Hamas’s iron grip slowly slip away as residents protest

“Outside!” Out! “

The voice in the Telegram video is insistent. Strongly. Sometimes musical.

And the message unequivocally.

“All of Hamas, out!”

On the streets of Gaza, More and more Palestinians are expressing an open challenge Against the armed group, which runs the tape for almost 20 years.

Many hold Hamas responsible for the flood of the tiny, impoverished territory in the oldest crisis that the Palestinians have been facing for more than 70 years.

“Delive the message,” another crowd deterred as it fired through the devastated streets of Gaza: “Hamas is garbage.”

“The world is deceived by the situation in the Gaza Strip,” says Mumen Al Natur, a Gaza lawyer and a former organizer of the anti-Hamas movement in 2019. “We want to live.”

Al Natur talks to us from the broken remains of his city, the vague sail side of the tent, which is now part of his house that curves behind him.

“The world thinks Gaza is Hamas and Hamas is Gaza,” he said. “We have not chosen Hamas and now Hamas is determined to manage the gas and bind his fate to his own. Hamas must withdraw.”

Speaking is dangerous. Hamas has never tolerated disagreement. Al-Natur seems steadfast, writes a fierce column about The Washington Post in late March.

“To support Hamas means being for Palestinian death,” he writes, “not Palestinian freedom.”

Was it not dangerous to talk that way, I asked him.

“We have to take the risk and talk,” he replied without hesitation.

“I’m 30 years old. When Hamas took, I was 11. What did I do with my life? My life was wasted between war and escalating violence for nothing.”

As Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007, forcibly banished political rivals, a year after winning the national elections, there were three major wars with Israel and two smaller conflicts.

“Humanity requires us to raise our voice,” Al Natur said, “Despite the suppression of Hamas.”

Hamas may be busy fighting Israel, but he is not afraid to punish his critics.

At the end of March, 22-year-old Odai al-Rubai was abducted by armed artillerymen from a refugee shelter in Gaza.

Hours later, his body is found covered with horrific wounds.

The Palestinian Independent Human Rights Committee said Odai was tormented, calling his death “a serious violation of the right to life and out -of -court murder.”

Al-Rubai had participated in the latest protests against Hamas. His family accused Hamas of his death and demanded justice.

Days earlier, frightened al-Rubai published a dark grain video on social media, in which he expressed his fear that Hamas fighters were coming for him.

“Gaza became a ghost city,” he said, looking over his shoulder.

“I got on the street without knowing where to go. I don’t know why they were after me. They humiliated us and brought us ruin.”

At his funeral, a small crowd required revenge and repeated requests for Hamas to leave Gaza.

Last summer, Amin Abed almost suffered the same fateAfter his decision to speak against Hamas.

Masked fighters beat him pointlessly, broke the bones all over his body and damaged his kidneys. Abed survived, but had to seek medical treatment abroad.

Now, living in Dubai, he is still involved in the protest movement and believes that Hamas’s authority has been reduced.

“Hamas’s power started to fade,” he told me.

“She is aimed at activists and civilians, beats and kills them to scare people. But it’s not.”

Before the fire stopped last month, Hamas’s fighters seemed to have the intention of highly visible manifestations of power.

But now, when Israel again attacks mercilessly, the same artillerymen withdrew underground and the Gaza civilians were immersed back into the misery of war.

Some of the more new protests suggest that the civilians, driven to the edge of madness by a year and a half of Israeli bombing, lose their fear of Hamas.

Bate Lahia, at the north end of the Gaza Strip, saw some of the most vocal oppositions.

In a series of voice notes, an eyewitness – who asked not to be baptized – described several recent incidents in which locals prevented Hamas’s fighters from carrying out hostilities from their community.

On April 13, he said, Hamas artillerymen tried to break their way into the house of an elderly man Jamal Al Mazhn.

“They wanted to shoot rockets and pipes (a shameful term used for some of Hamas’ domestic shells) from his house,” eyewitnesses told us.

“But he refused.”

The incident soon escalates, with relatives and neighbors coming to Al Mazhn’s defense. The artillerymen opened fire and wounded several people, but were eventually expelled.

“They were not intimidated by the bullets,” eyewitnesses said to the protesters.

“They advanced and said (the artillerymen) to take their things and run. We don’t want to do this place. We don’t want your weapons that brought us destruction, devastation and death.”

Elsewhere in Gaza, protesters have told fighters to stay away from hospitals and schools to avoid situations where civilians have fallen into Israeli air strikes.

But such a challenge is still risky. In Gaza Hamas, he shot such a protester dead.

With a little losing and hoping to end the war once more, some Gazani direct their fury equally in Israel and Hamas.

Asked which country he had accused most of the gas crash, Amin Ahd replied that it was “a choice between cholera and plague.”

The protest movement of recent weeks is not yet a rebellion, but after almost 20 years the iron of the gas rule slowly slips away.