We Want Dignity, We Want to Live
“It’s the only party we can affect”.
In Gaza, the survivors of the recent ongoing genocide have taken to the streets to allegedly protest Hamas control of the region. The protests mostly took place in Beit Lahia, a city in the north of Gaza, and amassed thousands of participants calling for the fall of Hamas and for an end to the bombardment and starvation. One demonstrator said that the demonstration focused on Hamas specifically because the people did not think there was any hope in getting Israel to stop bombing them.
While Bassem Naim, a senior Hamas official, affirmed the people’s right to protest, he wanted them to focus on Israel’s “criminal occupation” which has turned Gaza to an uninhabitable pile of rubble. However, the people of Gaza demand concessions from Hamas specifically with one demonstrator saying this:
“It’s the only party we can affect.”
Hamas accused the Palestinian Authority, Palestine’s official government, of orchestrating the protests, but the Palestinian Authority denied this. The estimated 3000 people took to the streets with signs proclaiming their desire to live and return to a sense of normalcy. This is also not the first time that the people of Gaza have protested tax hikes. In 2019, they demonstrated in response to poor economic conditions. “We simply want to live in dignity,” Amin Abed, who was 30 years old at the time, said of the protests.
At that time, Gaza saw unemployment rates of over 50% as young college graduates scrambled to find employment to afford the tax increase that Hamas put on goods such as cigarettes and food items. Many people who inhabited the region saw this as a sign of corruption in which the government hoarded the people’s money while they starved. Hamas responded to these protests by arbitrarily detaining, beating, and arresting demonstrators.
Hamas has allegedly engaged in similar actions during this year’s protests. Israeli outlet Ynet News reported that Hamas began a “brutal crackdown”. Odai al-Rubai, a 22-year-old who spoke out against Hamas on social media, was abducted and “was dragged by a rope around his neck” and “beaten with clubs and metal rods in front of passersby”. Footage from Ground News, an organization dedicated to highlighting media biases, showed mourners condemning his wrongful death at the hands of Hamas.
In 972 Magazine, a Palestinian outlet, many interviewees expressed that they were aware of Western and Israeli media outlets using their protests as propaganda against halting the occupation. From Deir al Balah, 45-year-old Munir Baraka said that the demonstrators were against both the occupation of the war. Baraka compared the Gaza protests to Israeli protests against Netanyahu and went on to emphasize that the people in this region want “a responsible body that cares about our lives”.
Sami Abu Salem pushed back against allegations of doing Israel’s or the Palestinian Authority’s bidding in a Facebook post. He said that the people protesting were the same people who were forced to live on animal fodder and weeds and that demonizing them indicated “moral bankruptcy”. He went on to say that such demonstrations would not work in Israel’s favor because they disrupted Israel’s narrative of conflating all Palestinians with Hamas.
Much of the pushback against the pro-Palestine movement today and in past years involves conflating all Palestinians with militant groups and those who commit acts of terrorism. The demonstrations taking place in Gaza show that the region is multifaceted with diverse political opinions, even as a small place under dire circumstances.
