A Shared Fate
- Assaf David
- Jun 5
- 7 min read
Updated: Jun 7
On the streets, on social media, and even in my own social circle, I keep encountering this statement: “Hamas is to blame for everything,” in various forms—even to the extreme where someone recently told me, “The IDF isn’t to blame for even a single death.” On the other hand, I hear left-wing friends who get upset even at the slightest mention of Hamas’s responsibility for what’s happened here over the past year and eight months.
Assaf David brings important voices from Gaza that most of us aren’t exposed to, which clarify the picture and provide some food for thought. Click to get a broad and clear-eyed picture of reality.
Now
Ayala Shalev, Editor, That’s About Us
Hamas and the Netanyahu Regime: A Shared Fate / Assaf David
The wait for a ceasefire in Gaza (which is still nowhere in sight) is exposing the deep levels of resentment toward Hamas within the Gaza Strip. A statement from families and clans in southern Gaza, published on May 31, explicitly demanded that Hamas agree to the ceasefire proposal “out of national responsibility,” warning against turning the suffering of Gaza’s citizens and the blood of their children into bargaining chips. The writers cautioned that the criminal Netanyahu would use any rejection of the proposal as an excuse to continue the war, declaring that the highest national priority is “saving whatever is left of Gaza.”
This declaration is actually one of the more polite texts to come out of Gaza in recent weeks. Many civilians in Gaza have been demanding, for months, the total surrender of Hamas: unconditional release of the hostages, disarmament, and exile of its members after abandoning Gaza to complete destruction. Two viral posts caught my eye in recent days. The first is from Abdallah Sharsharah, a public figure from Gaza who is currently in the North of the Strip. Last week, he publicly addressed members of Hamas’s Gaza leadership who are abroad, “and I especially mention Khalil al-Hayya, Basem Naim, and Ghazi Hamad. They bear full responsibility for Gaza’s future, because they understand Gaza—its present, future, and survival—better than anyone, compared to other leaders in the movement whom we don’t know and don’t want to know. These three, in particular, are fools if they think they’ll ever be forgiven, or that anyone could justify their betrayal of the blood of Gaza’s people. They will be damned in history. Gaza will curse them for all eternity.”
Another post from the same day, which went even more viral, was by a journalist named Yousef Fares from Gaza City, and it was just as blunt: “It’s now clear that betting on the hostages card to end the war was a mistaken and failed move. That card didn’t end the war when we had two hundred prisoners, and it won’t end it with the twenty living prisoners we still hold. The abduction was, from the start, an improvised and uncalculated act. The bet on international and European opposition to the Israeli rampage also failed. In the meantime, precious blood is being spilled like water. Every minute there’s a massacre. Entire families end their day without a roof over their heads. An entire people sleep hungry under the open sky. The fighters sacrificed their lives, their limbs, the blood of their hearts and their families’ hearts. They fought with their nails and bare hands, but the negotiation team failed for twenty months to use their sacrifice to end the killing and loss. The international and regional position is not serving us. Those who sell illusions on satellite channels, as if the occupation failed to achieve its goals, are just pouring fuel on the fire of ‘Merkavot Gideon’ so it can finish uprooting us.”
“The negotiation team,” Fares continued, “has to stand trial. They showed stubbornness when concessions could have achieved more and caused less harm, and now they’re trapping us in their reckless gambles and failed attempts with the Americans, after playing with mediators and being played by them. What you need to do today is end the killing and the systematic destruction of the city. Pay any price, however high or heavy. Save what’s left. What’s being offered today will be just a dream tomorrow. These are the results of betting on the Americans’ good intentions. They won’t give you what Netanyahu refuses to accept. The United States is the devil, and the devil is the United States.”
All this fire and brimstone is being poured on Hamas not over a proposal to end the war, but over a proposal for a temporary ceasefire that might lead to ending the war. It’s clear the US has an interest in ending the war (because of the stance of Arab states, especially the Gulf states), and Hamas also has an interest in it under certain conditions that will save a bit of its power and legitimacy, but the Netanyahu regime has no interest in ending the war, since its open goal is to conquer the Strip, reduce its population, and establish Jewish settlements there.
We mustn’t let the Palestinian criticism of Hamas blur our own responsibility to hold the Netanyahu regime accountable. As a Jew and an Israeli, I am ashamed about the abandonment of the hostages and the catastrophe we’re inflicting on Gaza. While I have no expectations from Hamas, I do have expectations from my own government. It must take care of its’ citizens and their future. The same is true for Palestinians that are living (on borrowed time) in Gaza. Likewise, they have no expectations from Israel but do have expectations from their own regime, Hamas. And Hamas has been sacrificing Gaza for twenty months to the Israeli grinder, in exchange for achievements that are dwindling even for the movement itself, resulting in the total destruction of Gaza and its people. I don’t see how Israel recovers from what it’s done, and I don’t see how Hamas recovers either from what it has done. A legitimate regime is one that cares about its citizens and their future, and Hamas has shown it doesn’t care at all.
Although we must focus on stopping the destruction in Gaza by the Netanyahu regime and its aids and followers, exposing the depth of Palestinian criticism of Hamas—especially from within Gaza—and discussing it publicly is crucial. It is important, to my mind, from three aspects. First, it’s a real phenomenon, widespread and even understandable, and those who care to give a voice to the people of Gaza have to sound it. Second, it humanizes Gazans for Israelis, who have gone through a horrific process of dehumanizing Palestinians, and especially, since October 7, the people of Gaza. Re-humanization can help stop the annihilation of Gaza. And third, it may help reduce the desire for revenge in Israeli society and shift the focus inward, toward the authoritarian regime dragging Israel and its citizens into crimes against humanity despite the fact that Hamas has been defeated in every possible way, and towards the necessary parallelization between the way Hamas has destroyed Gaza and the way Netanyahu’s regime is destroying Israel.
Another claim by those criticizing the exposure of the growing resentment toward Hamas in Gaza is that it allegedly “proves” Netanyahu’s regime and the right wing were correct. The answer to that is that this is the reality in Gaza, and we need to recognize and deal with it seriously. The crucial point is that the Israeli willingness (led by the Netanyahu regime) to erase Gaza, even though it was clear from the start that Hamas wouldn’t care – and that has been proven since the beginning of the war until today – was a disaster from the start and in retrospect. Surely, we could have done even worse things. It wouldn’t have mattered for Hamas: Gaza would have been destroyed faster and more cruelly, Gazans would still have had zero influence over Hamas’s rule and we would have turned into Nazis faster. The fact that we destroyed Gaza so systematically, in a way that turned the Gazan population against Hamas (although they weren’t popular there to begin with) does not prove that “the right wing was right”. After all, the goal in not – and never was – to rid Gaza from Hamas presence so we can promote a historic reconciliation with the Palestinians, but to take revenge on all Gazans so we can deepen the ethnic cleansing, exactly as the Israeli right wants.
On the other hand, ending the war at the previous exit points that were on the table over the past year would have: 1) Returned fewer bodies and more living hostages in better condition; 2) Reduced the killing, the physical and the psychological injuries of Gaza’s civilians, and the destruction of the Strip—making it easier to rehabilitate infrastructure and residents; 3) Lessened the terrible price we will have to pay, both internationally and internally, as a result of our brutality; 4) Increased the chances for a historic reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians, which is the only thing that can really reduce Palestinian violence in the long run. Yes, this would have left Hamas with more assets and legitimacy, but we could have dealt with that through a diplomatic move to strengthen the Palestinian Authority, bring it into Gaza, and isolate Hamas. All the major players in the world and the region wanted such a move, hoped for it, and were ready to invest resources in it. Yet Netanyahu’s regime resisted this. We are left with destruction whose shame we will carry to our last day.
In the midst of their historic disaster, Gazans are holding Hamas and their negotiating team accountable. One day, we too, out of our own historic disaster, will hold Netanyahu’s regime and its aids in the negotiating team, the public sector, politics, the media and more, accountable. Where the hell were all these people when the leadership of Bibistan sacrificed all the hostages and tore apart all our humanity? And inwardly, toward the army and Jewish society, one day we will ask ourselves where we all were when we erased Gaza, killed and starved its people. Personally, I will never again ask myself where the Germans were during the Holocaust. I now know.
Days of reckoning between the river and the sea are still far away. In Gaza and in Israel, regimes of destruction rule, willing to destroy and sacrifice everything to save their own gang. Only their gang—and let everyone else die. And there’s no one to stop them.
Dr. Assaf David is the Head of the "Israel in the Middle East" Department at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, and the co-founder and academic director of the Forum for Regional Thinking.
Comments