Hamas Pays Islamic Remuneration to Settle Bloodshed during 2007 Gaza
Takeover
Asharq Al-Awsat 19 July 2017
https://english.aawsat.com/theaawsat/news-middle-east/hamas-pays-islamic-remuneration-settle-bloodshed-2007-gaza-takeover

Gaza Strip – The militant group Hamas has turned its attention to settling
blood disputes caused by internal armed fighting with Fatah in the Gaza
Strip in 2007.

In June 2007, one of the history changing unrest took place when Hamas took
over the Gaza Strip. Being a military escalation, the battle is considered a
climax in the Fatah–Hamas struggle for power.

Hamas fighters took control of the Gaza Strip using coercive force to oust
Fatah.

The unrest resulted in the dissolution of the unity government and the de
facto division of the Palestinian territories into two entities, the West
Bank governed by the Palestinian Authority, and Gaza governed by Hamas.

After the 2007 conflict, which left some 300 Palestinians dead, the Gaza
Strip began witnessing organized political movement of families and tribes
of Hamas-slain victims who swore revenge.

For years-on revenge and schism rhetoric flooded the public, especially on
the annual date marking the Gaza takeover.

Commemorative posters picturing members killed in the 2007 conflict have
long occupied Fatah platforms in Gaza. Not only was the Palestinian
Authority the one to hold close to people it lost, but Hamas also followed
suit with condemning and convicting Fatah perpetrators involved in the blood
spill of its party supporters.

At a time when the two sides have failed to come together on political and
administrative policies, Hamas has begun to reach out for a community-based
agreement, a decade after taking over the coastal strip.

For the Muslim majority area, Hamas brokered some sort of reconciliation
with the families of Fatah victims, offering them Diya, Islam’s version of
financial compensation.

Diya in Islamic law is the financial compensation paid to the victim or
heirs of a victim in the cases of murder, bodily harm or property damage. It
is an alternative punishment to qisas (equal retaliation).

Some families agreed to receive the payment and ended their quest for
retaliation, others did not respond, and three refused to settle the matter
completely, sources told Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper.

Refusal was largely influenced by the families’ insistence for equivocal
retribution, qisas.

Sources also mentioned the Fatah families snubbing the efforts to settle the
controversy due to the absence of the Palestinian Authority, their political
representation, from Hamas-ruled Gaza.

Ex-Fatah politician Mohammed Dahlan is the mediator negotiating
reconciliation efforts over the matter.