Thousands of anti-Hamas protesters in Gaza, who have made international headlines, aim to convey that the terror organization must “get out of the picture” and have no role in the Strip, a 25-year-old law student at Islamic University of Gaza who has been part of the protests told reporters on Wednesday.
The student, who has been displaced during the war, declined to be named for his safety. He told journalists, in a video chat that ran about 45 minutes and via translator Hadeel Oueis, that his aim is to get out of the war alive with the least amount of losses.
“The fact that these protests expanded since yesterday—they started in the north Gaza and Beit Lahia and now they expanded today to the south—we saw people, thousands of people, protesting,” in the middle of Gaza, the student said.
“People are asking to stop the war and Hamas to get out of the picture, the political and military picture in Gaza, so the war can stop,” he added.
At the beginning, Hamas’s propaganda was “very hard to explain,” and the terror group, which had previously defended Gazans rights, blamed everything on Gazans, according to the student, who spoke in a conversation organized by the N.Y.-based nonprofit Center for Peace Communications.
“But with time, and as the people were watching how Hamas is playing politics in the negotiations and how Hamas is insisting on the continuation of this war,” he said, and especially after recent talks they see that “all Hamas wants is to stay in power, is to make political gains even if the civilian suffering will continue.”
“They see now that Hamas’s priority is to survive as a political entity,” he said.
The student told reporters that the Palestinian Authority isn’t involved in what he described as spontaneous protests.
JNS asked the student what he thought about U.S. President Donald Trump’s view that Gazans aren’t safe in the Strip during a ceasefire and that they should go elsewhere for their protection during reconstruction.
“In fact, life in Gaza has always been hard and not very livable, and in the short term, he agrees with Trump that Gaza won’t be livable,” the translator said, interpreting the student. “But if the plans that they hear and read about for reconstruction will be implemented, then in five to 10 years at least, Gaza can be liveable again.”
“Until five years from now, there will be big suffering and for sure Gaza can’t be livable. The situation will be horrible,” he said.
Protesters “want the world to know that Hamas should get out of Gaza, not only to end the current war and the current clashes, but also to end 18 years of dictatorship oppression by Hamas against the Gazans,” he told JNS. “Gazans were always suffering from Hamas.”
Those protesting also aim “to show the world that Hamas was lying through its propaganda machines. They were always telling even the Arab world that Hamas has big popularity in Gaza,” he told JNS.
They also have a message for Israel. “Unfortunately, Israel also tried after Oct. 7 to say that the ‘Gazans are animals,’ ‘All Palestinians are animals, and they should be punished,’ and that ‘They are terrorists,’” he said. “You can’t say about 7 million Palestinians that they are terrorists, because there is a terrorist and radical group like Hamas.”
The student added that he no longer believes in a two-state solution. “If we keep talking about the two-state solution, we are not getting anywhere,” he said.
The student told reporters that “many in Gaza support releasing the hostages immediately, because they see the hostages as “just a tool” for Hamas’s political gains. “Immediately, under no conditions, the hostages should go back,” he said.
JNS asked what he thought about the Palestinian security prisoners in Israeli prisons. The student said that many of the prisoners are in jail due to their support for Hamas.
He said there are also Gazan civilians in Israeli jails who “have nothing at all to do with Hamas who were arrested on the checkpoints, because of this war that Hamas put us as civilians from Gaza in it for no reason.”
