GAZA (JNI) — Hamas security men detained the Gaza branch director of the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation (PBC) for five hours Sunday, as he tried to document crowded conditions at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younes.
PBC Gaza director Rafat al-Qudra went to the hospital in a personal capacity, to accompany his daughter who was being treated there, he said afterward in a radio interview. After witnessing the overcrowded conditions, he said, “My journalistic instincts kicked in, and I decided to start documenting it.” According to Qudra, many in line at the hospital that morning were seeking evacuation from Gaza for medical treatment abroad — a sensitive issue, given a wave of public allegations that Hamas officials sell spots on medical evacuation lists for cash.
As soon as Qudra took a photo of the entrance to the office that handles medical evacuation paperwork, he was approached by a security man for questioning. “Why are you at the hospital?” he recalled them asking. “Who sent you?” The security men also tried to intimidate him. “You need to watch out,” they told him. “We are aware of everything you say, whether it’s on the street, in your car, anywhere.”
Hamas security men at the Nasser Hospital held Qudra from about 11 a.m to 4:30 p.m., he said. They seized his phone for examination, and returned it after making him sign a statement promising that he would not film there again. When they finally let him go and returned his phone, he found that none of the pictures had been deleted — an indication, he said, that his detention was more about intimidation than actual security concerns.
“This was simply an effort by Hamas to say, ‘We’re still here, and we’re going to keep holding on to power as long as we can,’” Qudra said. “If they can do this to me, in my position, then if it were one of my correspondents there in my place, maybe they’d have executed them.”
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