In Gaza the majority is “furious” with Hamas, in the West Bank its support triples

2023-12-18 22:08:04

In ‘History of two cities’Dickens portrayed the contrast of life in London and Paris during the beginning of the French Revolution. An orderly, calm and peaceful life in the first; a turbulent, chaotic and violent existence in the second. None of the disjointed pieces that make up the Occupied Palestinian Territories has known peace for many decades, but the devastating but unequal response it is giving Israel to the ruthless massive attack of Hamas From the past October 7 is vividly reflected in the perception that have the Palestinians from islamist faction. In none of the territories does it exceed 50%, but while in West Bank his support has tripled in the polls, in Gaza most are “furious” with the gunmen who started this latest war.

“The Hamas people still support Hamas, but the rest are furious with them for the price we are paying for his adventurism”says a journalist from the Strip, who prefers not to give his name for security reasons. “If they had had the support of Syria, Iran o Hezbollah in a big war to help us recover Our rights and liberate our land, the people would have accepted the sacrifice, but the reality is that they have only managed to put the lion in our homes,” he says in a telephone conversation. Hamas’s popularity in Gaza had been declining for some time, the natural result of more than three decades of unopposed governmentsuffocating external conditions and recurring Israel’s military punishmentsl to quell all resistance to his prison blockade and his dominio colonial based on massive destruction.

If to that is added the corruption of the bureaucratic apparatus of Hamas and the repressive vein that they have deployed internally, in the best tradition of the Arab regimes, one can understand the popular disaffection in Gaza, where they had a 42% support in September, according to the respected Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR), the main population center of the territories. Since the October attack on southern Israel, in which 1,200 people diedof them, about 850 civilians, support has increased four points, according to the latest PSR survey, carried out at the end of November, largely coinciding with the week of truce.

The risk of protesting in Gaza

In times of war, dissent is always a risky sport and Gaza is no exception. “Hamas people are everywhere and if they feel that someone is trying to destabilize the home front you can take a shot in the legs”says the same source, with no known affiliation. “You can complain verbally, but anyone who dares to call a protest is going to get in trouble.” In Israel, too, fear of arrests and police violence has silenced the minority of Israelis who, according to polls, oppose what their government is doing in Gaza.

In West Bank, Dickens’s London, only with thousands of detainees, daily raids and hundreds of dead Palestinians, the picture is different. From having only 12% support in September, support for Hamas has stood at 44%. And more than eight out of ten of its inhabitants consider that the Islamist attack was “correct”, compared to 57% who think so in Gaza. Most consider that it was carried out to protect Islamic holy places in Jerusalem of Jewish extremists and seek a prisoner exchange.

Support for armed resistance

“The population supports the resistance to occupation because everything else has failed. From the Oslo processat talks or one’s own Palestinian Authority (ANP)”, says the doctor, politician and activist Mustafa Barghouti, a history of Palestinian civil society. “It’s not that ideologically they have turned to Hamas, but that people are looking for anything that can change their situation,” he adds from his office in Ramallah. Historically, the Hamas intellectual basethe professors and thinkers closest to the hard line of the Muslim Brotherhood from which it comes, has not been in Gaza, but in the West Bank. Since 2007, when Palestinian political unity broke down, they have been living underground there.

“You have to understand that the population Palestine it’s very young and, like all young people, they see things in black and white“says the political analyst Nour Odeh. “For that generation, the henchmen of the ANP achieved nothing and today we are much worse than yesterday. They have humiliated us. Hence, people appreciate those who are willing to respond by fighting – whether right or wrong – in order to recover a minimum of dignity,” he adds in a telephone conversation.

What is clear is that the Palestinians do not even want to see their president in painting Mahmoud Abbas, the man who in the eyes of Europeans and Americans should take charge of Gaza in the postwar period and lead an eventual political process. 90% of those surveyed by the PSR want Abbas to resign.