The Hamas government's Interior Minister, Fathi Hammad, earlier this week announced that he was considering expanding Gaza's military force, initially with volunteers and eventually with conscripts. The existing paid security force numbers approximately 20,000. Bloggers in Gaza have reacted with astonishment to the idea of conscription. Palestinian youths by Rusty Stewart, under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs licence Seeran Nofal writes: She concludes: Blogger Kalam writes: Kalam then gives a list of questions regarding the purpose of conscription: He continues: On the other hand, I think that this step could contribute to solving the problem of unemployment; instead of young men “holding up walls”, they would find a place to unload their energy, and their guns. Kalam concludes with a reminder: