After years of torture and deprivation, are Palestinians finally ready to stand up to Hamas?

Columnist
Dan Perry
March 26, 2025

The international conversation about Gaza has long circled the same grim question: What would it take for the population to rise up against Hamas?

Now, we just might have the beginnings of a response: The resumption of war, after Israel broke a two-month ceasefire following 15 months of devastating conflict. The prospect of more death and dislocation with no end date, all because Hamas refuses to free more hostages until Israel agrees to leave it in power as part of a more permanent truce, appears to be too much to bear.

Observers could be forgiven for thinking this day would never come. When Hamas seized total power over Gaza in 2007, after first being elected into leadership in 2006, there was an assumption in Israeli and Western strategic circles that if life became hard enough under Hamas rule, the civilians of Gaza would eventually rebel. This thinking underpinned, at least in part, Israel and Egypt’s blockade on the strip — a policy designed not only to limit Hamas’s military capabilities, but also to create pressure from below, as civilians protested the deprivation brought on by such strained resources.

That policy failed for several reasons, foremost among them the fact that Hamas has created an unforgiving police state in which dissenters are not merely discouraged, but actively hunted down and destroyed. Opposition figures vanish. Torture is routine. Surveillance is widespread, and informants abound.

In this environment, even whispering criticism can endanger a civilian’s life, or their family’s. For a resident of Gaza to step into the street and denounce Hamas is an act of extraordinary bravery.

Which is why it’s remarkable that some dared to do so this week.

On Tuesday, rare protests broke out, beginning in Beit Lahia near the Indonesian Hospital. Roughly a hundred Palestinians gathered, holding signs that read, in Arabic and English, “Stop war” and “Children in Palestine want to live.” Others chanted slogans unthinkable even weeks ago: “Hamas out” and “Yes to peace, no to the ongoing war.”

The protests spread to other areas, including the Jabalia refugee camp and Khan Younis, with demonstrators burning tires and expressing their frustration with Hamas rule.

The group’s response was swift: Masked and armed militants dispersed the gatherings, reportedly assaulting participants. But the protests have still not entirely stopped. In a territory where public dissent has long been synonymous with suicide, this suggests a shift.

Hamas, which presents itself as a resistance movement, enjoys real and sometimes fervent support from many Palestinians (about 40% between Gaza and the West Bank, according to a recent poll). Hamas’s ideological appeal — its narrative of steadfast resistance, religious authenticity and unyielding opposition to Israel — resonates deeply.

But the group has also been cunning in cultivating dependency. Through a complex network of patronage and economic control, the group rewards loyalty with jobs, favors and protection, while punishing disloyalty with exclusion, surveillance and financial ruin. This mafia-like structure ensures that many Gazans are not just ideologically aligned with Hamas, but materially beholden to it. In a place with scarce opportunities and scarce hope, people cling to what little security they can find.

Meanwhile, Hamas dominates the media landscape inside Gaza, ensuring that its narrative is the loudest if not the only one. Outside information is technically accessible, but not widely consumed. And as elsewhere in the world, social media serves to amplify ideological echo chambers.

Add to this the deeply entrenched suspicion toward Israel — a suspicion grounded in decades of occupation, military strikes, settlement expansion in the West Bank, and the dehumanizing rhetoric of some Israeli leaders — and you have a population more inclined to blame Israel for its suffering than the rulers who claim to defend it.

Tuesday’s events suggest that, finally, that status quo might be changing. The war has pushed conditions beyond imagination. Nearly 50,000 are reportedly dead, many of them civilians. Entire neighborhoods have been flattened. Hunger and thirst are widespread. The protests — limited, scattered, but very real — may represent the emergence of a political agency that comes from desperation. Even so, none of this will be enough without a wider realignment.

Israel, thus far, has done little to nourish any form of Palestinian opposition to Hamas. Its leadership has failed to address the Palestinian people in a credible or compassionate voice. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in particular, is seen as toxic and untrustworthy, and his government’s far-right partners reinforce every suspicion and fear Gazans already harbor.

To make the most of this moment of opportunity for real change in Gaza, supported by Gaza’s civilians, a new Israeli government will ultimately be necessary — one capable of balancing strength with empathy, and war aims with postwar vision.

The international community must also act with clarity. It must affirm to Gaza’s populace that if Hamas goes, there is something waiting that is not only better but genuinely good. And it should be made unmistakably clear that there will be no reconstruction in Gaza if Hamas remains in power.

There must be a package on the table — economic, institutional, humanitarian — offered by the Arab world, the West, and Israel if needed. Israel must be on board with a day-after plan that is even minimally acceptable to public opinion in Gaza — presumably involving some version of the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority. This, too, almost certainly requires a new Israeli government.

Critically, education reform in Gaza must be part of this as well; no society can be expected to move forward if its children are taught to hate.

None of it will be easy. It’s clear, in retrospect, that the longstanding assumption that Gazans would rise up against Hamas under the weight of suffering was deeply naive. It failed to account for the durability of ideology, the mechanisms of fear and control, the psychological effects of long-term siege, and the ways in which people can normalize even the most intolerable conditions.

The culture of maximalism and martyrdom that pervades Palestinian politics will not vanish overnight. But the seeds of change exist. It would be a tragedy to let this week’s protests be remembered as just a flickering hope that was extinguished by business as usual in the Palestinians’ sad history.

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