“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.