IT has been almost two months during which the Israeli armed forces have bombarded and then invaded the Ghaza Strip with their declared aim of destroying Hamas and so far this Israeli onslaught has extinguished the lives of more than 15000 Palestinians including a large number of women and children. Thousands of others are severely wounded and in urgent need of medical assistance. The relentless air strikes in the South of Ghaza has left no place safe for the homeless Palestinians to find shelter and today no place in the Ghaza Strip is safe from the Israeli attacks. Israel with the active support and backing of the USA and the EU keeps insisting that the aim of the military campaign is to eradicate Hamas and to destroy its war making capability but this campaign is causing innumerable casualties and untold misery in the civilian population. There are now very visible signs that a segment of the Palestinian people are now refusing the leadership of Hamas and are now openly challenging its authority in the Ghaza Strip. According to the Associated Press angry crowds of people were seen throwing stones at a Hamas Police station in one area while at another location people taking shelter in a UN building were shouting insults at the Hamas officials.
Hamas the Palestinian resistance group in the Ghaza Strip was established in 1987 by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin an Imam of a mosque and his assistant called Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi during the uprising against the Israeli occupation called the first Intifda in the areas under the rule of the Palestinian Authority. Hamas emerged as a splinter group of the Muslim Brotherhood of Egyptand soon enough established its military wing called Izz-Al-Din-Al-Qassam brigade with the declared aim to engage in armed struggle with Israel to destroy the state of Israel and Liberate Palestine as an independent Islamic nation. Palestinians enjoy international support for self-determination and even the UN has asked for a two nation solution to the Arab Israel conflict but the aim of Hamas in its charter is to destroy the state of Israel and this is in contradiction to the point of view of the Muslim world and the United Nations. It was in 2005 that the Israeli Forces were withdrawn from Ghaza Strip by Ariel Sharon and the Jewish settlers were asked to vacate the area. In the elections of 2006 Hamas was able to capture a majority of the seats in the Legislature of the Palestinian authority and established its rule in Ghaza and this claimed its legitimacy in the Palestinian areas of the Ghaza Strip.
In the initial stages of its founding Hamas devoted itself whole heartedly to serving the people of Ghaza in the areas of Education and health care and its welfare activities were seen as a great relief for the common people who were sick and tired of the corruption of the Fatah party. Fatah with the support of the Western powers found the results of the elections of 2006 unacceptable and hence Hamas ceased to have any share in the power base of the West Bank and by this it was denied the role in the Palestine Authority that it claimed as its political right.A 2008 presidential election confirmed Fatah’s Mahmoud Abbas as the head of the PA. But by this stage the split between the two parties meant that while the Fatah-dominated PA governed the West Bank, Hamas was largely unchallenged in Ghaza.
With the passage of time the split between the two major resistance groups of Palestinians that is the Hamas and HizbUllah has grown wider and this rivalry between the two major groups has greatly damaged the cause of the Palestinians. The PLO under Yasser Arafat had accepted the right of existence of Israel and had agreed to a two nation solution but Hamas has always disagreed with this formula and wants nothing but the complete destruction of Israel and the establishment of a Free and Independent Islamic State of Palestine in all the areas currently occupied by Israel. The strongly adamant attitude of Hamas has eroded its popularity and support within the ranks of the Palestinian people. A survey undertaken by Arab Barometer, a nonpartisan research network, between September 28 and October 8, 2023 revealed dwindling confidence in Hamas (the surveys in Gaza were completed on October 6). Asked to identify the amount of trust they had in the Hamas authorities, 44% said they had no trust at all, while 23% said they had little trust.
Significantly, this lack of trust was roughly uniform across age groups with those between the ages of 18-29 and those over 30 giving similar answers.An earlier poll taken by the Washington Institute in July 2023, moreover, found that 62% of people in Gaza supported Hamas maintaining a ceasefire with Israel and 50% agreed that: “Hamas should stop calling for Israel’s destruction, and instead accept a permanent two-state solution based on the 1967 borders.”
Hamas has managed to control the Ghaza strip of 22 million people with an iron hand with little regard for human rights or the rule of law and has not had any elections since 2006thus the people have not had a chance to rule for any other leaders for the last 18 years. Hamas has used strict and authoritarian methods of control, applying its own interpretations of strict sharia law, enforcing gender segregation in public, controlling the media, repressing any political opposition and eliminating all mechanisms of transparency and accountability. The attacks launched by Hamas on October 7 have resulted in nothing but death and destruction for the People of the Ghaza Strip and has eroded the legitimacy of Hamas in the eyes of the world community and it has lost its popularity in the Palestinian people and this situation has increased the urgency of finding a permanent solution for the Palestinian question in the interest of peace in the region.
—The writer is Professor of History, based in Islamabad.
Email: tariq.aqil@headstart.edu.pk
views expressed are writer’s own.
