Gaza Arabs caught casually cursing Allah or kissing in public will now be doing jail time, new Hamas chief justice Abed al-Raouf Halabi told the International Herald Tribune at the weekend.
Halabi said Hamas would begin to impose a far stricter interpretation of Islamic law in Gaza in the coming months.
The Tribune report noted that compared to a year ago, just before Hamas seized control of Gaza in a brutal military coup, far more Gazan women are covered and far more men are wearing beards.
Israel National News noted that the Gazan population's acceptance of these changes is a rejection of the American and European notion put forward a year ago that the Palestinians of Gaza would spew out Hamas if the group dared to behave like Afghanistan's former Taliban rulers.