Israel’s war on Gaza was never about Hamas
A Palestinian flag stands amidst the rubble in the Gaza Strip
Qassam Muaddi writes in Mondoweiss on 29 March 2025:
After more than 500 days of Israeli mass bombardment, starvation, destruction of civilian infrastructure and thousands of housing units, and after two weeks of its most recent renewed assault following the breakdown of the ceasefire, Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip witnessed the first protest by Palestinians demanding Hamas to unconditionally release the remaining Israeli captives and give up control of Gaza.
The Palestinian protesters’ cries that they “want to live” has become the center of attention of Israeli and U.S. media. The New York Times titled its report as Palestinians being “frustrated with Hamas,” while the BBC chose to place the protest’s timing as “a day after Islamic Jihad militants launched rockets from the area.”
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If Gazans haven’t protested against Hamas earlier, and if these protests aren’t larger or more widespread, it is because Gazans understand that the goal of Israel’s campaign to destroy their lives, kill them in large numbers, and displace them is not to topple Hamas. Although it is one of the goals, it is not the primary motive.
On Tuesday, following the Israeli Knesset’s approval of the largest state budget in Israel’s history, which came two days after the Israeli cabinet approved a plan to establish a special bureau to drive Palestinians out of the strip, Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich stated that every shekel spent in encouraging “voluntary migration” from Gaza saves Israel from continuing the war. This logic is a new attempt by Israel to implement the same model of mass displacing Palestinians from Gaza. In 1971, a full 16 years before Hamas was created, Israel laid down plans to drive Palestinians out of Gaza. That included home demolitions, secret transfer locations in the Egyptian Sinai desert, then occupied by Israel, and threatening Palestinians with 48-hour ultimatums before their homes were demolished.
Israel’s conflict with Gaza isn’t with a group or an organization, but with its population. The reason is that Gaza is a mass concentration of 1948 refugees and their descendants, who never forgot who they are, where they come from, and why.