Hamas is losing the backing of ordinary people in Gaza who are paying the human price of its war
It’s become a tragically familiar scene in the Gaza Strip: After seeing her slain son’s corpse, a Palestinian woman screams in agony.
TEL AVIV — It’s become a tragically familiar scene in the Gaza Strip: After seeing her slain son’s corpse, a Palestinian woman screams in agony.
Yet she points her anger not at the Israelis whose weapons killed him, but at Hamas.
“I hope that God will destroy you, Hamas, like you destroyed our children,” she yells in a video captured by NBC News crews in Gaza, her anger palpable, tears streaming down her face. Her startled companion reaches to cover her mouth, insisting the woman’s teenage son died a martyr as she quickly ushers her away.
Her comments are a sign of the shifting times: Nearly nine months after Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attacks, people in Gaza are increasingly voicing frustration with the Islamist group that has governed the Palestinian enclave since 2007, when it wrested power from Fatah, its internationally recognized rivals who still run the occupied West Bank, the larger of two Palestinian territories in the region.
Dissent against Hamas’ rule was once rare in the Gaza Strip, and speaking out remains risky. But the despair and chaos of war has cleaved open a small space for defiance.
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