Hamza Hawidi, a Gazan who participated in a previous, less resonant demonstration against Hamas and is now living in Germany, said anguish and despair among participants seem to have outweighed fear of brutal Hamas retribution.
He told The Times of Israel in a Zoom interview. “The reason people haven’t done this for a year and a half is that they were afraid,”
“Ziad Abu Haya, a resident of Gaza, appeared in a television interview during the war and said one sentence: ‘Protect us from Hamas before you protect us from the Jews.’”
Having been beaten up for denouncing Hamas in August, Abu Haya was reportedly killed by Hamas in December. Hamas, Hawidi charged, “beat him to death for that one sentence.”
“If I see someone speak out and then get killed, I won’t criticize Hamas,” Hawidi continued. Now, however, he said, it seems the fear barrier has been broken.
Hawidi believes that the protests alone won’t bring down Hamas, but considers them to be highly important, including symbolically:
“We don’t want Hamas to fall while the people remain silent. People shouldn’t think that overthrowing Hamas is an Israeli demand; it is a demand of the people in Gaza
But will it alone topple Hamas’s rule? Based on my knowledge and familiarity with Hamas — no.”
Still, Hawidi expresses some optimism about what is playing out, including in the context of his own decision to leave Gaza in the summer of 2023: “I didn’t leave Gaza because I hate it. I left because there was no hope for change.
Everyone treated Hamas’s rule in Gaza as the permanent reality, and that was it.
“When I left, if you said that Hamas was a terrorist organization, it meant that you would be executed. But now I see my people saying for themselves, ‘Hamas is a terrorist organization.'”
