Back in the days of the first and second Intifadas, we used to believe in something called resistance,” says “Othman.” “But today, the ‘resistance’ has become a business.” Every tobacco stand and coffee shop is forced to pay Hamas protection money, he says, and when war breaks out, “[Hamas] sit in their bunkers while we have to bear the brunt. And at the end they tell us it’s a victory.”

From its inception, Hamas has cultivated an image of incorruptibility. In 2006, its candidates ran successfully in Palestinian elections in Gaza under the motto “Reform and Change.” They promised “a new breed of Islamic leadership” that was “ready to put into practice faith-based principles in a setting of tolerance and unity,” and “pledged transparency in government.”

Instead, Hamas proceeded to build an economy based on patronage and political favoritism, exacting a heavy toll on essential services including healthcare and education. It then exploited Gaza’s isolation under closure to build and institutionalize a network of smuggling which it exclusively controlled. Five years after taking power, Hamas’s network of smuggling tunnels was transferring half a billion dollars in goods annually, and exacting “import duties” in excess of 14.5 per cent. As one smuggler put it, the choice is to pay Hamas “or get shot in the legs.” Meanwhile, despite Gazans’ impoverishment, Hamas Imposes a range of taxes to fund an opaque budget, even the purpose of which is secret. As an AP report observes, Hamas “offers few services in exchange [for these taxes], and most aid and relief projects are covered by the international community.”

Unsurprisingly, Palestinian opinion polling finds that 73 percent of Gazans believe Hamas-run institutions are corrupt.

When Hamas wages war, ordinary Gazans pay an even steeper price. As one young Gazan told the Financial Times, “When the Israelis came, Hamas went and hid in the tunnels, and left us outside.” A participant in the 2019 “We Want to Live” protest movement noted, “None of us young people actually voted for Hamas… [it] glorifies itself as the resistance to the occupation, but they sit in their palaces with their Qatari passports while we pay the price.

Everywhere “Iyad” turns in Gaza, he finds Hamas’s leaders looking back at him. Their portraits and slogans cover the walls and alleys. “Is this a city, or a military barracks?” he asks. When his fellow Gazans declare themselves “ready for martyrdom,” he hears only despair. “Ok, Palestine is our cause, and a just one,” he says, “but that doesn’t mean you should keep getting Palestinians killed, again and again, without any result.”

While open criticism of Hamas’s war footing remains rare, a closer look shows a population questioning the wisdom of perpetual conflict. Last August, on a rare occasion when Hamas refrained from firing rockets into Israel during a period of escalation, 68 per cent of Gazans supported the decision. Gazan mother Halima Jundiya, noting the trauma her children still endure from the 2014 conflict, told the New York Times, “We don’t want Hamas to fire rockets. We don’t want another war.” Another 2022 poll found that 53 percent of Gazans agree at least somewhat that “Hamas should stop calling for Israel’s destruction, and instead accept a permanent two-state solution based on the 1967 borders.”

Indications of Gazan discomfort with Hamas ideology and policies, which have been growing, are likely understated, given the recent finding that 62 percent of Gazans believe “people in the Strip cannot criticize Hamas’ authorities without fear.” One dissenter, speaking with +972 Magazine on the condition of anonymity, said, “We’ve been through four horrific wars and accomplished nothing.”

“Fatima’s” brother used to work as a street vendor, selling vegetables his mother grew. But Hamas police in Gaza would confiscate his wares, demanding bribes to let him work and threatening him with jail, beatings, and worse.

Under Hamas rule, the line between taxation and racketeering is a blurred one. According to Palestinian polling, 73 percent of Palestinians believe Hamas institutions are corrupt. In 2019, after Hamas imposed a series of new taxes, approximately 1,000 Gazans waged street demonstrations under the banner “We Want to Live.” One protester observed, "Dozens of Hamas officials have grown their wealth through financial corruption” while "draining our people by imposing more taxes [and] ignoring [our] poverty.” In 2022, the U.S. Treasury Department designated a Hamas finance official and a network of Hamas-affiliated individuals and companies for having funneled over $500 million into a secret investment portfolio, noting that Hamas “has generated vast sums of revenue … while destabilizing Gaza, which is facing harsh living and economic conditions.”

The kind of extortion “Fatima” describes has also driven many Gazans, including her brother, to flee the Strip. A 2018 poll found that 48 percent of Gazans want to emigrate. The journey is a dangerous one, leaving would-be migrants vulnerable to further exploitation by black market smugglers. One mother recounted how her escape to Belgium with an autistic daughter cost $11,000 in bribes. Others perish in the attempt. In 2014, nearly 400 Gazans drowned after smugglers rammed their boat as it attempted to flee to Europe. As one young man put it, “there isn’t anyone [here] who doesn’t know someone who’s migrated to Turkey to sell his organs to help his parents… Hamas glorifies itself as the resistance to the occupation, but they sit in their palaces with their Qatari passports while we pay the price.”

When Hamas police came to cut off power to “Ahmed”’s home, his cousin, a child with Down syndrome, tried to stop them. They beat him and fired live ammunition at his house. After “Ahmed” uploaded footage of the incident to social media, the clip went viral. He spent the next three days on the run from Hamas authorities.

Hamas routinely deploys coercive tactics in an effort to silence critics. According to Palestinian polling from 2022, 62 percent of Palestinians believe “people in the Strip cannot criticize Hamas authorities without fear.” This fear is justified: a 2017 Human Rights Watch investigation concluded that “[s]ince it seized control of Gaza in June 2007… [Hamas] authorities have harassed critics and abused those in its custody.” The report noted that after one Gazan journalist asked Hamas leaders on Facebook, “Do your children sleep on the floor like ours do?”, he was arrested, charged with “misuse of technology,” and instructed by Hamas officers that “it’s forbidden to write against Hamas; we will shoot you.”

“Mariam,” a professional Dabke dancer, believes in the power of art to improve the world. But after Hamas gained control of Gaza in 2007, they told her to stop dancing and study Qur’an instead. When she refused, they began to threaten her family.

“Mariam” is not alone. Since taking power, Hamas has clamped down on women’s basic freedoms and artistic expressions deemed un-Islamic. In July 2022, Hamas banned street concerts. “[Hamas has] imposed unjust measures,” one musician told Al-Monitor, “as it deemed art and music to be against Islamic law.” In 2021, Hamas ruled that women require the permission of a male guardian to travel. In 2018, Hamas blocked the launch of a women's television channel and banned the opening of a ballet school for girls. In 2017, it banned dog walking “to protect women and children.” In 2013, a marathon organized by the United Nations was canceled after a Hamas decision to ban women from competing.

The organization shows no sign of changing course.

Billions in foreign aid have poured into Gaza. But as far as “Isma’il” is concerned, the sea might as well have swallowed it. Gaza is like the Bermuda Triangle, he says — everything that enters, disappears.

Between 2014-2020, UN agencies sent nearly $4.5 billion in aid to Gaza, and Qatar has provided an additional $1.3 billion since 2012. Yet the population lives at a subsistence level.

Hamas maintains that it does not “touch a single cent” of international aid, despite the active role it plays in its distribution. Most of the population are skeptical, however. A recent survey found that 73 percent of Gazans believe Hamas-run institutions are corrupt. On occasion, Hamas has been caught in outright theft. In 2009, the UN was briefly forced to halt aid shipments after Hamas gunmen stole several hundred tons of flour, blankets, and other aid. An UNRWA spokesman told the New York Times, "They were armed and we were not."

“Maha” once aspired to be a journalist in her native Gaza, but no longer tries. First her Facebook page was taken down. Then Hamas told her, “If you don’t stop, something bad might happen to your family.”

Hamas maintains strict control over media based in Gaza. Freedom House gives the coast strip a score of 0/4 for “free and independent media,” noting “a pattern of arrests, interrogations, and in some cases beatings and torture of journalists in Gaza.”

Hamas often silences journalists by targeting their families. In October 2022, one Gazan media activist posted a video of such a threat after a Hamas enforcer threatened his parents. A few weeks later, according to the International Federation of Journalists, another reporter was arrested by Hamas after he exposed their involvement in an operation smuggling Gazans into Europe. Interrogated by the Hamas security apparatus, he was told he had “stepped into forbidden territory.” The IFJ report adds that security officers subsequently broke into his home and threatened his family.

“Basma,” a licensed pharmacist in Gaza, was repeatedly harassed by Hamas over her affiliation with Fatah. After she opened her own pharmacy, Hamas priced her out of the market, forcing her to shut it down.

Hamas rule in Gaza, which began in 2007 after a lethal battle with Fatah and PA officers, has been marked by a combination of violent and nonviolent tactics aimed at eliminating all political opposition. In the years following the Hamas takeover, PA officials accused Hamas of “turning its rifles in the direction of Fatah members,” and local rights groups documented continual abuse and periodic killings. In 2014, Amnesty International’s report ‘Strangling Necks’: Abductions, Torture, and Summary Killings of Palestinians by Hamas Forces During the 2014 Gaza/Israel Conflict documented “serious abuses against Fatah members and former members of the PA security forces in Gaza, including abductions, torture, shootings, and other assaults.”

Less lurid, but more ubiquitous in daily life, are the various means by which Hamas has created a patronage network that bestows benefit on its members while shutting out other Palestinians. Tens of thousands have been hired and promoted in the civil service based on loyalty to the movement, while many others have been granted profitable stakes in Hamas-owned businesses. Meanwhile, doctors and other medical professionals have been summarily dismissed for retaining ties to Fatah. Indeed, despite the Strip’s chronic healthcare crisis, whole clinics have been forced to shut down for the same reason.

There’s nepotism in everything here,” according to “Ashraf.” On the one hand, for example, you need friends in the Hamas-run electric company to get a break on your bill. You’ll be taxed exorbitantly otherwise — especially if you happen to be among the 17,000 Gazans with a permit to work in Israel. On the other hand, Ashraf observes, a young relative of Hamas official Yahya Musa who mocked Hamas and cursed Islam was roaming free only two days later — for an offense that would see an ordinary Gazan “in jail to this day.”

The belief that Hamas institutions are corrupt, shared by 73 percent of Gazans according to a September 2022 survey, stems from a number of manifest signs, of which nepotism, according to a 2022 study by Aman Transparency Palestine, is the most common. Gazan social media last summer saw an outburst of criticism of leaders ”who can live in Gaza at the height of luxury and yet choose to abandon it for the hotels and villas of Doha and Istanbul.” During last summer’s attempted revival of the “We Want to Live” protest movement as a Gazan social media campaign, one woman observed, "Everyone in Gaza is suffering from the situation. The only ones who enjoy their life are the officials and their children.”

A further source of anguish is shared by parents like “Amna,” who wants her children to have a decent education, “to think rationally… and live a modern life.” She fears sending them to Ha-mas-run schools for this reason — “because that’s where they indoctrinate people,” instructing children “how they can go to heaven” through martyrdom, “and I don't want my kids to be exposed to that indoctrination.”

By way of context, in the years before Hamas seized power in 2007, a new discussion about the need for Arab education reform was spreading in the region. As the UN’s 2002 Arab Human Development Report put it, “Today’s global information marketplace requires a different kind of education, one that imparts the competencies, attitudes, and intellectual agility conducive to systemic and critical thinking within a knowledge-driven economy.” Whereas some Arab countries have seen steps forward in this direction, Hamas has transformed Gazan education into a system for ideological indoctrination and military recruitment. Gender segregation is imposed not only on students but on teachers. “They monitor [us] when we talk to our male colleagues and they humiliate us if we don't dress in the way they want us to,” one Gazan teacher told the Atlantic. Rules are enforced by “modesty police,” who are known to abuse those in their custody.

Pervasive antisemitic indoctrination and Holocaust denial are coupled, from an early age, with instruction in weapons use and encouragement to wage “jihad” after graduation.

As Amna makes clear, she wants a different future for her children.

Gazans’ suffering under Hamas is compounded, says “Yasmin,” by the feeling that Arabs across the region do not understand what life under Hamas rule is really like. “A lot of the [Arab] media outlets are working for Hamas,” she explains. “They depict Hamas as heroes.” Meanwhile, “If you’re a Gazan citizen who says, ‘I don’t want war,’ you’re branded a traitor.”

Hamas-friendly narratives have long enjoyed a dominant position in Arab media. One quantitative analysis of Al Jazeera’s reporting found that it “has significantly elevated and prioritized” Hamas “and the resistance narrative in its coverage.” Al Jazeera even received an award for its “professionalism” in covering Hamas from Hamas itself. Meanwhile, the movement also enjoys staunch backing from all Iranian government-owned media, with over 210 outlets in 35 countries, as well as Russian state-backed media, which rank among the most influential in Arab media today.

A crucial component of Hamas’s narrative dominance is its control of media and reporting within the coastal strip. Some outlets it administers directly, such as Shehab News Agency and Al-Aqsa Radio. Ibrahim Daher, director of the official Al-Aqsa Radio, told the Washington Post, “We are the leading reason behind Hamas’s popularity… In any Hamas action, we spread the word about it and then stop any rumors about the party.” When news unfavorable to Hamas breaks, he explained, “our policy has always been to keep silent.” Asked about the cost of Hamas’s policies in Gaza, Daher said, “We aren’t interested in showing other things, like any success by the Israelis or how businesses were hurt by the war.” Nongovernment journalists are contained through other means, including arrest, interrogation, and physical abuse. In 2019, after reporting on a corruption scandal that implicated Hamas, independent journalist Hajar Harb was arrested, “threatened with physical harm, and even accused of being a collaborator with Israel. “I’m paying the price of doing an investigative piece about corruption in Gaza,” she said. “How is this fair?”

Amid the pressures of life in Gaza, many crave an outlet to air and manage their feelings. So “Layla” opened a counseling center in her house, tending to the emotional needs of women and children. “Solving their problems made me happy,” she says. Hamas authorities, however, demanded that she either shut the center down or work under their oversight, “so that the issues would be contained … [lest] people go out and protest what the authorities are doing.” One day, police arrived, surrounding her home on all sides.

Fifteen years of Hamas rule have left Gazans with few opportunities to air unsanctioned grievances. One Human Rights Watch report notes, “Hamas authorities routinely arrest and torture peaceful critics and opponents with impunity.” Another found that this ongoing abuse may constitute “crimes against humanity, given its systematic nature over many years.” In the same period, abuse and harassment of women has soared. According to Freedom House, Hamas is “reluctant to pursue such cases,” so “rape and domestic violence remain underreported and frequently go unpunished.” Even so, a recent survey found that 37.5 percent of women in Gaza had experienced violence in the past year.

Were Gaza’s women free to air their grievances at forums like Layla’s, the true scale of the problem — and authorities’ disinterest in addressing it — could pose a challenge to the rulers of the strip. As Hamas discovered in 2019, there are plenty of brave youth in the area who want change and have the courage to demand it.

In 2019, approximately 1,000 Gazans waged street demonstrations under the banner “We Want to Live.” “Rana” was one of them. “The people wanted its voice to be heard by the government,” she explains. “But as I’m sure you saw, Hamas responded with the opposite of what we had hoped … with every kind of brutality.”

Indeed, it was reported at the time that police fired at demonstrators, stormed houses around the strip, and arrested anyone suspected of involvement. An Amnesty International official observed, “The crackdown on freedom of expression and the use of torture in Gaza has reached alarming new levels … we have seen shocking human rights violations carried out by Hamas security forces against peaceful protesters, journalists, and rights workers.”

Among the victims was Momen al-Natour, a protest organizer. Hamas stormed his house and threatened his parents, demanding his whereabouts. Both he and others arrested were “tortured, humiliated, and accused of collaborating with Israel and the PA,” al-Natour said. The violence, he added, shows that “this is a partisan police fight to protect Hamas, not the people.” Another protest leader whose family faced similar mistreatment told AP, “Hamas doesn’t want us to scream. It wants us to die in silence.”

Another demonstrator, “Walid,” describes being jailed by Hamas seven times. Before the protests, “I was a young dreamer, dreaming about change,” he recalls. “I hadn’t imagined that they would brand us as traitors … we meant no harm to anyone, after all.” What changed his life, he says, was the experience of looking his torturers in the eyes.

Though Hamas claims to respect Palestinians’ right to free expression, its behavior shows otherwise. In addition to firing into crowds, raiding houses, and arresting over 1,000 demonstrators, Hamas abused untold numbers in custody. Nineteen-year-old Amir Abu Oun, for example, “was detained and held for five days, during which he said he was slapped, beaten and deprived of food.

Part of the Hamas response to the 2019 demonstrations was to work systematically to brand protesters as traitors. In 2019, pro-Hamas media outlets, both within the strip and in other Arab countries, were enlisted to tar Gazan protesters as “collaborators” with Israeli security forces. One Hamas security official claimed, “These protests are driven by foreign parties and these parties are seeking to destabilize the Gaza Strip.”

As pro-Hamas media from various Arab countries echo these talking points, they reinforce the feeling within Gaza that many in the region confuse support for Hamas and support for the Palestinians who live under Hamas control.

“Safa,” a Gazan photojournalist, tried to support the 2019 demonstrations by providing coverage to international outlets. Police smashed her camera and her hand, jailed and tortured her family members, and even threatened her relatives abroad that if they posted information about the protests on social media, their loved ones back home would be punished. Un-bowed, Safa believes that “in the end, something will happen that makes them take to the streets again.”

According to the International Federation of Journalists, 42 Gazan journalists were “targeted” during the 2019 protests, facing “physical assaults, summons, threats, home arrests, and seizure of equipment.” Freedom House, which gives Gaza a score of 0/4 for media freedom, reports, “Gazan journalists and bloggers continue to face repression, usually at the hands of the Hamas government’s internal security apparatus.” The Foreign Press Association noted that its repression of the 2019 “We Want to Live” movement was just “the latest in a string of chilling attacks on reporters in Gaza.”

Hamas’s tactic of targeting critics’ families is a common thread in such episodes. In October 2022, one Gazan media activist posted a video of a Hamas enforcer threatening his parents in an attempt to silence him. When Osama al-Kahlout, an independent journalist, published a photograph of one protester with a sign reading “I want to live in dignity,” Hamas broke into his family’s home, smashed his furniture, and beat him on the way to the police station. There he was“advised” not to report on any more protests. As he later said, however, “I’m a journalist. I don’t regret covering it.”

Though more than three years have passed since the demonstrations were quashed, Gazan political scientist Mikhaimar Abusada appears to agree with Safa that Hamas has not heard the last of the “We Want to Live” movement. Just because they are not protesting, he observes, “doesn’t mean the Palestinians in Gaza are happy with Hamas.”

Part of what stokes Gazans’ bitterness, according to “Hisham,” is the ostentatious behavior of Hamas leaders. “Nowadays, it’s not an occupier who is killing me,” he says, but rather Hamas, which imposes crushing taxes, leaving Gazans in abject poverty, while its officials have “land, businesses, and vast sums of money.”

Hamas imposes a heavy tax burden, collecting roughly $30 million per month from already be-leaguered Gazans. These taxes fund a largely opaque budget, even the purpose of which is secret. Yet Hamas “offers few services in exchange, and most aid and relief projects are covered by the international community,” reports AP. Mohammed Agha, a gas station owner feeling the pinch, lamented, “Before Hamas, 1,000 shekels (about $320) a month was enough for a family to get by. Now, 5,000 isn’t enough because they tax the citizens.”

Meanwhile, despite outwardly projecting an air of austerity, Hamas officials and their families live in relative luxury. In 2009, Hamas political bureau chairman Ismail Haniyeh declared, "Our hands are clean. We do not steal funds, hold real estate, or build villas." Yet in recent years, Haniyeh’s son has become widely known in Gaza as “Abu al-Aqarat [Father of Properties]” for extensive real estate holdings made possible by his father’s influence. Earlier this month, Palestinian journalist Lara Ahmed reported that Haniyeh has laundered several million dollars among his extended family. As Palestinian journalist Akram Atallah observed that “Hamas as an authority has been exposed,” he said. “The people found out that its leaders live much better than they do.”

Gazan youth sometimes respond to such information with dark humor. Last year, local activists launched a social media campaign drawing attention to Hamas financial impropriety, titled "Our Hands Are Clean." A recent poll by The Washington Institute found not only that large majorities of Gazans “are frustrated with Hamas governance,” but also that 84 percent of Gazans prioritize “internal political and economic reform over foreign policy issues.”

For the majority of Gazans who do not openly censure Hamas, there is no guarantee that Ha-mas will not censure them. At a certain coffeehouse in Gaza, “Lubna” and her boyfriend used to hold hands – until Hamas police noticed their behavior, reported it, and shut the cafe down. Today Lubna is married, and at every family gathering, relatives ask when they will be having children. “It would be wrong to bring a child into the conditions we endure,” she explains. “A child is innocent. She doesn’t deserve to be forced to go to government schools teaching lessons that are worthless and deceitful.” The young couple hopes to build a future somewhere else.

Efforts by Hamas to impose conservative social mores intensified after the group took power. They include imposing gender segregation in schools, banning books, prohibiting women from biking, and encouraging polygamy. Hamas officials claim these measures reflect Gazans’ innate-ly conservative sensibilities, but local rights activists feel otherwise. Zeinab al-Ghoneimi, a women’s rights advocate based in Gaza, challenged the group to be more straightforward: “Instead of hiding behind traditions, why don’t they say clearly they are Islamists and they want to Islamize the community?”

“Lubna’s” fears about a child’s education are well founded. Hamas-run schools and summer camps steer children toward a life of conflict. Their curricula deny basic critical thinking skills while instilling antisemitism and Holocaust denial. Children are trained in firearms use and urged to pursue “jihad” after graduation. Samir Zakout, a Gazan human rights activist, believes Hamas’s educational methods are aimed at “building a military culture, familiarizing boys with resistance, and creating the next generation of militants." Mkhaimar Abusada, an assistant professor of political science at Al-Azhar University in Gaza City, decries the group’s efforts: “They can call it summer camps, but in reality this is just part of Islamic socialization … They are recruiting these kids to join the al-Qassam Brigades. Whenever there is a fight with Israel or there is a new round of violence with Israel, most of the boys will be recruited to fight as suicide bombers or at least to join the Palestinian resistance.”

“Samir’s” late brother, who served in the PA security forces in Gaza, was among the critically wounded in the Hamas coup of 2007. His friends rushed him to the emergency room. Before he could be treated, Hamas militants shut off the power and made it impossible for doctors to save his life. Years of Hamas persecution of his family followed. “These people profess Islam and claim to be religious,” Samir says, “but they slaughtered people.”

Since Hamas consolidated its rule over Gaza, it has waged a campaign of violence and harassment against Palestinians supporting other parties, as well as their families. During the initial putsch in 2007, Hamas killed dozens of noncombatants associated with Fatah. Some, like Muhammad Swairki, a cook employed by Fatah, were bound hand and foot and thrown off a 15-story building in Gaza City. As one Hamas commander put it in 2014, “The Resistance will show no mercy to anyone who informs on the Resistance and its men to the enemy. They will be dealt with through field executions.”

Hamas authorities liberally accuse their critics of collaboration with Israel. As several human rights groups have noted, however, evidence in these cases is murky at best, and due process does not exist. A 2014 report by Amnesty International found that on numerous occasions, the only evidence of the supposed offense was a confession extracted under torture, used in a “grossly unfair” trial. That year alone, Hamas executed at least 23 people on charges of “collaboration.” In periods of heightened tension with Israel, as Amnesty International’s Philip Luther noted, “Hamas forces took the opportunity to ruthlessly settle scores, carrying out a series of unlawful killings and other grave abuses… [actions] designed to exact revenge and spread fear across the Gaza Strip.”

Majed” recalls how the Gaza border protests of 2018-2019 began. “It started with peaceful protest camps,” he says, “but Hamas decided to exploit them.” Gazans were told that they would “break the blockade” if they marched on the border, he remembers, “but the people were broken instead.”

Though the March of Return protests were initiated at first by grassroots activists, Hamas was quick to direct them to its own ends. As Gazan political analyst Reham Owda told CNN, “Nothing happens here without Hamas’s approval and it approves of the demonstrations.” In an interview, Hamas politburo member Salah al-Bardawil boasted that at least 50 of those killed during the protests were Hamas members. Another Hamas stalwart, Khalil Al-Haya, later claimed that Hamas was “at the heart” of the protests.

In co-opting the March of Return, Hamas sought to refashion it as a platform for violent cross-border attacks. Hamas’s takeover of the march troubled its organizer, Gazan activist Ahmed Abu Artema, who told the Financial Times, “The idea was ours, but the real situation is another story.” Hamas, rather than ordinary Gazans, was the biggest beneficiary of the protests. As Al-Azhar University professor Mkhaimar Abusada put it, “They are the number one winners of this march — they didn’t have to come up with the idea, but they were immediately able to appropriate it.” This left regular Gazans to suffer the consequences. As Majed observes, “four hundred people were martyred, and nobody knows for what.”

“Bassam” would like the world to know that in the 2019 street demonstrations, he and his fellow protesters wanted nothing more than “a government that knows how to run the country.” As proud Palestinian nationalists, they did not expect that Hamas would tar them all as “traitors” and “Zionist collaborators.” Though they took a truly independent stand for positive change, moreover, they were disappointed to have “found no international support.” If a new movement for change is ever to be revived, he says, it must have “coordination” with the international community.

The “We Want to Live” Movement first emerged in 2019 in protest against Hamas’s tax increases, corruption, and economic mismanagement. As one activist told BBC, “Hamas has billions of dollars in investments in many countries, while people [in Gaza] starve to death and migrate in search of work.” The thousand-odd Gazans who took to the streets made non-ideological demands, such as improving living conditions and ending corruption and nepotism. As the movement grew, Hamas cracked down violently, beating demonstrators, raiding homes, and arresting more than a thousand people.

Even without the international support Bassam calls for, some Gazans have continued to speak out, attempting to revive the movement online or in exile. Frustrations remain high: one recent poll found that only seven percent of Gazans would positively evaluate their conditions, while demand for elections stood at 78 percent. As one organizer put it in 2021, “It is the right time to demand our right to live, just like any other people around the world.” Amal al-Shamaly, another protest veteran, stressed that she would refuse to give up: “To reject this bitter reality … I will keep writing against corruption and illegal governmental decisions imposed on us.” While little has changed for Gazans, as another organizer told the NYT, “The demonstrations broke the state of silence and inertia among Gazans and showed the reality of Hamas.”

Bassam’s call for international support for a Gazan movement for change reflects a larger trend among Arab reformists under extremist domination. While outsiders who sympathize with them eschew assistance for fear of tainting them with the so-called “kiss of death,” reformists, facing bogus accusations of “collaboration” and treason anyway, would rather not be left alone to suffer the stigma without the benefit of actual international support.

“Khalil’s” grandparents raised him on stories of a better time. In their generation, “we used to attend [Israelis’] celebrations, and they would come to ours.” Palestinians were free to travel from Gaza to Jaffa or Jerusalem, and work alongside Israelis. ”When you work with Israelis, and they trust you,” his grandparents told him, “you can live the life you’ve always wished for.”

Without idealizing the largely forgotten period between 1967 and 1987 in Gaza, it is worth recalling the context of the memories Khalil’s grandparents shared. Those two decades saw rapid material improvement in living conditions in the Gaza Strip. Relations between Gaza and Israel led to a steady increase in Gazan workers traveling to the Jewish state, reportedly peaking in 1987 at nearly 40 percent of the workforce. These guest workers enjoyed a daily wage premium roughly 20–40 percent higher than those employed in Gaza itself, and accounted for an enormous share of Palestinian GDP.

Gazans also enjoyed far greater freedom of movement. According to B’Tselem, from 1967 until 1991, “Palestinians from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip could travel almost entirely freely… Gaza and Israel maintained family ties; students from Gaza studied in West Bank universities; and extensive trade took place among Palestinians, no matter where they lived.” As Nahed al-Ghool, a water delivery man in Gaza, told Al-Jazeera, “The best period of our lives was when we used to work in Israel, 25 or 30 years ago. We were happy, we used to go to Israel or Jordan or Egypt – the roads were open. We lived well, there was money. Today, there’s no money.”

“Zainab” would like the world to know that “there’s a false stereotype that Palestinians in Gaza love rockets and wars.” While pro-Hamas media works to “instill a thirst for blood” in the youth, her struggle is to tell Israelis and Palestinians alike “that I’m a human being here in Gaza — not a beast, a terrorist, or a lover of weapons — because in the end, weapons won’t get us anywhere.”

Hamas rhetoric calls for Gazans to serve as cannon fodder. Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar memorably told Palestinians, “Everybody who has a gun should take it, and those who don’t have a gun should take a butcher’s knife, axe or any knife they can get… from satellites, the entire region should be seen engulfed in fire.”

Last month, the head of the Hamas Women’s Movement gave an interview describing the culture of “martyrdom-seekers” that Hamas fosters, in which “a girl sets out only one thing on her mind — to meet her Lord by means of her blood and body parts.” She added that “most kindergartens [in Gaza] belong to our sisters in Hamas. Children are raised from a young age on this culture … From infancy, children are nurtured to love jihad, to want to meet Allah.”

The many Gazans who oppose this worldview are forbidden to say so. Any attempt at civil peacemaking is met with harsh repression. In 2020, when a group of Gazan peace activists held a Zoom meeting with Israeli counterparts, several were arrested, beaten, and charged with “betrayal.” Unsurprisingly, as one young Gazan woman told NPR, “most Gazans have stopped believing in Hamas and the others… they don’t feed us, they don’t provide anything. How can we build a future with these guys?” Ali El-Jeredly, an unemployed 28-year old Gazan, put it more directly: “I want work more than rockets.”

In recent years, observes Fadi, Gazans have discovered that “the Palestine which Hamas wants to liberate is not the same Palestine which we as Palestinians were expelled from. … There is now an entire people there — and that, a people, and Israel as a whole, which the Palestinians actually need.” While Hamas makes it “extremely hard to talk about peace,” Fadi believes that “if we could engage the outside world, it would be possible for Palestinians in Gaza to regain their humanity. … [and] in recognizing that life has value, they’d see the humanity in Israelis too.”

Hamas often claims that victory is imminent. Last year, Hamas politician Kanaan Abed declared, “The State of Israel will be history. Palestinians outside Palestine: Prepare your papers. You will return to Palestine after the liberation.” Many Gazans see a different reality. As one young Gazan struggling to provide for his family told the Economist, “My life is like a TV screen with no picture.”

Rather than open up new spaces for Gazans, Hamas hems them in still further. As noted earlier, in 2021, after Gazan activists held a series of Zoom conversations with Israelis to discuss the possibility of peace, Hamas arrested several of them. Hamas’s armed wing declared in a statement, “Normalization in all its forms and activities is treason, a crime, and religiously, nationally, and morally unacceptable.” The group’s leader was imprisoned and tortured, according to the AP. Omar Shakir, Israel-Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, noted that the incident reflects Hamas’s “systematic practice of punishing those whose speech threatens their orthodoxy.”

“Zainab” wants the world to know that she dreams of a Gaza without war and free from religious coercion, where “everyone can find income and a livelihood.” In this new place, “women are free to remove the hijab or to wear it.” It is a Gaza “open to the world,” with movie theaters and bars like any other city. “I don’t want there to be wars and rockets,” she says. “We and the Israelis are one people… all of us should live in peace.”

In stark contrast to Zainab’s dream for the future, Freedom House ranks Gaza an overall score of 11/100, noting that “the political rights and civil liberties of Gaza Strip residents are severely constrained.” Al-Nasser Cinema in Gaza City, once among the largest in the Middle East, was sealed with concrete after clerics denounced it as “pornographic.” Muhammad Aeraar, a Hamas official from the Ministry of Culture, dismissed cinema as “a violation of the community’s traditions and corrosive to its values,” and claimed that “Gazan citizens do not miss the cinema, nor do they sense its absence.”

Many feel differently. On a rare occasion when Hamas permitted a film screening, hundreds attended. Audience members told foreign press, “We need to live like humans, with cinemas, public spaces and parks.”

“Ibrahim” has a vision of a thriving, developing Gaza, at peace with Israel and itself. He wants the world to know that Palestinians free of Hamas domination can build such a place themselves, given a modicum of outside assistance. “Most of the Hamas leadership has left Gaza,” he observes, “living in Turkey or Qatar, and building a better future for themselves and their children.” Let those who want to “break the blockade… come to Gaza and truly liberate it,” he says — by building a civil society.

The gulf in living standards between Hamas leaders and ordinary Gazans has grown increasingly conspicuous in recent years. In 2019, Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh moved to Qatar with his family, while the group’s deputy leader Khalil al-Hayya relocated to Turkey soon after. Since then he has visited Gaza only twice. Fat’hi Hamad, another senior Hamas official, now also resides in Istanbul, often flying to Beirut for meetings in luxury hotels. More than a dozen other high-ranking Hamas officials have followed suit. This exodus has not gone unnoticed. According to Azmi Keshawi, Gaza analyst at the International Crisis Group, “Ordinary Palestinians see that Hamas… [is] living in these comfortable zones where they are no longer suffering and seem far from the Palestinian cause and issues.”

Gazans have ample cause for frustration. In the years since Hamas took power, Gaza’s GDP growth has averaged one percent per year, one sixth the rate of growth in the West Bank. In periods of relative calm, such as 1997-1999 and 2003-2005, Gaza enjoyed growth rates as high as 17 percent per year. One study concluded that were Gaza’s rulers to adopt a conciliatory posture toward their neighbors, the territory’s GDP would skyrocket by 40 percent; household purchasing power by 55 percent; and exports by 625 percent. In today’s bleak conditions, by contrast, young Gazans see their best chance for a decent life in fleeing to somewhere else. One woman whose son died trying to leave the coastal Strip by sea said, “I blame the rulers here, the government of Gaza… They live in luxury while our children eat dirt, migrate, and die abroad.”