DIAA HADID

The Toronto Star

JERUSALEM (AP) –An attempt by Hamas police to detain a young woman walking with a man along the Gaza beach has raised alarms that the Islamic militant group is seeking to match its political control of the coastal territory with a strict enforcement of Islamic law.

The man she walked with and two of his peers were detained, beaten and ordered to sign statements promising not to engage in immoral activities, said the woman and one of the men.

The incident was the first known case of Hamas openly trying to punish a woman for behaving in a way it views as un-Islamic since seizing power two years ago. But it follows months of quiet pressure on Gaza's overwhelmingly conservative 1.4 million residents to abide by its strict religious mores.

Hamas officials in Gaza have urged shopkeepers to take down foreign advertisements showing the shape of women's bodies and to stash away lingerie displayed in windows. Officials search electronic shops to check if they are selling pornography on tiny flash drives.

"There's an open, public program to preserve public morals in Gaza," said local rights activist Isam Younis. "In reality, that means trying to restrict freedoms."

Hamas denies any crackdown is underway. Freelance journalist Asma al-Ghoul says a group of Hamas police sent a message that certain behaviour would not be tolerated when she went to the beach one evening in late June.

Al-Ghoul, 26, said she was spending time with a group of friends – two women and three men – on the northern Gaza shore.

Al-Ghoul is fairly exceptional in Gaza because she does not wear a Muslim head scarf. On that evening she wore jeans and a T-shirt – dress considered provocative in Gaza's conservative society and which could have easily attracted the attention of the plainclothed Hamas vice police who patrol the beaches.

Al-Ghoul swam, fully dressed, with a girlfriend, and then asked a male friend to walk her over to a nearby beach house rented by another couple she knew to shower and change.

Three policemen showed up and waited for al-Ghoul in the beach house garden, said an eyewitness. They took her identity card and demanded she accompany them to a nearby station. She refused.

An argument ensued and she was able to avoid detention and get her identity card back only after the homeowner contacted a senior Hamas official by phone, who intervened and spoke to the officers.

The eyewitness said the police did not say why they wanted to detain al-Ghoul but were insinuating that her behaviour was unbecoming. Under Hamas' strict interpretation of Islamic law, a woman should not go out in public with men who are not related to her.