Hundreds of Palestinians have taken to the streets in Gaza this week to protest against Hamas’s tyranny. In the largest anti-Hamas demonstrations since the war with Israel began, Gazans have been demanding that Hamas step down from power and end the conflict.
This won’t come as a surprise to those actually listening to Palestinians. Polling this month shows that just six per cent of Gazans want Hamas to stay in power. The ongoing demonstrations in Gaza feature slogans such as ‘Hamas terrorists’, ‘Hamas out’ and ‘Stop the war’ – a reminder that the onus to end this war lies with Hamas.
Hamas, which has occupied the Gaza Strip since 2007, functions as a jihadist militia, not dissimilar to the Taliban, al-Qaeda or Islamic State. But there is one glaring dissimilarity with those other terror groups. No other jihadist outfit could kill nearly 1,200 people, as Hamas did on 7 October 2023, and still receive so much sympathy across the West. No other group could deploy gory sexual violence at such a scale and be met with silence, if not applause, from women’s rights organisations. Hamas seems perfectly able to get away with it, however. This is because, for the past 18 months, ideologues ranging from leftists to Islamists have been able to couch their cheerleading for Hamas as a ‘pro-Palestinian’ position.
The slimy mélange of Judeophobia and jihadism that passes for Western Palestine activism does not speak for Palestinians, most of whom actually want to get rid of Hamas. Indeed, Gazans have risen up against Hamas numerous times in the past. In 2019, Hamas militants violently crushed a demonstration against the economic hardships in Gaza. This poverty had been aggravated by Hamas rulers spending hundreds of millions annually on expanding their jihadist infrastructure and on buying luxuries for the leadership.
The West’s pro-Palestine protesters are spectacularly detached from Gazan aspirations. They have rallied for a Palestine ‘From the river to the sea’, believing that Israel is an ‘artificial state’ that does not deserve to exist. Yet in Gaza, over three-fourths of the population support a two-state solution and thus the continued existence of Israel, according to a poll from last year.
So, if the majority of Palestinians in Gaza do not want Hamas to rule and do not want to destroy Israel, how did the Western pro-Palestine movement get it so wrong? Why have leftist activists grown so sympathetic towards this Islamist terror group? The honest answer is that such people are motivated less by support for Palestine, and more by a hatred of Israel.
The tragedy is that by inflating hostility towards the Jewish State, the Western ‘pro-Palestinian’ narrative actually makes peace more elusive. It accepts Hamas’s subjugation of Palestinian territories. It treats Israel’s war against Hamas as uniquely evil and distinct from other military manoeuvres – especially those undertaken by Arab or Muslim regimes. These supposedly pro-Palestinian activists have long maintained, in earnest, that the only way to ensure peace in the region is for Israel to voluntarily stop existing. This is not a remotely serious proposition and has nothing to do with the wellbeing of Palestinians.
What has any of this achieved for Palestinians? Soon, the troika of the US, Saudi Arabia and Israel will arbitrarily settle the fate of Gaza. Whatever gains the Palestinians receive will be exponentially less than what could have been achieved by accepting a Jewish state sooner. Indeed, a narrative that demands that Israel be wiped out, and that supports the jihadist bloodlust of Hamas, was never going to serve Palestinian interests. But there will be nary a murmur of self-reflection on this from the ‘pro-Palestine’ activists.
The obvious pro-Palestinian position is to embrace peace with Israel. Hamas’s war-mongering has been a disaster for ordinary Gazans. Yet even now its Western cheerleaders can’t see it.
Kunwar Khuldune Shahid is a writer based in Pakistan.
