Gaza protest puts the ball firmly in Hamas's court

In a rare but significant display of defiance against Hamas inside Gaza, hundreds of war-weary Palestinians marched through the bombed-out ruins of the northern part of the strip this week. One voice among the protesters cut to the heart of the matter. Majdi, a demonstrator who did not wish to give his full name, asked: "If Hamas leaving power in Gaza is the solution, why doesn't Hamas give up power to protect the people?" It was an incisive question that puts the ball firmly in Hamas’s court. Is the group’s priority its own political and military survival while locking Gaza’s people into an apocalyptic conflict with Israel, or is it the building of the future of the Palestinian nation? Its actions thus far, including building tunnels and shelters for its fighters but not Gaza’s civilians, point to the former. The result of Hamas’s wild gamble in attacking Israel on October 7, with no way to defend Gaza from the inevitable Israeli onslaught, can been seen in the group’s waning popularity. This is not the first time that Palestinians in Gaza have publicly hit out at the militants – three months before October 7, thousands of Palestinians in Gaza city, Khan Younis and other areas took to the streets , angry at the Hamas government over chronic power cuts and a lack of fuel. Even during the conflict with Israel, dissenting voices among Gaza’s people spoke out, furious with the group for its ruinous war strategy. The results of a public opinion poll published by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Research in September found that although Hamas still has the highest support of all Palestinian factions in Gaza, there had been a fall in backing for the group’s postwar control over the enclave and a rise in support for a Palestinian Authority-led administration. The poll also found a drop in support for armed struggle and more backing for negotiations to end the Israeli occupation. It is a far cry from the enthusiasm that greeted the militants when they took charge of Gaza back in 2007, ousting the Fatah-led PA whose weak governance and reported corruption had frustrated and angered the enclave’s people. Importantly, this week’s protest also undermines the dangerous Israeli narrative that all Palestinians in Gaza are aligned with Hamas. This assumption has been used to justify a military response to October 7 that long ago became a campaign of collective punishment . Given the Israeli state’s history in encouraging the militants’ rise as a counterweight to the Palestine Liberation Organisation, there is a painful irony in its mischaracterisation of all Gazans being part of the Hamas machine. In reality, Palestinians are held hostage by their circumstances. Those in Gaza live under the rule of Hamas, an organisation that brooks little dissent. In the West Bank, Palestinians are represented by an ailing PA that has not held elections in nearly 20 years. More than nine million Palestinians live in exile as refugees, with limited control over their destinies. That these are the results of a decades-long Israeli occupation does not take away from the fact that Palestinians deserve a better future from those who purport to fight in their name.