Gazans against Hamas are ignored by the West and betrayed by their leaders

Their demands were that Hamas disarm and leave the Gaza Strip, recognising this is the only way this war will end. But they weren’t able to offer names of anyone they thought could lead Gaza in its place. They were equally scathing about Fatah, which controls the Palestinian Authority. For them Fatah are almost as bad as Hamas – the men cited how Hamas’s rivals still encourage hatred rather than peace towards Israel.

Mostly they described their desire to get out – leave – go to a place where there wasn’t an endless cycle of death and destruction because they had no faith that a different Palestinian leadership would change things. They wanted to come to Europe.

I hope those men are OK because by the time I came to write about them, the demonstrations appeared to be over – seemingly strangled by the Islamist ruthlessness of the death cult that is Hamas. The terrorist organisation is believed to have killed at least six leaders of the demonstrations including a 22-year-old called Odai Nasser Saadi Al-Rubai, who was tortured for hours before his body was dumped on the steps of his family home.

You won’t read about Odai in most of our news media. It certainly isn’t being touched by the BBC, apparently our most “trusted” news brand, not even on its Middle East page; that is too filled with the perfidy of the Israelis.

Explaining that people who dare to openly criticise Hamas are liable to be ruthlessly murdered rather goes against its message, doesn’t it? As we know, it questions every bit of information it gets from the IDF but on a daily basis use stories and images from propagandists working with the same people who just killed their Palestinian critics.

And you won’t see any protests on our streets for the demonstrators of Gaza either. Knowing that there are some people who are tired of “resistance” and might even prefer peace with Israel to endless war goes against its message too. The keffiyeh-clad hordes who scream “from the river to the sea” would rather Palestinians such as Kareem and Saeed kept quiet. They are simply pawns in their hatred towards the Jewish state. One could ask if they even care about the Palestinians.

Kareem and Saeed are anti-Hamas and say there are many in Gaza like them. Saeed says that when he heard about the attacks on October 7 his first instinct was to try and get out of Gaza – something he failed to do – because he knew what the result would be.

Both insisted they were against the attack of October 7 and that taking hostages was something they were fundamentally opposed to. It might be that they would say that; they were speaking to journalists mainly based in Israel, after all.

But the position they were in remains deeply depressing all around. A few thousand desperate people marching against Hamas with no viable alternative in sight is, unfortunately, not going to change a thing, however much we would like change to come from inside the Palestinian population.

Strength remains the only language Hamas understands and cares about. And Israel can only show strength by continuing its war. But how does this war end?

If there were plans that Hamas would eventually be destroyed by forces inside Gaza, that hope appears to be destroyed. Hamas has never shown any real care for the Palestinian people – the ruthless way it behaved towards the demonstrators reveals that. All they care about is power.

An alternative to Hamas must be sought – although it is hard to know where it will come from. The idea of a “reformed” Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, as former US Secretary of State Antony Blinken put it – one that would have the support of Palestinians and could govern competently and guarantee peace with Israel – remains wishful thinking.

It has been nearly 18 months and we still don’t know what the “day after” plan is going to look like. Since October 8 nearly 600 IDF soldiers have been killed battling Hamas and thousands more injured and it is no wonder people are increasingly demanding to know how this ends.

There are evidently Gazans who would prefer this war to be over. They know they have lost even if Hamas pretends it is really the victor. That is why they risked their lives to demonstrate; they can see that continuing the war is madness.

For the sake of both Israel and the Palestinians inside Gaza, now is the time to name an alternative vision and endgame, one that both Palestinians and Israelis can perhaps demonstrate for.