Gazans are bravely defying Hamas — here’s how to help them build a future

After three days of public protests in northern Gaza against Hamas, the organization’s political grip there seems to be fraying. Each of the protests have involved hundreds of Palestinians and they reflect a clear understanding that Hamas, and not just Israel, is responsible for their plight. It could be a turning point, but much depends on how outside powers respond.

Public criticism of Hamas in Gaza is hardly, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims, unheard of. Even during the war launched by Israel after the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel, smaller and more sporadic protests periodically erupted.

What differentiates the recent protests is their size and continuity. In the last three days, thousands of Palestinians gathered to urge Hamas to relinquish power, release hostages and help stop Israel’s relentless attacks that the Palestinian Health Ministry reports have cost over 50,000 Palestinian lives (the majority of them civilian). Netanyahu is wrong to cynically and dishonestly cite the protests as evidence that Israel’s policies are “working.” But Hamas is wrong in claiming they are manufactured and directed by “outside forces,” rather than the spontaneous expression of richly deserved outrage.

I have repeatedly opined that Palestinians should never forgive Hamas for deliberately provoking Israel into an extreme overreaction. Israeli policy has always rested on disproportionate retaliation. The intensity of Israel's violence in Gaza is as predictable as it is appalling. Palestinians understand this intimately.

There’s ample outrage against Israel’s war on Gazan society in general, which is hardly limited to just Hamas. Many scholars and historians on genocide, including a number of Israelis, have argued that the word reasonably applies to the Israeli military’s use of food, medicine, water and routine displacement as weapons of war against civilians.

And still, frustration with Hamas among ordinary Gazans is boiling over. The protests are predictably centered in Gaza’s north, the first areas decimated after Oct. 7, and where the most extreme violence and denial of basic necessities have been focused.

Contrary to Netanyahu’s claims, these protests are taking place despite Israel’s ongoing brutality, not because of it. A poll released on Oct. 6, 2023, the eve of the attack against southern Israel, by the Arab Barometer, found just 29% of Palestinians in Gaza had any favorable attitudes toward Hamas. Today, it may be even lower.

The protesters have no illusions about Israel. Virtually all interviewed by Arab and Western media made their fury at Israel’s brutality crystal clear.

Hamas did not care about the fate of the over 2 million Palestinian civilians it conscripted for “martyrdom” without the least consultation, warning or preparation. It also doesn’t much care about the ebb and flow of public opinion. It retains a base of public support, and much of the population will continue to understandably focus their rage against Israel, at least until the IDF is finally gone from Gaza. But despair and fury have fueled these unusually large and sustained protests against Hamas and its evident share of responsibility.

For outsiders who are sincerely interested in seeing the end of Hamas power in Gaza, these protests represent a significant opportunity. It’s by no means clear Netanyahu is genuinely among them, after decades of consistently ensuring that the Palestinians remain divided between Islamist rule in Gaza and secular nationalist control in the small self-ruled areas of the West Bank. Predictably, he’s doing his best to damage and undermine the credibility of the protests and their political potential by framing them as evidence of the wisdom of Israel’s scorched-earth policy.

However, it behooves constructive-minded Arab states like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE to cautiously but deliberately do whatever they can to support protest leaders and organizers. They could well provide crucial elements of an alternative Palestinian civic authority in Gaza to assume governance responsibility — instead of both Israeli occupation and Hamas.

Surviving business interests, clan leaders and remaining Fatah cadres in Gaza are surely either intimately connected to the protest movement and its organizers or should become so, no matter how spontaneous the demonstrations have been. There is certainly significant coordination taking place given how large, widespread and sustained they have been.

Israel should remain silent about the protests for its own political purposes and resume the ceasefire. Leading Arab states should step up and take the initiative, and the U.S. and Western countries should recognize that the protests demonstrate that the Egyptian-coordinated Arab League plan for finally halting the madness and initiating reconstruction in Gaza is viable and, indeed, the only real framework that can bring an end to both the war and Hamas rule in Gaza.

The protesters are bravely demonstrating that thousands of patriotic Palestinians in Gaza sincerely want the war (as they typically say, “the genocide”) to end, the remaining Israeli hostages to be released and Hamas to step down.

It’s exactly what Arab states, Western countries and even the Israelis say they want. There is no longer any basis for contending there is nothing to work with practically and politically among the Palestinians of Gaza. Obviously, there’s plenty, if anyone is genuinely interested.