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.”