Hamas bans women from smoking water pipes

July 19, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip

There are few pleasures left for Gaza’s 1.5 million people, squeezed by both a blockade and Hamas’ efforts to impose its strict Muslim lifestyle. And women here just lost another one.

Gaza’s Hamas rulers have banned women from smoking water pipes in cafes, sending plainclothes agents through popular beachside spots Sunday to enforce the edict. Some women in the Palestinian territory are grumbling.

“This is silly,” said Haya Ahmed, a 29-year-old accountant who said she has smoked water pipes for 10 years. “We are not smoking in the streets but in restaurants, where only a few people can enter.”

Many Gazans pile into beach cafes in the evenings to puff on water pipes well into the wee hours of the morning. Islamic law does not ban women from smoking the traditional tobacco-infused pipes, but many frown upon the practice.

The water-pipe restrictions are just the latest in a yearlong Hamas campaign to gradually enforce a strict Muslim life code on the people of Gaza.

Hamas, the Islamic militant group that overran Gaza three years ago, has banned women from riding motorbikes — mostly impoverished women riding behind their husbands on cheaply bought Vespas.

Men, meanwhile, are the ones mostly targeted if they are seen alongside women in public. And they too are bullied by Hamas officials if they dress in ways considered too Western — such as shorts instead of long pants.