GAZA CITY: Gaza parents and guardians have new powers to block adult children or dependants from traveling, the territory’s Hamas rulers said in a decision condemned by rights groups Monday.

The ruling allows “males over the age of 18 to be banned from traveling by court order based on the wishes of the father or grandfather, and bans virgin, widowed or divorced women from traveling without permission from a guardian.”

“One of the parents or the grandfather may prevent a male child over the age of 18 from traveling if genuine harm will result from the travel, by bringing a case at the relevant court,” it said, without elaborating on what constitutes “genuine harm.”

The decision, authored by the head of the Supreme Sharia (Islamic law) Council in Gaza, Hassan Al-Juju and with immediate effect, was circulated in the Mediterranean enclave late Sunday, with no further explanation.

The secular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine condemned the edict as “a violation of basic Palestinian law and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”

The Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said the measure was “a flagrant violation of the right to movement” and demanded its immediate withdrawal.

Hamas took power in the Gaza Strip, an Israeli-blockaded territory home to some two million Palestinians, in 2007.

The Islamists recently struck a deal to hold the first Palestinian elections in 15 years with their secular former rivals Fatah, who control the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank.

AFP