“At the very least, I will die rejecting what has happened and what is still to come. Maybe I’ll be killed by an Israeli airstrike, or maybe Hamas will kill me — but I will die standing against this madness,” Fadi, one of the demonstrators who took to the streets of Gaza on Tuesday, March 25, 2025, wrote on facebook. The message of the protest was clear: “End the war. Down with Hamas.” Protesters believe Hamas led the people of Gaza to slaughter in order to further the group’s agenda. These people, these brave protestors, are the ultimate losers in this war. Dreams have been shattered, lives uprooted, homes lost — over the course of eighteen months of brutal war. The days blur together. The survivors have stopped counting. All they care about now is that the bloodshed ends, or that they are remembered as having fought to the end against their own slaughter.
The popular uprising erupted after Israel resumed its aggression following the collapse of negotiations. Gazans are convinced that there can be no end to the war without Hamas’s surrender, the release of hostages, the disarmament, and the removal of every pretext the Israeli government uses to pursue its ethnic cleansing campaign. The protests are symptomatic of the fact that after over a year of destruction, many Gazans now view Hamas as the very justification used by Israel’s military machine to continue massacring them. They believe that Hamas’ presence serves as a pretext for the ongoing destruction of what little remains of Gaza and it will be used as an excuse for the forced displacement of the remaining population.
At 5:00 PM on Tuesday, March 25 — suddenly and unexpectedly — thousands of Gazans poured into the streets, chanting at the top of their lungs, “Hamas, get out!” Some even shouted “Hamas is a terrorist organization,” by which they meant that Hamas terrorises them! That criticism is intended to puncture Hamas’ self-image as a “resistance” movement. This was the first time that demonstrations of this scale erupted under the constant threat of Israeli bombardment. Smaller protests had occurred previously during the war but were quickly dispersed—people’s urgent needs for shelter, food, and water took precedence over protest.
Hamas and its supporters were stunned. To them, it was inconceivable that Gaza’s residents would rise up against the movement while warplanes hovered overhead. But this uprising was born of desperation. People have come to believe that the war will not end as long as Hamas remains in power. There is no hope for an end to their suffering unless Hamas steps aside and makes meaningful concessions. The people in Gaza are paying the price for Hamas’s decisions and actions and they are demanding that that sick dynamic end. It is they, not the leaders in hiding, who endure Israeli retaliation. The protest was a plea — an urgent call for Hamas to take responsibility and put an end to this human catastrophe, at any cost. The people did not choose this war. Hamas dragged them into it. It must now be the one to end it.
These demonstrations shattered the narrative long propagated by both Hamas and Israel’s far right that all of Gaza is Hamas, or that even those who are not Hamas would choose to terrorism in order to resist Israeli occupation. The message of the people of Gaza is clear: they choose life over death and violence and constant terror. The sheer number of protestors — men, children, elders, and even public figures — forced Hamas into a state of confusion. Initially, the group tried to frame the protests as simply anti-war. But the crowd’s chants overwhelmed this narrative. Hamas then reverted to its familiar tactic, claiming the protests were orchestrated by Israel, the Palestinian Authority’s intelligence services, and other Arab states. This is the same excuse Hamas has used time and again — in 2009, 2017, 2019, and 2023. Just two months before October 7, protests had filled Gaza’s streets over worsening living conditions, power outages, and growing discontent with Hamas’s rule. The response was brutal as usual: demonstrators were suppressed, arrested, and tortured.
But this time was different. In the midst of war, hunger, destruction, and death, the people of Gaza voiced what so many pro-Palestinian protestors abroad have failed to say: enough is enough. The message was unequivocal — Hamas must step down, disarm, and release the hostages. These demands, ironically, pose a threat not only to Hamas but to Israel’s far-right government as well. Without Hamas in Gaza, Israel can no longer justify its dream of ethnic cleansing or the total destruction of the Strip. In fact, some far-right voices in Israel went so far as to claim that the protests were staged by Hamas, only for Netanyahu to later declare that even if Hamas laid down its arms, he remained committed to the plan of displacing Gazans. In doing so, he handed Hamas another excuse to silence the protesters — “even surrender won’t stop the plan to expel you.” And so once again Hamas and Netanyahu remain perfect allies, twins in the pursuit of eternal war.
For three consecutive days, from north to south, Gaza’s streets filled with chants from noon until late into the night. But on Friday, March 28, the protests suddenly stopped, despite calls to make that day the largest demonstration yet. No one came out. Hamas had called for its own demonstration in support of the movement that same day, effectively derailing the momentum. It became clear that Hamas was determined to prevent any revival of the protests. That night, it returned to its usual crack down on dissent. On Saturday evening, Hamas abducted and brutally tortured young activist 22-year-old Odai Al-Rubai for six hours before dumping his lifeless body in the street. His family publicly held Hamas responsible for his death. This came shortly after Hamas issued a statement accusing the demonstrators of collaboration with Israel — a de facto death sentence in Hamas’ eyes, used to justify later crimes against them.
Alongside Odai’s story are countless others of abductions and threats made against Palestinian activists who participated in the anti-Hamas protests. Yet these voices remain unheard. Gazans have come to realize, many for the first time, that the world’s concern for Gaza has never truly been about its people — but about Gaza itself. Self proclaimed allies of Gazans were silent when the aggressor brutally slaughtering civilians was Hamas rather than Israel. These protests exposed the hollowness of Western progressive’s supposed solidarity. Even under the bombs, when Gazans cried out against Hamas, their voices were ignored.
During the protests, children in Gaza were seen in a video chanting, “We want to live, we don’t want to die.” Their words were a direct response to two chilling statements. One came from Youssef Hamdan, a Hamas leader and the son of Osama Hamdan, who appeared in a video saying that Hamas has no fabric to raise a white flag — but plenty to shroud the bodies of children. In other words, the group would fight to the last Gazan child. The second statement came from a Hamas-affiliated analyst who appears almost daily on Al Jazeera, declaring that “we have no choice but to fight with the flesh of Gaza’s children.” This nihilistic view toward the children of Gaza pushed those very children to respond in the simplest and most powerful way: we want to live in peace — we do not want to die. At present, there are no demonstrations in Gaza, as the Israeli bombardment intensifies and Hamas continues its brutal crackdown. No one knows when the protests will return — but return they will, and with even greater force. Because those delivering speeches from Doha have no legitimacy to determine the fate of those living in tents, and those enjoying the comforts of the West while cheering for Hamas have no right to tell a Palestinian in Gaza what is best for them. Anyone whose children are far removed from the horrors of war, yet calls on others to fight with the flesh of Gaza’s children, is consumed by a perverse obsession with their deaths.
The final word — and the only word that matters — belongs to the people of Gaza. It is they who have borne the cost of Hamas’ recklessness and its disregard for their lives. Hamas must disappear entirely from the Palestinian political landscape. That is what their own alleged constituency wants — they need a leadership that is committed to their people’s safety and success. And that is what they deserve. That is what the world owes them.