How can we understand the terrible, self-imposed deprivation now gripping the people of Gaza? The heart-wrenching stampede that unfolded in Gaza last Thursday casts a stark light on the brutal reality of life under Hamas’s rule. It is a somber reminder of the urgent need to address the suffering of Gaza’s people, but it also serves as a crucial moment to clarify the accountability for Gaza’s plight.
The chaos and desperation that led to this tragedy are direct outcomes of Hamas’s governance, which prioritizes violence and killing Jews over the welfare of its population. The stampede, occurring during an aid distribution, tragically underscores the severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Driven by sheer desperation, people found themselves in a deadly crush, a situation that should never occur.
To pave the way for peace and stability for my brothers and sisters in Gaza, it is essential to acknowledge the root causes of their suffering. Hamas’s diversion of resources, suppression of dissent, and neglect of civilian needs must end. The international community, along with the Palestinian people, must demand accountability and seek a future where governance prioritizes human dignity, economic opportunity, and peaceful coexistence. Only through addressing these fundamental issues can we hope to prevent such tragedies and build a brighter future for all Palestinians.
As a Palestinian human rights activist deeply sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinian people and the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I can tell you beyond the shadow of a doubt that the terrorist group Hamas is responsible for the suffering of Gazans.
MOHAMMED ABED/AFP via Getty Images
Outside obfuscators often try to misplace blame for the suffering onto Israel’s “blockade” on the Strip, but a brief consideration of the timeline shows the absurdity of this conceit. Israel unilaterally withdrew all of its soldiers and settlers from Gaza in 2005. Within hours, Hamas-aligned looters had stripped bare and destroyed the greenhouses and farms Israel had left behind for local sustenance. In 2007, Hamas seized military control of the strip in a brutal local coup against the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority (PA), throwing its supporters off the roofs of buildings.
Since then, rather than engage in peacemaking and economic development, Hamas, like a Mediterranean North Korea, has diverted all of its resources to warfare. It and its ally, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), have repeatedly fired rocket salvos into central Israel—in 2008-9, 2012, 2014, and 2021. In October 2023, Hamas breached all precedent with an all-out invasion of Southern Israel, massacring over 1,200 innocents in a single day—including 300 young people at an all-night nature dance party celebrating peace.
Rape, torture, and bodily mutilation were reported on a systemic scale, and over 240 innocents were dragged back to Hamas’s terror emirate in Gaza as hostages. Hamas is still holding over 130 of these innocents hostage.
As a human rights activist and a human being, I recognize that it defies all rules of geopolitics, morality, and human nature to suggest that Israel not respond militarily to dismantle Hamas and rescue its people, who we now know are being raped and psychologically tortured in captivity.
And yet, amidst the intensity of the ongoing war, Israel has facilitated the transfer of international aid to Hamas-controlled territory—while Hamas has been seizing these essential supplies and transferring them for military purposes. Hamas has built a massive network of tunnels under the Strip that exceeds the New York subway system in length, where hostages have been kept underground without light and used as human shields to protect terrorist commanders. Hamas’s cannibalization of the civilian economy has gone so far as to dig up water pipes and convert them into makeshift rockets to fire into Israeli territory.
Beyond economic manipulation, Hamas’s rule in Gaza is marked by a severe crackdown on political dissent. Opposition and press voices are silenced, often violently, with human rights organizations reporting arbitrary arrests, torture, and extrajudicial killings. LGBTQ+ individuals, and anyone else who defies the harsh religious extremism governing all life in the Strip face torture and execution.
The real victims of Hamas’s governance are the ordinary people of Gaza, who endure the consequences of their rulers’ bloodthirsty actions. The youth, facing unemployment rates that are among the highest in the world, see their futures evaporate in an economy stifled by mismanagement and artificially exacerbated conflict. The sick suffer from a health care system in disarray, with hospitals overwhelmed and under-resourced, in part due to the diversion of medical supplies to serve Hamas’s fighters and the repurposing of these healing spaces into military command centers.
As a Palestinian human rights activist, my loyalty lies with the Palestinian people, whose rights and future have been compromised by a cruel leadership that prioritizes military and terrorist objectives over human welfare. For those of us caught in the middle, the path forward requires an honest confrontation with the reality of our situation.
The plight of Gaza is a wound at the heart of the Middle East, a testament to the failures of an international policy that has foolishly coddled a brutal tyrant and implacable foe. Only by dismantling the governing rule of the irredeemable Hamas can we begin to heal this wound and move toward a future where the rights and dignity of all Palestinians are upheld, and peace and economic development alongside our Israeli neighbors can at last bear fruit for both sides.
Bassem Eid is a Palestinian human rights activist. He lives in the West Bank.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.