Palestinians return to their destroyed homes in the city of Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, July 30, 2024. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

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.”

Palestinians return to their destroyed homes in the city of Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, July 30, 2024. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90

Hamas, Hadi asserted, “didn’t take into account the impact that Israel’s reaction would have on Palestinian civilians. It entered the war without securing food, water, or the necessities of life. One month into the war, we were already beginning to starve and get sick.”

Yet despite widespread anger toward the Hamas leadership, Gazans do not hold the young resistance fighters themselves accountable, recognizing that they are also part of the population who were coerced into the war. “We are proud of the resistance and its sacrifices, but for me, the resistance is part of the people — they are the same ones who are suffering and were forced into this war,” Hadi said. “While we cannot remain silent [and must] criticize our leaders like Sinwar, we also cannot allow Israeli forces to simply kill us.”

 ‘Can no one stop this madness?’

Amid the widespread but waning media coverage of Israel’s assault, Palestinians in the Strip have often been portrayed in one of two reductive ways. The first treats Gaza’s residents as if they are all somehow linked to Hamas, or holds them at least partially responsible for the October 7 attacks and the onset of the current war. This fails to recognize that Palestinians, both in Gaza and the West Bank, are deprived of the right to elect their government and that the decisions impacting their lives are dictated by a Palestinian leadership disconnected from the realities of war in Gaza, and by an Israeli government intent on erasing Palestinian existence.

The second perspective rightfully condemns Israel for its brutal military campaign, but depicts Palestinians as inexhaustibly resilient. This, too, fails to recognize our humanity, portraying us as being capable of enduring endless pain, and willing to make any and all sacrifices for the Palestinian cause.

Adel Sultan is a 62-year-old from the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City. He spoke to +972 Magazine about his utter desperation for the war to come to an end. “Save those of us who are still alive, end the war, and give us a chance to recover,” he exclaimed. “We no longer recognize ourselves; our faces have changed from this ongoing war consuming us.”

Displaced Palestinians living in tents shelter in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, August 4, 2024. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

Sultan voiced his frustration with the Palestinian leadership, calling on them to agree to a ceasefire with Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli government as a matter of urgency. “Those who started it should end it. Where are our leaders? Let them sit with the occupation government and end the war before it ends us, as Netanyahu wants.”

In early November, Sultan was wounded in his leg when an Israeli airstrike targeted his neighbor’s home. Unable to receive treatment at Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital, which had already been forced to cease all functioning following Israel’s raid, Sultan used the opportunity presented by the week-long ceasefire later that month to flee southward. He managed to reach Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital, in central Gaza’s Al-Maghazi refugee camp.

Sultan hoped the temporary truce would lead to a full ceasefire so that he could be reunited with his family: his wife and one son were stranded in Türkiye, where they had traveled to receive medical treatment prior to the war, while his other son had remained in northern Gaza with his family. But Sultan is still separated from his family, and moves alone from one place to another under the constant threat of death. He is currently living in a tent in western Rafah.

“I am exhausted. I have nothing left to hold on to, no home to return to,” he told +972, with tears in his eyes. “Every night, I nearly go mad. Why is this happening? What was the outcome of Hamas’ actions on October 7? Why were we left alone? Where are the Arab and Muslim nations? Is it logical to leave our lives to an evacuation notice? Where do we go, and to whom do we turn? Can no one stop this madness?”

 ‘I have the right to speak. Or should we die silently?’

Many Palestinians in Gaza understand the Hamas-led October 7 attack as the outcome of decades of Israeli occupation and prolonged siege of the Strip. They fully comprehend the concept of personal sacrifice for the goal of national liberation. Yet they fault Hamas for its lack of preparation in the aftermath of its attack, and reject having to suffer for no apparent gain.

Beyond its failure to prepare for Israel’s response, Gazans also criticize the Hamas leadership for its lack of a clear post-war vision for the Strip’s future. “We want one of the Palestinian leaders to tell us where we are going,” Dana Khalid, a 19-year-old university student displaced in a tent in Az-Zawayda, near the central city of Deir el-Balah, told +972. “Is there still a future for us? What does [Hamas’ leader in Gaza, Yahya] Sinwar want to achieve? Where is he?”

Palestinians return to their destroyed homes in the city of Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, July 31, 2024. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

“Why did October 7 happen?” asked Mohammed Adnan, a 27-year-old Palestinian whose carpentry shop was destroyed in February when Israeli forces entered the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City. “Of course there is no justification for what Israel is doing, and we are all against Israel. We all support the decision [to fight] for liberation and freedom, but it must be a well-thought-out decision.

“When I express my opinion, people consider me a traitor who doesn’t care about the sacrifices of my people,” Adnan, who is now living in the Al-Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City, continued. “I am part of the people who suffer; I am among the many hungry ones left in the north. I have the right to speak. Or should we die silently?

“If the result of the war is full Palestinian freedom, I don’t care about my life or my home. But if it’s less than that, then the decision to go to war is absurd.”

These sentiments are reflected in a recent poll by the Institute for Social and Economic Progress, an independent Palestinian research organization. According to the study, less than 5 percent of Palestinians in Gaza want Hamas to rule in a post-war transition government, and a majority expects the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority to take over the Strip. Nearly 85 percent of Gazans oppose Sinwar, and only slightly fewer opposed Hamas’ political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, who was assassinated by Israel last week in Tehran.

Palestinians return to their destroyed homes in the city of Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, July 31, 2024. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

In the face of this growing unpopularity, Hamas has attempted to silence those who criticize it, with reports of attacks and beatings that have only further fueled public discontent. On July 8, a group of masked men claiming to be from Hamas’ security forces attacked Amin Abed, a Palestinian activist and known critic of Hamas, who has been outspoken in his rejection of the October 7 attacks.

Abed told the media that he was taken from his home to a partially destroyed building, where he was beaten. The group’s leader instructed Abed’s attackers to break his fingers to prevent him from continuing to write publicly against Hamas. While Fatah condemned the “blatant assault” against Abed, Hamas has yet to respond to these allegations.

 ‘Lack of options does not mean resilience’

Hamas and its supporters have long claimed that the group has the backing of the Palestinian population to fight Israel. But this is a distortion of reality and an evasion of their moral and national responsibilities to their people.

As Adnan, the carpenter, told +972: “Everyone has left us alone; everyone wants us to appear as heroes who don’t tire or hunger. But no one knows that I am hungry, that I crave clean water.” True resilience involves protecting people from death, preventing the collapse of internal order and institutions, and not leaving the battlefield to the criminal Israeli army.

In late June, Motaz Azaizeh, an influential 24-year-old Palestinian journalist who left Gaza after 108 days of covering the war, posted on Facebook: “Lack of options does not mean resilience.” His straightforward depiction of the harsh reality in Gaza, without glorifying the sacrifices and pain, drew criticism from some — many of whom were outside Gaza, and have never experienced life in a tent, or lived through the fear and anxiety of forced evacuation and being separated from loved ones. But Azaizeh is right: Gazans are trapped, enduring hardship because they have no other choice.

Israeli soldiers operating in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, July 31, 2024. (Oren Cohen/Flash90)

In another post published late July, Azaizeh criticized the Palestinian leadership. “What I see from every politician is that he promotes himself first and then talks about Gaza,” he wrote. “Even after Gaza and its inhabitants were annihilated, more than 40,000 were martyred, and nearly 100,000 people left the Strip during the war and more before it! They present their interests first, then they move on to talk about us, and here I do not mean one party or one group, but I mean everyone.

“Everyone cares about the governance and the ‘day after’ for Gaza, but they do not talk much about the blood that is being shed now, yesterday, and tomorrow,” Azaizeh continued. “Our cause is in the abyss. We don’t need someone who puts the interests of his party and himself first and then remembers his people. This is my personal opinion, it’s up to you to agree or disagree; All those on the scene now cannot give up their interests in order to stop the bloodshed. This war is not a war of liberation as some believe.”

Even those who escaped the war are not safe outside. Mahmoud Nazmi, 38, spent all the money he had to flee Gaza with his family in search of survival. “Why do we always have to lie?” he asked. “Why do we have to present an image that pleases the Palestinian leadership at the expense of our death and months-long suffering without mercy? It doesn’t make sense to say we are resilient while we are left under the crushing heel of Israeli hubris. We have lost everything, for what?”

In late July, Palestinian factions including Hamas and Fatah signed a Chinese-brokered agreement to form a “national unity” government for Gaza after the war ends. This comes after multiple attempts to bridge the divide between Hamas and Fatah since the 2007 civil war in Gaza, all of which have failed to achieve unity.

Yet even this seemingly positive development has only deepened residents’ frustration. Many Gazans see the focus on post-war governance as displaying disregard for their immediate suffering and a missed opportunity to prioritize ending the war — once again putting the interests of the leaders above those of the people.

We Palestinians need to reflect on everything we’ve been through over the past 10 months. We must ask ourselves honestly, what do Palestinian leaders truly want? And what are we willing to sacrifice?

The people of Gaza deserve to live with dignity and security, and to see a bright future free from war and destruction. We need clear answers from our Palestinian negotiators. We need them to prioritize ending the war above all else, for the sake of the mothers, fathers, and children — a whole generation on the brink of annihilation.

+972 reached out to Taher al-Nono, a media advisor for Hamas currently based in Qatar, to respond to Gazans’ criticisms of Hamas’ management of the war and the decision to launch the October 7 attack, but he did not respond to our request for comment.

Mahmoud Mushtaha

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