In the largest protest against Hamas so far, thousands of Palestinians marched daily in Khan Younis in southern Gaza May 19-21. They chanted “Hamas, out, out!” “Hamas, you’re a bunch of losers — the people of Gaza don’t want to die,” and “Stop the war! Stop the displacement.”
More and more Gazans see — and act on — the departure of Hamas as the only way to change their oppressive conditions.
The march came on the heels of a May 19 Israeli announcement that civilians must evacuate Khan Younis immediately in advance of an expanded military offensive, and go to the overcrowded tent city of Mawasi, where thousands fleeing previous rounds of fighting are encamped.
Hamas knew before it launched the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of 1,200 people in Israel and took 251 hostages — the largest anti-Jewish pogrom since the Holocaust — that the Israeli army would retaliate. That’s why it placed its command posts inside and underneath hospitals, schools, mosques and homes, but did not build a single bomb shelter for civilians.
Statements by Hamas leaders living comfortably abroad have also fueled anger at the Tehran-backed group. Sami Abu Zuhri, head of the Hamas Political Department Abroad, told Libyan TV that the death and destruction in Gaza is nothing to worry about.
“Did you know that the number of newborn babies in Gaza equals the number of martyrs who were killed in this war?” since Oct. 7, he boasted. “We will rebuild the houses, and will produce dozens more [babies] for each martyr. They are the price we need to pay.”
The vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza reject the Hamas cult of death and destruction. “Abu Zuhri you are a scumbag — our children have the right to live!” protesters chanted.
Gazan: It’s Hamas, not the Jews
“Record this and let those sons of b—h Hamas leaders see what people are enduring,” said one man filmed as he followed the Israeli order to evacuate Khan Younis. “No, it’s not the Jews — it’s Hamas.”
It’s striking how little coverage of these and similar protests throughout Gaza have appeared in the bourgeois news media in Israel, the United States and worldwide. That’s because they puncture the myth promoted by both liberals and conservatives that most Gazans support Hamas.
But for working people in the Middle East and worldwide the courage and resilience of the protesters in Gaza is of great importance. It shows there are openings for a different road, one of developing working-class consciousness and building revolutionary working-class parties that bring together Jewish, Arab, immigrant and other workers in defense of their own interests.
That is what Nazi-like Hamas — and its backers in the reactionary regime in Tehran — fear the most.
Israeli authorities on May 20 allowed 93 trucks with baby food, flour for bakeries, medicine and other supplies to enter Gaza, the first major delivery since early March, amid pressure from Washington and others who said Gaza was on the verge of a famine because of the Israeli embargo.
Israeli officials — and Palestinians in Gaza — say that Hamas confiscates much of the aid for themselves and sells some of it at a profit in the markets.
But the Donald Trump administration and other imperialist governments, including in the United Kingdom, France and Canada, are using the mounting food and medicine shortages to increase pressure on the Israeli government. They demand not only an increase in humanitarian aid, but insist Israel end the war against Hamas.
“Israel will allow a basic quantity of food to be brought in for the population in order to make certain that no starvation crisis develops in the Gaza Strip,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said May 18. “Such a crisis would endanger the continuation of Operation ‘Gideon’s Chariots’ to defeat Hamas.”
Later that day, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt stated that “the president has made it very clear he wants to see this conflict in the region end.”
“The war can end tomorrow if the remaining hostages are released, Hamas lays down its arms, its murderous leaders are exiled and Gaza is demilitarized,” Netanyahu’s office reiterated May 19.
Tehran’s drive toward nukes
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has not given up on its negotiations with the regime in Iran over Tehran’s nuclear capacity.
While Netanyahu seeks U.S. imperialism’s support, he’s well aware that for the U.S. rulers, defense of Israel is subordinate to their own economic and political interests in the Middle East. He knows that U.S. negotiations with Iran could end with a dangerous deal similar to what the Barack Obama administration agreed to, a temporary limit on Tehran’s enrichment of nuclear material.
As part of the U.S. negotiating stance, Trump’s envoy, Steven Witkoff, insists that Tehran give up all enrichment. But enrichment “will continue with or without a deal,” said Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister and lead negotiator in the talks, and is nonnegotiable.
That’s because Tehran’s goal, like Hamas, is the destruction of Israel and eliminating the Jews who live there.
“The Zionist regime,” Iran Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said May 17 after Trump’s Middle East trip, “is a lethal, dangerous, cancerous tumor [that] should certainly be eradicated, and it will be.”
Even one small nuclear weapon, similar to what Washington dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that made it through Israel’s air defense system could kill hundreds of thousands of Jews and Arabs in Israel — a new Holocaust.
That’s why Netanyahu has said that Israel will do what is necessary to prevent Tehran from getting that capacity, with or without agreement from Washington. That would mean targeted Israeli strikes on nuclear and ballistic missile facilities in Iran.
Semi-civil war in Israel
Washington and the other imperialist powers are stepping up their pressure on Israel to end the war, just as Israeli forces are making significant gains in Gaza. They are taking control of more areas and holding them, destroying tunnels and decimating the leadership of Hamas death squads, and preparing to organize humanitarian aid in a way that prevents it from getting into Hamas’ hands.
That pressure is also intensifying the semi-civil war inside Israel, where Netanyahu’s bourgeois rivals seek to oust him at all costs. They also act as a transmission belt for the demands of U.S. imperialism.
“Israel is on the way to becoming a pariah state, the South Africa of the past,” former Israel Defense Forces Gen. Yair Golan, now the leader of the opposition Democrats Party, told Kan news. “A sane country does not wage war against civilians, does not kill babies as a hobby and does not set goals of population expulsion.”
Golan went on to charge that the government is led by “immoral people” who “have no connection to Judaism.”
That the leader of a major bourgeois party in Israel could repeat the same slanders as the Jew-hating leaders of Hamas and the regime in Tehran speaks to the depth of the divisions inside Israel.
Israel is a class-divided capitalist country and the Israel Defense Forces is a capitalist army. But there is no evidence that Israeli soldiers are targeting civilians or babies, unlike what Hamas did on Oct. 7 and continues to defend.
On the contrary, the Israel Defense Forces often evacuates civilians from combat zones before launching attacks, even though that means Hamas and its allies get advance warning. Toilers in Gaza are well aware of who is centrally responsible for their conditions — that’s why they demand the removal of Hamas.
While giving no political support to the Israeli government, class-conscious workers are for an Israeli military victory in Gaza. That would remove the biggest obstacle Palestinians face to fighting for their rights and to joining with other workers in defense of their common interests in the region.