Seventeen years after the Gaza Strip was brutally ruled by Hamas, and eight months after the war began, Palestinians in Gaza want change.
Eight months after the Israel-Gaza war began, events have escalated again, as Israel and Hezbollah's carefully calculated war of attrition appears poised to spiral into all-out conflict.
Israel has shown no intention of ending the war in Gaza, and Hezbollah is losing patience. It intends to advance to weaken Israel's military pressure on the Gaza Strip in general, and Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in particular. Consider the statement made by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah last Wednesday. In what could be seen as a warning to the Israeli government, Nasrallah, in his own way, pleaded with Israel to avoid an open confrontation that would bring great damage not only to Israel but also to Lebanon.
Nasrallah's threat was clear: he did not intend to attack Israel the next morning. On the contrary, he wanted Israeli decision-makers to understand his intentions clearly and without question: If the war in Gaza continues, Hezbollah will no longer be silent.
Just two days before the speech, Nasrallah flew at least one drone over Haifa, patrolling all the city's key sites, and then aired the video as a way of letting Israel know that Hezbollah knew the exact coordinates of countless targets.
To be honest, Israel cannot fight on more than one front at a time. What happened in the June 1967 war is history and will never be repeated. At that time, Israel fought on three fronts, each far removed from the domestic front. Israel also planned the attacks, their timing and targets. Today, other forces play a role in determining the course of Israel's war: Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Houthis, and of course Iran, who is pulling the strings from afar.
What can we learn from all this? On the one hand, we have Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas strongman in the Gaza Strip, who seems to be the only person with real power in the Strip. He feels he has nothing to lose and is on a suicidal path together with Benjamin Netanyahu. Of course, that path may endanger the entire population rather than the leader as an individual.
Until recently, it was clear that neither Sinwar nor Netanyahu wanted a quick end to the war. But after President Biden outlined what he called an Israeli draft plan for a ceasefire and prisoner exchange in Gaza, Hamas showed signs of bowing to pressure from the three intermediaries — the U.S., Egypt and Qatar. Hamas said it accepted the draft, although it added some comments and doubts.
Meanwhile, Israel did not recognize the ceasefire. Prime Minister Netanyahu sidestepped the issue, avoiding mentioning the plan, lest Hamas reject it and have to approve the plan drawn up jointly with the United States. What followed was shocking. Mediators and many countries around the world ignored Israel and pressed Hamas, as if they took Israel's recognition of the ceasefire for granted. But they misjudged it.
The people of Gaza want this war to end as soon as possible. They know that many responsibilities lie ahead, not the least of which is checking in on family members who may have survived the fighting, visiting the wounded and finding them somewhere to settle.
There is no place for Hamas in Gaza. People I spoke to in Gaza said that few openly support Hamas or Sinwar. Most Palestinians in Gaza are afraid of the large number of undercover Hamas agents, especially in the police forces. They cannot raise their voices in criticism. When Arab and foreign TV stations interview Palestinians, they are quick to praise the Gazan resistance. They fear that their criticism will be interpreted as bowing to pressure from the Israeli army, or even worse, as collaborating with Israel.
Hiding hostility towards Hamas in public and expressing criticism behind closed doors has become a way of life for most Gazans who have suddenly become displaced, homeless and lost family since the outbreak of the war. They blame Israel primarily for what happened, but also Hamas for not preparing them for what came after the October 7 attacks. They now believe that Hamas, having failed to provide them with adequate shelter, drinking water and food for the past eight months, does not deserve to continue ruling the Gaza Strip.
This is why Palestinians are interested in alternatives to the Hamas regime in post-war Gaza: despite the resentment many Palestinians in Gaza harbor toward the Palestinian Authority (PA), they still see the PA's return to Gaza and reunification of Gaza with the West Bank as the best option.
Officials from multiple Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip (including, not necessarily, Fatah, the main West Bank political party) told me that Hamas’ ruthless 17-year rule of the Gaza Strip is intolerable. They agree that Hamas cannot assume a governing role in any post-Gaza war scenario. They speak highly of the Palestinian Authority’s achievements in the Gaza Strip from its establishment in 1994 until Hamas took control in the June 2007 military coup. At that time, life was normal, businesses thrived, and people had individual and collective freedoms. Most of that has disappeared since Hamas took control, and what little remained since the war began has been wiped out.
The situation in Gaza is tricky because the people who elected Hamas to the Legislative Council in the 2006 elections are the same people who are now deeply disappointed with the movement and its activities in the Gaza Strip, including the military coup in 2007. Some saw Hamas' promises of “reform and change” in the 2006 election campaign as genuine and sincere, but in the end it was merely a promise to get into the Legislative Council without any real governance responsibilities.
Hamas die-hards don't believe their movement will die out after the war. While Israel has inflicted irreparable damage on Hamas' military wing, most of its political leadership remains intact in Doha. Some believe the movement can be reborn in Gaza after the war, just as the Muslim Brotherhood has weathered many setbacks since its founding in 1928.
In its founding charter, Hamas describes itself as the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, which believes it must take two steps to seize control of Arab countries. The first step is violence, which the Muslim Brotherhood has used for many years in Egypt, including the assassination of Egyptian Prime Minister Mahmoud Fahmi el-Noqrashi Pasha in 1948.
The second step is control of democratic elections. If the Muslim Brotherhood takes power in a country, the elections should be stopped and the party should stay in power forever. Hamas followed this rule when it won elections in Gaza in 2006. The Hamas-appointed foreign minister at the time, Mahmoud Al-Zahar, said: “We won the elections thanks to our supporters. Who said that elections should be held every four years? The last elections for the Palestinian Authority were held in 1996. Elections may be held in 10 years or even later.” In fact, there have been no elections in Gaza since 2006.
With this mindset, Hamas can never play the role of partner with other Palestinian factions in running the Palestinian Authority or State of Palestine. Hamas doctrine is based on excluding and rejecting the other. All attempts to end the division and reunite the West Bank and Gaza have failed, mainly because Hamas never wanted to share power with the Palestine Liberation Organization, preferring instead to keep it all to itself. No attempt to share power with Hamas has ever worked, and never will.
Hamas will survive as an Islamist idea, but not as a dominant force in the Gaza Strip, no matter how long the war lasts. The Palestinian leadership, Arab countries, and many other countries around the world are frankly doing Hamas a huge favor by imposing a specific role on it in post-war Gaza. Even the United States is willing to consider incorporating a compliant Hamas into the governmental institutions of the Palestinian Authority or state. But the question is not whether all these countries will support this idea, but whether Hamas will accept it.
Judging by past experience, Hamas may one day wake up and become a viable enough movement to cooperate with others. But in a few years or decades, Hamas will change its mind. After all, Hamas is an unreliable movement that cannot play in harmony with the rest of the orchestra. Anyone who thinks that Hamas can be a disciplined partner in a future Palestinian polity should start preparing for new violence from Hamas and some of its factions. Does this sound apocalyptic? It certainly is. The overall situation in Gaza is very bleak, death is coming fast, and destruction is happening everywhere.
