Latest news with #GazaProtests
Telegraph
29-06-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Hamas tortures Gaza civilians while world distracted
The face of the young man staring into the camera as the crowd streams around him is strong and defiant. In his hands, the 26-year-old holds a banner bearing an incendiary message: ' Hamas does not represent us.' An accompanying video shows him spurring on others, openly fanning the flames of dissent while many of the people around him nervously avert their faces to avoid being identified on camera. That man is Ahmed al-Masri, one of the key organisers in northern Gaza of the protests that rocked the enclave in April and May. This week, pictures emerged of the same man on a stretcher, a frightened and helpless look in his eyes, his legs a bloodied mess. According to multiple sources who spoke to The Telegraph, Mr Al-Masri was abducted by Hamas gunmen in Beit Lahia, near the northern border with Israel, whereupon he was brutally tortured. His feet were deliberately broken with large stones and iron crowbars; he was also shot in the legs. The atrocity is part of an escalating wave of bloodshed unleashed by Hamas against the ordinary Gazans it purports to represent. As the terror group faces an unprecedented squeeze on its military and economic strength by Israel's grinding campaign, it is turning to ever crueller methods to keep control of an increasingly desperate population. Khaled Abu Toameh, a lecturer and expert on Palestinian affairs, said: 'After the protests of the last few months, they began executing and arresting people in order to intimidate the population and to terrorise. 'I think it's working. After a certain point, the protests disappeared.' In recent weeks, reports have multiplied of people being dragged out of aid lines, tortured in basements, or simply executed in broad daylight. One video, published gleefully by Hamas-affiliated social media accounts, showed masked figures using a long metal pole to smash a blindfolded man's kneecaps. His agonised screams and pleas for mercy are too visceral to properly describe. Much of this violence is done in the name of the so-called Sahm unit – meaning arrow in Arabic. Those who make it to hospital are sometimes hunted down and finished off in the wards. In Mr Al-Masri's case, the violence came in several waves, and was centred around a major medical facility. People with knowledge of the situation, too frightened of reprisals to be named, said the young activist was kidnapped and taken to the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, where he was interrogated and warned not to speak to the media. One said: 'They shot two people in front of him, then they shot him in the feet. 'They broke his feet with large stones and crowbars and threw him out in the sun for an hour. 'Then they brought an ambulance and took him to the hospital where they beat him on his feet inside the ambulance.' In another notorious incident earlier this month, Hamas gunmen allegedly taunted victims they had shot up earlier by preventing them entering a hospital, leaving them to writhe around outside. Mr Al-Masri, who runs a pharmacy business, was first taken to the main Al-Shifa hospital, but he has now been moved elsewhere for his safety, according to friends. They are now appealing to anyone who will help to get him out of Gaza, both to escape Hamas and to get proper treatment for his injuries. 'He's in an extremely bad way,' one person said. 'We are trying to do our best for him, but people are terrified of speaking out in case they're next.' Some activists believe Hamas has taken advantage of Israel's conflict with Iran to step up its campaign of intimidation while the eyes of the world are elsewhere. They are doing their best to flood the parts of social media seen by the West with graphic videos and photographs put out by Hamas in the Arabic corners of the internet that are mainly watched by people in Gaza. One, Howidy Hamza, described the victims as being 'killed twice'. First, by Hamas; second 'by a movement that refuses to see them', the pro-Palestine movement in the West, many of whose supporters, including those on university campuses, hold Hamas up as a legitimate organ of resistance. He made the point this week above a video of a blindfolded man being interrogated for alleged 'collaboration with the Palestinian Authority', the body that governs, under ultimate Israeli control, the West Bank. With that accusation amounting to a capital crime under Hamas's rule, it is likely the man was executed. The Telegraph has learnt details of a further killing of a protest organiser, Mohammed Abu Saeed, who led the movement in Khan Younis. Witnesses have said he was shot so many times in the feet that one had to be amputated. At his funeral, Hamas gunmen allegedly opened fire on the procession, killing members of his family. Alongside the physical violence, these smear campaigns against those who demonstrate dissent are a key Hamas tactic. In Gaza, accusing someone of collaborating with Israel is the worst slander. 'It goes back to the time of the British mandate,' said Mr Toameh. 'If you want to smear someone you accuse them of collaborating with the occupier. Thousands have died in the West Bank because of this since 1967.' One activist, who declined to be named, said the terror group had begun trying to entrap people into saying incriminating things by approaching them with fake social media accounts. Although the protests of April and May died out, Hamas faces an enormous challenge to its authority with the introduction of the new aid distribution system. Under a plan agreed by Israel and the US – and opposed by nearly everyone else – a US firm, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), distributes aid from a small number of specially created hubs. It has been condemned as inhumane, and there are almost daily mass shootings, with Israeli troops, who provide an outer ring of security for the US contractors, implicated by eyewitnesses. Despite the system's many cruelties, it does appear to have worried Hamas, which previously intercepted and then sold back huge amounts of aid that arrived into communities by truck. 'Hit with sticks, iron pipes and stones' On June 11, gunmen ambushed a bus carrying Palestinian workers for one of the GHF hubs in an area of Al-Mawasi, near Khan Younis, killing eight. One of the dead was Osama Sa'adu Al-Masahal. His sister, Heba Almisshal, said that after the shooting, 'my brother and his companions were transported to Nasser hospital, but they were not left in peace'. She added: 'The gunmen caught them, threw them at the hospital gate, prevented doctors and nurses from providing any help, and forced people to hit them with sticks, iron pipes and stones.' It was later suggested that Hamas had targeted the workers because it believed them to be associated with a militia tied to Yasser Abu Shabab, the leader of a clan in the south of the strip that is being armed by Israel. As starvation increases, emboldening desperate Gazans into questioning their rulers of the past two decades, the power of these armed families, which long pre-date the terror group, has grown. On Thursday, pictures emerged of the aftermath of a firefight in the Nasser hospital after Hamas gunmen had taken cover from furious family members of a young man they had allegedly just killed. Three of their vehicles were burned. Despite all this, Hamas remains by far the most powerful Palestinian group in Gaza. As the last few weeks have shown, suggestions by hard-line Israeli ministers that ordinary Gazans could simply 'throw off' the terror group – the implication being that maybe they did not really want to – proved to be cruelly wide of the mark. It means the population, more than a hundred of whom died in less than 24 hours on Thursday, continues to be caught between the Israeli war machine and jihadists who use their suffering to justify its case in front of the world.
Washington Post
21-06-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
Mahmoud Khalil vows to continue protesting Israel's war in Gaza after coming back home
CONCORD, N.H. — A Palestinian activist who was detained for more than three months pushed his infant son's stroller with one hand and pumped his fist in the air with the other as supporters welcomed him home Saturday. Mahmoud Khalil greeted friends and spoke briefly to reporters Saturday at New Jersey's Newark International Airport a day after leaving a federal immigration facility in Louisiana. A former Columbia University graduate student and symbol of President Donald Trump 's clampdown on campus protests, he vowed to continue protesting Israel's war in Gaza .
Geek Wire
10-06-2025
- Politics
- Geek Wire
UW President Ana Mari Cauce reflects on decade of growth as she steps down amid funding threats
University of Washington President Ana Mari Cauce at the April 2024 Admitted Student Preview Day. (UW Photo) It hasn't been an easy decade to oversee one of America's leading research institutions and the academic center for Seattle's technology sector. As president of the University of Washington, Ana Mari Cauce navigated the tumultuous COVID-19 shutdowns and transition to remote learning, negotiated with an encampment of Gaza war protesters, and oversaw the controversial move of UW athletics to the Big Ten Conference. But as Cauce steps down from her role this month, potentially even tougher times are ahead for the 165-year-old institution as the Trump administration tries to gut funding for research and pursues international students for deportation while at the same time worries grow that AI will replace college grads in entry-level jobs. In an interview Monday with GeekWire, Cauce said she's often asked to give reassurances that everything will be OK, that the UW will plug all the financial holes, that students won't be targeted by immigration officials. 'People want me to say, 'You're going to be safe,'' Cauce said. 'And you know, we will do everything we can to create a safe environment here, but it's a scary world right now.' The UW boasts world-class, well-funded research efforts, landing nearly $1.8 billion in research grants and contracts in the last fiscal year alone. But that status is at risk under U.S. leadership that aims to withhold dollars and has created bureaucratic hurdles to grant applications, just as the state is struggling with a budget crisis. The university has installed cost-cutting measures to keep work going, but it ultimately can't backfill the massive federal cuts being sought, Cauce said, and that threatens progress on critical diseases including Alzheimer's and cancer. 'Right now, we're at that point where all that slow, steady research is getting ready for a big leap forward,' she said. 'And it would just be so incredibly sad to have that stopped.' Gerberding Hall is home to the UW president's office. (Geekwire Photo / Lisa Stiffler) During her tenure, Cauce has strengthened the UW's academic and research standings. Student enrollment is up 13% across the UW's three campuses, and last fall the school welcomed its most diverse student body to date. The UW raised $6.3 billion from donors in its Be Boundless campaign. Two professors won a Nobel Prize. The UW's lauded Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering more than doubled its enrollment. Cauce, a professor of psychology, joined the UW in 1986. She moved up the leadership ladder, serving as chair of her department; dean of the College of Arts and Sciences; and UW provost and executive vice president, which included the roles of chief academic officer and chief budget officer. When she was appointed president in 2015 — becoming the first female, the first Latina and the first openly gay person to serve in the role — she planned to hold the job for two five-year terms. Seated on a purple velveteen chair among packing boxes stuffed with books, documents, photos and a slew of Husky-themed knickknacks, Cauce admits that she has been hoping for world events to get 'a little boring.' But she also acknowledges that the tumult of recent years can trigger positive reforms. 'It's important to keep in mind that change also offers opportunity, that when everything is humming along, there is little impetus for change,' she said. It has made her think about defining campus diversity more broadly to include students from rural populations, and to realize that more needs to be done to recruit men to the UW as colleges in general attract disproportionately more women. With budgets under attack, Cauce said universities must do a better job communicating to the public the significant benefits of research. They need to clearly explain that diversity and merit are not in opposition to each other when it comes to admissions. 'It is important to be clear about who we are, and this is pushing us to be clearer … about what our values are,' she said. After a decade leading the University of Washington, President Ana Mari Cauce is packing up her office for retirement from the role. (GeekWire Photo / Lisa Stiffler) Those challenges will soon fall to the UW's incoming president, Robert J. Jones, who is completing a nine-year tenure as chancellor of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Jones is an agronomist and crop physiologist, and his career has included spearheading university initiatives in engineering, science, technology and medicine. Under Jones' guidance, the UW will need to articulate the benefits of earning a college degree among the warnings of the coming 'AI job apocalypse' that some say will eliminate swaths of employment, including low-level roles and jobs in the tech sector. Cauce said the UW has a strong value proposition. Even as students pursue studies in technical fields such as mechanical engineering or computer science, she said, they're also learning communications and critical thinking skills. 'You're learning how to learn,' Cauce said. 'And so we really are preparing them for the fact that the world will be changing enormously.' Before her big transition, Cauce's next step is delivering the commencement address at Saturday's graduation ceremonies plans at Husky Stadium. Then she's taking a well-deserved sabbatical — her last one was in 1989 — that will include winding down, cleaning her basement, writing and visiting her niece and nephew's children in California, while also remaining available to support Jones. Reflecting on what she has loved about leading the UW and her impact on the institution, she pointed to strengthening a university environment that embraces basic research and interdisciplinary collaboration that are key to innovation. She noted the solid leaders in place, including at UW Medicine and the appointment of Tricia Serio as UW provost two years ago. 'No one accomplishes anything in a university this size by themselves,' she said. 'It really is about facilitating good things happening … and that is all about building [a] team and building culture.' UW President Ana Mari Cauce's office in the Gerberding Building overlooks the university's Central Plaza, which is more commonly known as Red Square. (GeekWire Photo / Lisa Stiffler)
Telegraph
06-06-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
The middle-class student activists motivated by ‘privilege guilt'
From chants to 'Globalise the Intifada' on the leafy campuses of New England to anti-colonial vandalism in 700-year-old Oxbridge colleges, the more prestigious the university, the more amenable it seems to anti-West radicalism. Last week, Sciences Po – the Paris university that serves as a finishing school for France's elite – was accused of being 'ruined by woke radicals' in a book by a Le Figaro journalist. Similar accusations are made against Harvard, Yale and Columbia in the United States and Oxford and Cambridge in Britain. Trans rights, climate change, and Black Lives Matter have all been sources of fierce student protest in recent years. But nothing appears to have radicalised elite students more than the war in Gaza. Israel's response to the attack by Hamas on October 7 has emerged as the principal motivation for protests by some of the highest-status students in the world – those who supposedly work to the highest standards and expect to reap the rewards of their privilege as future, highly-paid leaders in business, politics, and law. A disproportionate number of students at elite universities are also from middle-class backgrounds. In 2023, one in three successful Oxford applicants and a quarter of successful Cambridge applicants came from private schools. 'There is a paradox at the heart of this,' says historian and former Oxford professor David Abulafia, who has criticised the excesses of woke ideology in our culture. 'The protesters are obsessed with entitlement and ideas like how evil whiteness is, but of course, most of them are entitled and the vast majority are white. The positions they take are full of contradictions.' It is not a coincidence that some of the most privileged students are adopting these positions, says Abulafia. 'There is an embarrassment about being in a privileged situation. People want to appear to reject characteristics they themselves have and the only way they seem to be able to deal with these characteristics is to side with those who are critical of them.' Columbia University in New York has become the epicentre of student radicalism over the Gaza conflict, with the tents of the 'Gaza Solidarity Encampment' appearing in April last year. This climaxed with the occupation of Hamilton Hall, brought to an end by riot police and the arrest of more than 100 people. Last month, police in helmets streamed into the university to remove a group of mask-clad protesters, some of whom had written 'Columbia will burn' across pictures. Four days after the Hamas attack on Israel, the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee released a statement that students 'hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence'. It was co-signed by 33 student groups. Protests have flared at Harvard and fellow Ivy League giant Yale ever since. In April this year at Yale, some 200 keffiyeh-wearing protesters chanted, 'We will honour all our martyrs.' With the protests have come complaints by Jewish students that they have been made to feel unsafe and intimidated by rising anti-Semitism. This pattern of radical protest by students at elite universities is mirrored in Britain. One of the Just Stop Oil activists accused of defacing Stonehenge last April, Niamh Lynch, 22, was an Oxford student. Lynch denies the charges against her and, at a hearing in January, asked for her trial not to clash with her university exams this summer. It has been set for October. In 2023, Daniel Knorr, a 21-year-old biochemistry undergraduate, allegedly sprayed the Radcliffe Camera Building in Oxford with orange paint in protest at the university's links with fossil fuel companies. He has pleaded not guilty and his trial will take place in August. Chiara Sarti, a PhD student at King's College, Cambridge, sprayed her own college building with orange paint in 2023 and in March last year, an unidentified member of Palestine Action (it's still not known whether they attended the university) knifed and defaced a painting of Lord Balfour in Trinity College, Cambridge, for his part in the creation of the state of Israel. In January, members of Oxford Action for Palestine seized the Radcliffe Camera Building. The group said it had renamed it the Khalida Jarrar Library, after the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a proscribed terror group. Meanwhile, Phoebe Plummer – who was convicted of defacing Van Gogh's Sunflowers at the National Gallery in 2022 – studied at Manchester University having attended a £50,000-a-year boarding school in Ascot. Douglas Headley, a professor of philosophy of religion, has worked at Cambridge's divinity faculty for almost three decades, since 1996. In that time, the university has seen protests ranging from large-scale demonstrations on the Iraq War and student fees, to the recent acts of vandalism by Just Stop Oil and pro-Palestinian activists. In March, the High Court granted Cambridge an injunction preventing protesters from disrupting graduation events. On Friday Trinity and St John's Colleges sought fresh injunctions against pro-Palestinian demonstrators as a result of an encampment set up on their land over the previous weekend. 'For young people, a cocktail of radicalism within a secure environment is unbelievably attractive,' says Hedley. 'The ideologically driven self-hatred and hatred of the country is the core of this problem.' Is it possible that the privilege actually increases the students' urge to be more radical? What motivates their keenness to rubbish the heritage from which they have benefitted more than anyone, and where does their moral certainty come from? 'Some privileged young people understand they have had access to things that others do not,' explains Paul Glynn, clinical director at Klearminds therapy group, who has worked with students on issues of privilege. 'The key emotions are guilt and shame. Guilt is an activating emotion – it's about making amends or a correction. Shame can be isolating. A student can often deny or avoid exposing their privilege to others.' 'Privilege can result in 'overcompensation', where students experiencing guilt align themselves with causes that make them feel like they have a less privileged identity,' adds Glynn. When students chant 'Globalise the Intifada' on campus, it's an expression of an overtly binary view of the world, an expression that can be linked to their privilege. 'Certainty is attractive,' says Glynn. 'Most of these issues are complex, but we don't like that so let's make it good or evil.' 'What strikes me is the lack of knowledge among students,' says Abulafia. 'With the Gaza/Israel example there is a complete ignorance about the historical context. They don't really seem to be interested.' The anti-Vietnam marches of the 1960s were an attempt to stop a war which had direct consequences for American students, with a chance that you, your friends or family members could be drafted to fight and die on the other side of the world. The current protests have grown in a hothouse of identity politics – in which protesters' views on Gaza are part of a broader world view that tends to encompass critical race theory, extreme trans rights and anti-capitalist activism. Through this lens, Israel is perceived to be a white colonising state and therefore bears the sins of all colonialists, with its associations of racism, apartheid and exploitation. As Abulafia highlights, in many cases, the students appear to be rejecting the world that got them to such colleges in the first place. If they are told the system is bad, they must be bad too. Assumptions about colonialism in higher education that sprang from Edward Said's 1978 book Orientalism and the influence of French intellectuals such as Michel Foucault have contributed to the notion of a hierarchy of oppression, from which students can judge who and what deserves the most sympathy. Katharine Birbalsingh, a leading headteacher who advocates for freedom of speech, suggests that the problem starts at school – specifically private school classrooms – where the connection between privilege and guilt is first made. 'It seems obvious there is a relationship between what you might call 'woke' culture and privilege,' says Birbalsingh. 'By that I include mainly white, middle-class people. Woke ideas like 'decolonisation' and criticism of Western values are everywhere in the most exclusive private school classrooms and that feeds into universities. 'One example is outside speakers who come into private schools and imply that there is something wrong with being privileged and they point towards absolving themselves by embracing Black Lives Matter or the trans movement.' Birbalsingh recently claimed that transgender children are more likely to be 'white and privileged' and that many were searching for 'victimhood narratives', which are 'admired' in modern society. Deferring to your less privileged peers A key part of the dynamic between privilege and protest is how some students react to their less socially advantaged peers. Psychologists suggest students who are perceived to be 'marginalised' are more likely to be listened to, especially when it comes to theories around race and history. 'We have found that students from less privileged backgrounds are deferred to by more privileged ones, because the privileged students believe that the opinions and beliefs of others must be more authentic,' says Dr Helena Bunn, a member of the British Psychological Society and a director of a doctorate programme that explores social justice, oppression and privilege with students at the University of East London. 'The privileged students feel compelled to become advocates for a cause they have little personal connection to. If there is guilt about privilege, that can lead to less critical thinking. 'There can also be a sense of 'I feel I have to do something' so they follow the opinions of others who are seen to be less privileged. It can be as simple as just thinking 'something is wrong here' like a war for example, but the emotional priority is to belong to the cause.' Perhaps the most infamous example of student entitlement was recorded during the Columbia tent encampment, with the appearance of Johannah King-Slutzky as its spokesperson. King-Slutzky, a PhD English student and the daughter of psychologists, warned that students illegally occupying university property could 'die of dehydration and starvation' if they were not given supplies. The protests have raised the ire of the Trump administration, which sees the demonstrations as evidence that universities such as Columbia and Harvard are gripped by a 'woke' elite complicit in the radicalisation of their students. The US president threatened to redirect $3 billion in Harvard research grants last week, following a decision to suspend foreign students from enrolling. 'Harvard is treating our country with great disrespect,' he said. 'Globalise the Intifada' may be cosplay rebellion for some privileged students and a way of expiating guilt for others, but sceptics argue the increasing prevalence of the chant has real-world consequences. The former New York Times columnist Bari Weiss pointed to recent attacks on Jews in New York and Colorado, saying: 'It was dismissed as a metaphor and not what it always was: a demand for open season on Jewish people worldwide.' 'The elite institutions have been ideologically captured,' says Hedley. 'When I worked in the US, I noticed the universities you would assume to be the best weren't because their departments and academics were taken over by a gender and race ideology. Once you turn a university into an ideological arena, it encourages the students to express their outrage and their virtue in ways the average person outside is not going to be very impressed with.'
RNZ News
02-06-2025
- General
- RNZ News
Hamas accused of brutal crackdown on protesters in Gaza
By Matthew Doran , ABC Middle East correspondent and ABC staff in Gaza Palestinians have taken to the streets to protest against Hamas. Photo: ABC News Hanging from the tarpaulin walls of Amal Ashraf Al Shafa'a's tent are three posters showing the faces of three young men. She does not need those photos to remind her of the immense loss her family has experienced during the war in Gaza. But in the midst of the chaos and destruction they take pride of place in her makeshift home in the territory's north. "I lost three of my sons and now they have left behind orphans," she told the 7.30 programme. "When I look at my grandchildren I am heartbroken - my children are gone." With her grief looming over her Amal took to the streets alongside hundreds of other Palestinians to rail against Hamas in the days after Israel resumed its bombardment of Gaza. Amal Ashraf Al Shafa'a has photos of her three dead sons on the wall of her home. Photo: ABC News The March demonstrations have been described as the largest anti-Hamas rallies since the war in Gaza began, following Hamas' deadly attacks on 7 October, 2023. Palestinians expressed their anguish over the immeasurable devastation wrought by Israeli forces during the war, but laid blame at the feet of Hamas for allowing it to continue. "Out Hamas, out!" the protesters chanted. "The people want the fall of Hamas!" One man, Rafed Rafed Mohammed Atta Al-Radi, was in the crowd as the demonstration erupted. "We are asking Hamas to leave Gaza today, we won't wait any longer," he told the ABC. "We want Abu Mazen [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas] to rule Gaza," he said. Amal Ashraf Al Shafa'a joined the public protests against Hamas. Photo: ABC News "We want him to govern Gaza because Hamas is destroying the people." Despite battling cancer and needing urgent surgery, Amal said she felt she had to join the protest. "I lost my children, so of course I want to demonstrate," she said. "I want to shout, 'no to war, no to war'. Many are talking against the war and nothing happens. "I support peaceful demonstrations asking for the end of the war, it is not wrong. "We ask from the government that will rule to bring safety, security. Our children are hungry - we are very tired." Protests broke out in the days after Israel resumed its bombardment of Gaza. Photo: ABC News Since the protests broke out there have been reports of deadly reprisals against those who took to the streets. Amnesty International said it had documented "a disturbing pattern of threats, intimidation and harassment, including interrogations and beatings by Hamas-run security forces against individuals exercising their right to peaceful protest". "It is abhorrent and shameful that while Palestinians in Gaza are enduring atrocities at the hands of Israel, Hamas authorities are further exacerbating their suffering by ramping up threats and intimidation against people simply for saying 'we want to live'," Erika Guevara-Rosas, senior director for research, advocacy, policy and campaigns at Amnesty International, said. The family of one man, 22-year-old Odai Al-Rubai, said he was abducted and tortured for hours by Hamas before his body was dumped outside the family home. "We are not opposed to resistance, we are opposed to the war itself," Amal said. "We stand against the politics of Hamas and the ongoing killings, we cannot remain silent or passive." Hamas has a reputation for ruling Gaza with an iron fist. In early May it announced it had executed six people and shot another 13 in the legs for alleged looting, and last week killed another four. "A warning has been issued - those who ignore it bear full responsibility," the group said. A protester carries a sign that reads "Hamas does not represent us". Photo: ABC News "Let's not forget that Hamas as a movement, as a religious movement - and it's a political religious movement actually - has its own ideology, its own world view and its own way to do things in terms of culture, in terms of social life, and sometimes in terms of political dissent," Dr Hasan Ayoub, assistant professor of politics at An-Najah University in the West Bank, told 7.30 . "Yes, Hamas at some points in Gaza, they practiced their own, let me call it, non-democratic, coercive tactics against political dissent." In recent weeks the Committee to Protect Journalists has published testimony of journalists in Gaza being threatened and assaulted by Hamas for covering protests against the militant group. Despite that reputation and the reported reprisals, Dr Ayoub is not convinced the recent protests would have angered Hamas. "If you can find people in Gaza taking to the streets to protest a year-and-a-half of genocide, of being starved on such a systematic way, that's not a bad thing," he said. "I think for Hamas, they don't mind and they don't see it as protests against them if people took to the streets, because it's against the silence of the entire world on what is happening in Gaza." Dr Ayoub suggested the protests were misdirected fury at Israel for its ongoing bombardment of Gaza. "Let's assume that nothing of this, what I said, is true - that people really are spontaneously [protesting] because they are fed up to the back of their teeth of the situation. No one can blame them, it's very much understood," he said. "But I have never heard of a people when, being exposed to genocide and to this terrifying amount of killing, will come out and protest against a liberation movement that is fighting in their favour. "It never happened, not in the Palestinian history, not in any history in the world - so there is something that is not adding up here." A man holds a sign that reads "Enough killing children" at a protest against Hamas. Photo: ABC News Israel has repeatedly said its war in Gaza is against Hamas, and not the Palestinian people. Although the devastating death toll, with more than 54,000 Palestinians now dead, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, showed the heavy civilian cost of the conflict and has led to serious accusations against the Israeli military of indiscriminate bombing and shelling of the strip. Israel resumed its bombardment of Gaza to, in its words, pressure Hamas to release the remaining 58 hostages still held captive - only 21 of whom are believed to still be alive. Negotiations on another ceasefire and hostage deal have repeatedly stalled, with Hamas accusing Israel of refusing to commit to steps to formally declare an end to the war and withdraw its military from large swathes of Gaza it now controls. A red line in negotiations for Hamas has been demands for the militant group to lay down its weapons - something it insisted would allow Israel to renege on any commitment to end the conflict. Hamada Alza'anoun says Hamas "serves only the interests of their loyalists". Photo: ABC News For Hamada Alza'anoun, the desperate situation facing his family and his people prompted him to join the protests. Picking through the rubble of his former home, destroyed by Israeli bombs, he said Hamas' elite benefited from the war. "We oppose their rule because it serves only the interests of their loyalists," he said. "Even before the war, their actions were driven solely by the needs of their own supporters, while the rest of us were left without benefit - the only ones who gained were those aligned with them. "As Palestinians, especially in Gaza, we are not against the resistance and we will never be against the resistance. However, during this war we stood against Hamas' policies." Hamada said his house was not the only thing he had lost in the war. Hamada Alza'anoun picks through the rubble of his destroyed home. Photo: ABC News Like so many other Palestinians, numerous members of his family have been killed. He feared Hamas' approach to the war, and negotiations to bring about a ceasefire, meant the risk of losing his own life was growing by the hour. "We are asking for the end of the war that has reached all the people in Gaza," he said. "Regardless of conditions, we want the war to end. Gaza people love life. "We want life, we don't want death - as children, young men, we want to stay alive, we don't want to die." In January, days before leaving office, then US Secretary of State Antony Blinken revealed an interesting aspect about the impact of the war on the Gazan population. "We assess that Hamas has recruited almost as many new militants as it has lost," Blinken said. "That is a recipe for an enduring insurgency and perpetual war. "We've long made the point to the Israeli government that Hamas cannot be defeated by a military campaign alone, that without a clear alternative, a post-conflict plan and a credible political horizon for the Palestinians, Hamas, or something just as abhorrent and dangerous, will grow back." The future governance of Gaza remains a contentious issue. Hamas has said it is prepared to hand power to others, while refusing to lay down its arms. The Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank wants to unify the two occupied territories under its leadership - something Israel has said should never happen. Palestinian National Initiative leader Mustafa Barghouti says his own party needs significant reform. Photo: ABC News / Hamish Harty One of the leading Palestinian opposition politicians said the PA would need significant reform if it was to ever take control of Gaza, and the leading Fatah party would need to allow change. Last year the various Palestinian factions all signed a declaration in Beijing about the future governance of Gaza once the war ended. "They told us that they are ready to accept a national consensus government, which would mainly consist of independents, but a government that would be respected and accepted by all Palestinian parties," Palestinian National Initiative leader Mustafa Barghouti told 7.30 . "We concluded that agreement, we signed it - Hamas signed it, Fatah signed it, everybody signed it." Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas has been president of the Palestinian Authority since 2005, and elections have not been held since. He recently named a new vice-president, Hussein al-Sheikh - a move seen as appointing a successor. Rival Barghouti insisted that was not good enough to ensure the PA is seen as a legitimate government. "I'm surprised sometimes when people think that appointing somebody in a certain position is reform," he said. "This is not reform, the reform is really when we have the right to have free democratic elections." Barghouti argued the reason Fatah was reluctant to hold elections is because its power would be diluted, but said it must happen for the party to uphold its commitment to the Beijing declaration. "I know the results, how will the results be - it will not be that Hamas will win majority, as some claim, but Fatah also will not get absolute majority," he said. "It will be a pluralistic system. "I think a pluralistic democratic system is the healthiest thing for Palestine. That's what you do in Australia, that's what people do in other countries. You rarely get a party that gets more than 50 percent but you have coalitions. "And I think that's also what we need in Palestine." - ABC
