Tensions rise, as Gazans condemn Hamas
JERUSALEM — More than six months into the war in Gaza and with dimming hopes for a ceasefire deal, Palestinians there are growing more critical of Hamas, which some of them blame for the monthslong conflict that has destroyed the territory — and their lives.
The Israeli military waged a punishing campaign to eliminate Hamas after the group, which ruled Gaza for 17 years, attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing an estimated 1,200 people and abducting more than 250.
While the majority of Palestinians in Gaza blame Israel for their suffering, according to polling conducted in March, they also appear to be turning their ire toward the militants. In interviews with more than a dozen residents of Gaza, people said they resent Hamas for the attacks in Israel and — war-weary and desperate to fulfill their basic needs — just want to see peace as soon as possible.
If Hamas wanted to start a war, “they should have secured people first — secured a place of refuge for them, not thrown them into suffering that no one can bear,” said Salma El-Qadomi, a freelance journalist who has been displaced 11 times since the conflict started.
Palestinians want leaders “who won’t drag people into a war like this,” she said. “Almost everyone around me shares the same thoughts: We want this waterfall of blood to stop. Seventeen years of destruction and wars are enough.” Hamas, an Islamist political and military movement, was founded in 1987 during the first Palestinian uprising. It staged some of the deadliest attacks on Israeli civilians and later won Palestinian legislative elections, beating out the secular Fatah party that leads the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.
The rival parties entered into a deadly power struggle, fighting a brief but bloody battle in Gaza in 2007, when Hamas seized control. For years after that, the group fought sporadic wars with Israel, but it also presided over periods of calm.
It used the smuggling tunnels under the border with Egypt to manage the territory’s besieged economy and cracked down on criminal gangs that preyed on locals. More recently, however, Hamas’s fortunes turned. The tunnel trade had dried up after Egypt sealed off the network, and the group’s isolation deepened as some Arab states began normalizing relations with Israel.
Still, many observers, including Israel’s leaders, were sure Hamas wanted to stay in power and had little interest in a major conflict. The attack in October took many Palestinians — and much of the world — by surprise.
Hamas has said it launched the assault in part to avenge what it claimed was Israel’s “desecration” of the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem, Islam’s third-holiest site, known to Jews — who also consider it sacred — as the Temple Mount. The attack, a terrifying rampage through southern Israeli communities, initially boosted the group’s support in both Gaza and the West Bank, according to the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, which carried out polling in late November and early December.
Even recently, in a poll conducted over five days in March, a majority of respondents say Hamas’s decision to carry out the attack was “correct.”
But, the center’s researchers said, “it is clear from the findings … that support for the offensive does not mean support for Hamas.”
Instead, the results show three-quarters of Palestinians believe the attack refocused global attention on the conflict “after years of neglect.”
The anger mounting now in the enclave appears centered on stalled cease-fire talks, with Hamas insisting on a permanent truce and Israel’s full withdrawal from Gaza before it hands over any hostages.