"Yeargh! Let's reconciliate!"Hamas police and supporters on Monday beat a number of professors and students of Al Azhar University, the last bastion of Fatah in Gaza, wounding several, witnesses said. Hamas denied it had acted improperly and said the police restored order.The students and staff were protesting a rally that Hamas insisted on holding inside the university campus in memory of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder of the militant Islamic group who was killed in an Israeli air strike in March 2004.
Al Azhar University has continued to operate, despite having been raided five times since Hamas routed rival Fatah forces and took control of Gaza last June.
Before dawn on Monday, Hamas activists entered the compound and set up equipment for the rally, hanging pictures of Hamas leaders and Hamas flags. When members of the academic staff protested outside, Hamas police beat them with clubs, said Ayman Shaheen, a professor of political science. Shaheen said he was hit twice.
"All they know is the language of force," Shaheen said of Hamas. "We try to talk to them but they don't listen."
A number of female students were then attacked at the rally by participants who mostly came from outside, many armed with clubs, witnesses said. Tahrir Abu Latifa, 19, a student of commerce, was taken to Gaza's main Al Shifa Hospital unconscious but was able to leave a few hours later.
I was removing a poster that said 'Hamas forces will win over Al Azhar,'" she said, "then men surrounded me and hit me on my head and all over my body."
Rana Redwan, a student of psychology, said she received a blow to the head after she entered the rally and a speaker on the podium called her "impure." Witnesses said they saw her tearing a Hamas flag.
Another woman, Riham Abu Arrus, was struck in the leg with an ax, according to friends who accompanied her to hospital. Abu Arrus was first taken to Gaza's main Al Shifa hospital, which is now under Hamas control, but was refused immediate treatment, the friends said. Most of the wounded were treated at the private Ahli Arab Hospital.
The women who were wounded were all wearing colorful headscarves, in deference to Islamic rules of modesty, but not the more conservative uniform worn by female students at the nearby Islamic University that is run by Hamas.
Ehab al-Ghsein, a spokesman for the Hamas-run Interior Ministry in Gaza, said the police intervened when the rally threatened to become unruly. "The issue is between the administration of the university and the Islamic bloc," he said, referring to a small group of Al Azhar students who support Hamas.
Sharif Abu Shamala, 24, who heads the university's Islamic bloc, said that the women had provoked the audience by shredding a Hamas flag. In such cases "it is hard to control what happens," he said.
"We have no control over our own acts, you know."