‘We’ve lost everything, for what?’: Gazan anger at Hamas grows as war drags on
Palestinians return to their destroyed homes in the city of Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, 30 July 2024
Mahmoud Mushtaha reports in +972 on 6 August 2024:
For 10 long and grueling months, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have been left alone to face a genocide. We Gazans have had to endure the consequences of decisions we had no hand in, bearing severe hardships that the world has grown accustomed to and largely forgotten.
Undoubtedly, the primary source of our misery is Israel — an occupying, apartheid state, whose soldiers kill with brutal indifference, and which has sought to erase Palestinians since 1948. But we must also consider the role that Palestinian factions are playing in our ongoing suffering.
What has become clear over the past 10 months is that the Palestinian leadership — both Fatah and Hamas — has abandoned the people without any forethought or a coherent plan. While Gazans face relentless Israeli bombardment with no safe place to turn to, Hamas evades its responsibility to protect the population and Fatah is nowhere to be found.
As the war has dragged on, displays of public opposition to or criticism of Hamas have grown among Palestinians in Gaza. Many accuse Hamas of failing to anticipate the ferocity of Israel’s response to the October 7 attacks, and hold the group partially accountable for the dire consequences they are now facing.
For Palestinian journalist Ahmed Hadi (whose name has been changed for his safety, along with everyone interviewed in this article), October 7 was “a crazy decision for us as Gazans.” The attack, he argued, and particularly “the killing and capturing of Israelis, some of whom were civilians and not soldiers, unfortunately had a counterproductive effect on us. It granted Israel global sympathy and provided it with a justification to launch a brutal war on Gaza.”