waged two short wars in a stated effort to stop the missiles.

The official called the Hamas government a “Stalinist authoritarian regime” whose measures against suspected spies amounts to “brutal and arbitrary violence against the people of Gaza, using collaboration charges as an excuse”.

FEAR AND FAVOUR

Since taking power in 2007, Hamas authorities have executed 14 people, including six convicted spies. Hammad said his ministry reserved the right to execute more spies in future.

Hamas’s political rival, the Palestinian Authority which has partial control over the nearby, occupied West Bank, also comes down heavily on alleged spies. Last week, a member of the Palestinian security forces was condemned to death for being a collaborator, although his sentence will almost certainly be commuted to life in jail.

Human Rights Watch said the amnesty plan was an improvement to Hamas’s usual legal practice, which it says often involves incommunicado detention and evidence extracted through torture.

“Steps by Hamas to provide an alternative to the detention and trial of alleged collaborators should be encouraged given the severe problems with its justice system,” senior HRW researcher Bill Van Esveld told Reuters.

ISS deputy head Lafi, for the first time disclosing details on its jailing policy on convicted spies, said most of those already in jail whose crimes were not serious would be freed after serving two-thirds of their sentences.

The offer will not spare veteran spies, and those whose work led to the killings in Israeli bombing raids or assassinations of militant leaders, Hamas said.

But with almost one third of Gazans unemployed and 80 percent of households living below the poverty line, local NGOs believe some young Gazans will continue to be drawn to espionage in return for Israeli cash, regardless of Hamas crackdowns.

“The Gaza government should treat some of the reasons why Israel’s security forces manage to get through to victims, such as poverty,” said Samir Zaqout of the al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, which is based in Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp.

(Additional reporting by Noah Browning; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

In meetings this week in Washington, Arab states appeared to soften their 2002 peace plan, acknowledging that Israelis and Palestinians may have to swap land in any eventual peace deal.

The United States and the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank praised the move. But speaking to hundreds of worshippers in a Gaza mosque, senior Hamas official Ismail Haniyeh said it was a concession that other Arabs were not authorized to make.

“The so-called new Arab initiative is rejected by our people, by our nation and no one can accept it,” said Haniyeh, prime minister of the Hamas government in the coastal enclave.

“The initiative contains numerous dangers to our people in the occupied land of 1967, 1948 and to our people in exile.”

He was referring to the partition of British-mandate Palestine in 1948 when the United Nations voted to divide the territory into a Jewish state and an Arab state, and to the 1967 war when Israel captured the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.

Hamas refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist and claims all the territory between the Mediterranean and the Jordan river as rightfully Palestinian. It never accepted the Arab plan which was first presented in 2002.

RARE SPAT

The modified version was announced by Qatar’s prime minister on Monday and Haniyeh’s comments represented a rare public disagreement between Hamas and one of its main supporters.

The rich Gulf state has pledged over $400 million to fund housing projects in the Gaza Strip, which Hamas seized from the rival Palestinian Fatah faction in a brief civil war in 2007.

“To those who speak of land swaps we say: Palestine is not a property, it is not for sale, not for a swap and cannot be traded,” Haniyeh said.

Haniyeh said the rival Palestinian Authority, headed by Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, was to blame for inspiring the softer Arab position because it accepted the need for land swaps with Israel.

Israel rejected the Arab peace plan when it was proposed 11 years ago. Israeli officials gave a cautious welcome to the new suggestions, but the government still objects to key points, including the “right of return” for Palestinian refugees and the creation of a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is seeking to revive direct peace talks that broke down in 2010 over the issue of Jewish settlement building in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

On Tuesday, he hailed the Arab League announcement as “a very big step forward.”

However, any peace moves will have to confront the fractured Palestinian political landscape with Abbas holding sway over parts of the West Bank and Hamas firmly entrenched in Gaza. Repeated attempts by the two sides to secure a political reunification of the two territories have failed.

(Editing by Crispian Balmer and Angus MacSwan)

There was also bloodshed in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where for the first time since 2011, a Palestinian killed a Jewish settler. Israeli soldiers shot and wounded the attacker after he stabbed the man at a busy intersection.

Both incidents held the potential of wider confrontation – along the Gaza frontier, where factions linked to al Qaeda have been carrying out intermittent rocket attacks, and in the West Bank, where clashes between stone-throwing Palestinians and the Israeli military intensified in recent months.

Israel said the Palestinian killed in the air strike, Haitham Al-Mes-hal, 29, was a jihadi who was an expert in making rockets. It accused him of involvement in a rocket attack from Egypt’s Sinai peninsula against Israel’s Red Sea resort of Eilat on April 17, which had caused no injuries or damage.

“I had said we would not sit by quietly and let this pass … we will not accept a drizzle of fire from Gaza or from Sinai,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said after the strike.

Islamist militants in Gaza have fired sporadically at Israel in the past weeks despite an Egyptian-brokered truce that ended an eight-day conflict in November in which rockets hit Israeli cities and Israeli warplanes struck Palestinian territory.

Hamas, an Islamist group close to the Muslim Brotherhood now ruling neighboring Egypt, has cracked down on hardline Salafi rivals it sees as jeopardizing its control of the Gaza Strip.

Egypt, which signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, has also battled militants in Sinai, where lawlessness has mounted since President Hosni Mubarak’s downfall in 2011.

In Gaza, Mes-hal’s body was wrapped in a black flag of the Salafi factions after the air strike, near a Hamas training camp. “The Sword of Islam” Salafi group, threatened to avenge his death, saying “the response will come very soon”.

An Islamist website that carries statements from al Qaeda-related groups, described Mes-hal as a leader of Magles Shoura Al-Mujahideen, which claimed responsibility for the Eilat hit.

Hamas appeared to take softer tone. A spokesman for the movement, Fawzi Barhoum, said the Israeli attack was “unjustified and a dangerous escalation”, but he urged Egypt to press Israel “to abide by calm and stop the aggression”.

STABBING

In the nearby West Bank, the killing of Eviatar Borovsky, 31, stoked anger among settlers, who complained the military had failed to respond strongly to mounting stone-throwing incidents.

Borovsky’s attacker, who a military spokesman said grabbed his weapon after stabbing him, was identified as Salam Assad Az-Zaghal of the mainstream Fatah movement. Palestinian officials said he was released two months ago from an Israeli prison after serving a 3-1/2-year term.

Ghassan Daghlas, a Palestinian official in the West Bank city of Nablus, said settlers launched “large-scale attacks” in four villages in the territory after the incident.

“They are throwing stones and attempted to set a house on fire. They also hurled rocks at a school bus and smashed its windows. The situation is going from bad to worse. A mosque was also attacked,” Daghlas said.

Nine Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank since the beginning of the year, mainly in clashes that have risen sharply in recent months, raising fears that a third popular uprising, or Intifada, might be in the offing.

The Palestinians want to establish a state in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, territories Israel captured in a 1967 war. Peace talks between the sides broke down in 2010.

(Additional reporting by Ali Sawafta in Ramallah and Ori Lewis in Jerusalem; Editing by Crispian Balmer and Alison Williams)

Last October, Israel lifted a five-year ban on the lucrative export of Gazan herbs and spices, imposed after the Islamist Hamas group seized control of the coastal enclave, and farmers had hoped to cash in with their latest crop of mint and basil.

But Israel shut its sole commercial crossing into the isolated Palestinian territory last Monday in response to a rocket salvo fired out of Gaza, allowing only a brief reopening on Friday to enable the import of certain goods.

Farmers said the closure came just as they were preparing to harvest two tonnes of mint and a tonne of basil, adding that the herbs were now past their prime for the European market.

“It was too late and we regret that we have had to throw away the farmers’ harvest,” Jamal Abu Naja, director of Gaza’s communal agriculture association, told Reuters. “Repeated closures are threatening this hopeful project.”

The Palestinian economy is bound closely to Israel’s through infrastructure and has few foreign trading partners. Israel’s security cordon around Gaza and its security restrictions in the occupied West Bank limit Palestinians’ ability to compete in export markets and contribute to an unemployment rate of almost 25 percent, the World Bank said last month.

Israel and Hamas, which rejects the Jewish state’s right to exist, fought an eight-day war last November that ended with an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire.

After three months of quiet, militants fired a rocket into Israel at the end of February, with very occasional salvos following in subsequent weeks. Israel has responded each time by closing the Kerem Shalom commercial crossing.

Abu Naja urged farmers to take advantage of the decision to lift the curb last year, pointing to high demand in Europe for spices and herbs, with traders paying $26 a kilo for the Palestinian produce against $0.27 on the home market.

Some 15 tonnes of spices have been exported since January, but the latest crop was mowed down on Saturday and will be burnt after it has dried in the sun, farmers said.

“It took a month to grow this mint and if you don’t export it at the right time, you have to burn it because there is very little local consumption,” Abu Naja said.

To date, some 30 dunam (7.4 acres) have been turned over to herbs, including 20 inside the former Israeli settlement of Gush Katif, from which Israel pulled settlers and soldiers in 2005.

Some 40 Palestinian men and women who used to work in the settlements were the backbone of the current planting teams.

“We chose 40 people, including seven women, who had good experience in order to assure success. Settlers had mainly depended on planting spices when they were here,” Abu Naja said.

Unlike other produce that Israel allows to be exported to Europe, such as strawberries, cherry tomatoes and flowers, spices can be planted and exported the year round.

(Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Murals of famous leaders of Palestinian militant groups who were once held in the Saraya prison decorated walls at the site, along with a leather banner listing the names of 12 detainees who died in what locals dubbed “the slaughterhouse”.

“Prisoner Day,” an annual Palestinian national rite that commemorates the detainees, is set for Wednesday and more street violence with Israeli troops is anticipated.

Palestinians view compatriots held in Israel as heroes of their struggle for statehood, whereas the Jewish state says that many are guilty of killing or hurting innocents and the detentions guarantee its security.

A hunger strike by a handful of prisoners and the deaths of two inmates in custody this year have touched off deadly clashes with Israeli security forces that some analysts say could snowball into a third Palestinian uprising.

Saraya was refurbished and opened to visitors by Waed, a prisoners’ association loyal to Hamas.

The ex-prison spans the fraught history of Palestine. It was built by British colonial authorities in 1936 only to be used in turn by Israel during its post-1967 occupation, the Palestinian Authority under a self-rule deal from 1994 and finally Hamas for a brief period after it seized control of Gaza in 2007.

Many of Saraya’s original concrete cellblocks and interrogation rooms were destroyed over the years by Israeli air strikes during conflict with Palestinian militants. In their place, Waed built rows of tents it says resemble detention camps still in use in Israel’s nearby Negev desert.

“STRUGGLE”

Waed spokesman Abdallah Qandil said he hoped anger over the prisoners’ plight would lead to another “armed struggle”.

“When I came in I was overcome by the memories and the feelings of suffering prisoners are undergoing,” said Zeyad Jouda, a former detainee at Saraya who was guiding visitors.

“By being here I am conveying my story to people who are visiting to increase their solidarity with prisoners. We are trying to explain to them what detention and what the cells were like,” Jouda said, as he showed around some 40 local women.

Local authorities say 800,000 Palestinians have been detained under Israeli military orders since the 1967 war when Israel captured the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.

Palestinians want an independent state in those territories but negotiations with Israel have been frozen since 2010.

Allegations of torture have been directed against all of Saraya’s former gatekeepers. Most recently, the Palestinian Fatah and Hamas movements accused each other of abusing fellow Palestinians there during their bloody rivalry.

Hamas says its militant attacks were key to making Israel withdraw from Gaza in 2005 and gaining the release of over a thousand Palestinian prisoners in 2011 in exchange for an Israeli soldier it held hostage.

Visitors to the site echoed this sense of triumphalism.

Salwa al-Mashharawi froze briefly at one of the prison room windows where she used to visit her two sons when they served time there during Israel’s occupation. “I recalled the cries, the tears and the pain – but no regret,” she said as women around her chanted “God is Great!”

(Editing by Noah Browning and Mark Heinrich)

Ihab al-Ghusain, head of the Hamas government media office, denied the allegation and said an inquiry headed by the prosecutor general was set up shortly after the incidents and had made recommendations to the cabinet. He did not elaborate.

The slain men were serving prior jail sentences for passing information to Israel when, HRW said, gunmen pulled them from their cells and killed them. Some of their corpses were dragged in Gaza’s streets by motorcycles to chants of “God is Great”.

One of the men was killed on November 16 and his body was left for the public to see on a busy street. The other six were killed and mutilated four days later.

Following the incidents, Hamas deputy leader Moussa Abu Marzouk called the killings “unlawful” and said the perpetrators “should be punished and it must not be repeated”.

Human Rights Watch said their convictions may have been based on evidence extracted through torture, and that an inquiry into their deaths pledged by Hamas seems not to have begun.

“Hamas’s inability or unwillingness to investigate the brazen murders of seven men makes a mockery of its claims that it’s upholding the rule of law in Gaza,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director for the New York-based HRW.

“Even before the killings, the abuses the men suffered made the criminal justice system a travesty, regardless of their guilt or innocence,” she said.

Hamas and other militant groups were at the time fighting an eight-day conflict with Israel in which six Israelis, two of them soldiers, and 175 Palestinians, mostly civilians, were killed. Human Rights Watch and other groups faulted both Gaza fighters and the Israeli military for causing civilian deaths.

Hamas accused HRW of being “unprofessional,” contacting them only a day before their report was published and not focusing enough on Israel. “(HRW) should pay more attention to crimes by the (Israeli) occupation and the killing of hundreds of Palestinians with no mercy,” Ghusain told Reuters.

Israel regularly employs Palestinian agents to scope out targets and militant personnel for air strikes, which often kill civilians. Collaboration with Israel is generally reviled by Palestinians, who regard suspected spies as traitors to their people and ostracize their entire families.

On March 12, Hamas authorities launched a month-long campaign calling for collaborators with Israel to turn themselves in to authorities in exchange for amnesty.

The ultimatum expired on Thursday and the Hamas interior ministry said that in the coming hours security forces would arrest a number of spies whom they say failed to surrender.

(Writing by Noah Browning; editing by Mark Heinrich)

The centres, which the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) closed on Thursday after demonstrators stormed its headquarters, supply food to 800,000 Palestinians – nearly half the population of the impoverished Gaza Strip.

Announcing that food distribution centres and relief offices would reopen on Tuesday, Adnan Abu Hasna, UNRWA’s Gaza media adviser, said the agency had received “assurances from the relevant parties over the safety of its staff”.

The violence on Thursday was part of a dispute that had been brewing for weeks in the territory, which is governed by the Islamist Hamas movement.

Robert Turner, UNRWA’s director of Gaza operations, said the agency faced a $68 million shortfall in 2013 and that it had decided to cut a $40 annual handout to 106,000 Gaza refugees to save some $5.5 million. To soften the blow, the agency offered job programmes to help the poorest families.

Police were deployed outside UNRWA headquarters on Monday to prevent any recurrence of Thursday’s events. Contacts between the agency and the Hamas government, and meetings between UNRWA officials and refugee committees helped to defuse tensions.

In a statement, UNRWA said it understood the “frustration of the population heightened by the tightened (Israeli) blockade” of the Gaza Strip, a reference to border and fishing zone restrictions Israel strengthened after Palestinian rocket attacks.

But, the statement said, UNRWA must ensure the safety and security of its staff, and would close its installations again if its personnel or facilities were threatened.

(Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Alistair Lyon)