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Hamas cracks down on anti-Hamas dissidents in Gaza
Gazans who tried to mount a mass protest “Day of Rage” against Hamas on June 26, demanding that the terror group disarm and step down, say their plans were crushed before they could reach the streets.
Multiple dissidents said in phone interviews with National Post that smaller protests went ahead in some areas, but the terror group forced participants to disperse, warning organizers and would-be demonstrators that anyone attempting to join would face violent reprisals.
“What the world doesn’t really know, is that there is a strong opposition movement inside Gaza today that’s developing against Hamas,” said Hadeel Oueis, a U.S.-based Syrian-born journalist and editor of Jusoor News, an Arabic-language outlet that reports on Middle East news.
They maintain a network of contacts in the Strip, and she helped National Post arrange interviews with dissident Gazans.
“A lot of people are fed up from the war, fed up from Hamas’s wrong choices, and they want to protest,” demanding that Hamas disarm, and leave the Strip “in order to stop the war, to stop the Israeli attacks, and to rebuild Gaza.”
One of the organizers for small local groups in the region of Deir al-Balah, Mohammad Hussein Lafi, said he arrived at a designated gathering point in central Gaza, only to see “it was already filled with Hamas security forces openly displaying their weapons.”
The 22-year-old told National Post that “Hamas was much better prepared than we were,” having been tipped off.
He said he was told that cell phones were confiscated from anyone suspected of ties to the protests, and some were also physically assaulted and detained. Hamas has “the weapons, the force and the means to intimidate people. They threatened families, and reportedly paid money to influential clan leaders to publicly announce that they would disown any family member who participated in the demonstrations,” he said.
Lafi was about to graduate from the faculty of physical education at Aqsa University in Gaza when Hamas launched the October 7 attacks on southern Israel in 2023. Israel responded with a war that has killed tens of thousands of Gazans, including terrorist combatants and civilians. He now lives in a school-turned-shelter.
Roughly a year ago, Hamas arrested him, accusing him of speaking out against the October 7 attacks to his friends – something he said many Gazans do privately. After being “severely beaten and tortured during detention,” he said he became convinced Hamas’s rule had to come to an end.
The opposition movement wants Hamas to disarm, “so that reconstruction can begin …(and) living conditions can improve,” he said.
The public show of defiance officially shifted to a more discreet “soft protest.” At 10 p.m. on Friday, Gazans banged pots and pans and whistled for about an hour from inside displacement camps and tents, responding to an online call by organizers, according to Lafi.
Others, independent of the organized plans, corralled an ad hoc demonstration the following day. Video footage embedded in a Times of Israel story showed a funeral procession near planned protest sites, and Lafi told National Post that mourners carried signs that read “God willing, Hamas out,” “We are not pawns,” with chants of “enough with the destruction.”
Mustafa Asfour, a Gazan activist who has lived in the United Kingdom for four years, and was one of the June 26 demonstration organizers, said in an interview that Hamas “launched a media campaign to discredit the movement, accusing it of betrayal, and targeting anyone” who participated.
Two days before the planned protest, his contacts told him that Hamas pressured prominent families “to hold press conferences denouncing the June 26 movement,” and pro‑Hamas media then circulated statements in the names of major clans — including the Al‑Buhaisi, Daghmash, Abdul Aal, Al‑Najjar, Al‑Bureim, Miqdad, Asfour families and the Tarabin tribe — claiming they opposed the protests.
“Many of these families later issued official statements saying they had never released such declarations and rejecting the statements attributed to them,” he said.
Families received threatening phone calls warning them not to allow their children to participate, and displaced people were told that anyone who joined the protests would be expelled from the camps, he said. “The repression started before the protests, continued as they began, persisted afterwards and is still ongoing,” Asfour said.
Asfour argued that NGO silence has only emboldened Hamas. He says he and others reached out to Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, to draw attention to the planned protests, and warn against repression.
There was no response, he said, except for the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. The National Post was shown the letter in Arabic, a stock response of four lines acknowledging receipt of the complaint, saying the “matter raised by you is under follow‑up” by the center.
Oueis says Jusoor News has documented graffiti on Gaza walls declaring support for the June 26 movement, and calling for Hamas’s ouster.
According to Oueis’ sources, at least half of Gazans want Hamas out, “so they can get a better future, a better life.” That same number, she claimed, were in retrospect “unhappy with the Oct. 7 attacks.”
Oueis accuses Hamas of worsening everyday life through diversion of aid, heavy taxation and a harsh crackdown on dissent.
During “the worst days of hunger and lack of food in Gaza,” Oueis said, Jusoor interviewed residents who alleged that Hamas “hijacked every truck that came with food to Gaza, stored it in its own storage, stole this aid that’s coming from international organizations, and kept it.” They claimed the aid was then handed out selectively “only to their soldiers” and to pro‑Hamas communities, while those without a fighter in the family “won’t get aid.”
She said “any merchandise that’s entering Gaza, Hamas is taxing it,” driving up prices on basic goods at a time when most people can least afford it.
Since the start of the ceasefire last fall, Hamas has “captured and arrested” almost 200 activists and dissidents, she said, many accused of collaborating with Israel and some tortured to death. One of Jusoor’s own reporters, she said, was arrested, beaten “very badly,” and left unable to walk. “He’s paralyzed because he made this coverage, anti‑Hamas coverage from Gaza.” Her team interviewed Gazans who were tortured for posting criticism of Hamas on Facebook, she said.
Oueis said “most of the Islamists of Gaza are pro‑Hamas,” but insists that “many deeply religious Muslims” are among those calling for change, and that “a lot of the people who are going to protest and taking initiative in spreading the word against Hamas are religious Muslims” who reject Islamist politics. Many, she added, are “frustrated young people” who may have loose affiliations with the opposition Fatah party.
Some Gazans, she said, even openly argue that “it’s time to stop the wars between Israel and Palestinians, and it’s time to have peace with Israel.” They recall the period before October 7 when tens of thousands of Gazans worked inside Israel for “very good high salaries,” and say they “definitely want these things to go back.”
Kareem Joudeh, 30, told National Post that his own motivation for helping with demonstrations was based on the “belief that civilians in Gaza have the right to express their voices peacefully, and to demand dignity, safety, and a better future.” He wants the world to know that they demand “accountability, and the right of people to have a voice in decisions affecting their lives.”
Formerly of northern Gaza, now displaced to central Gaza, he works with World Central Kitchen’s humanitarian efforts.
“I lost my home during the war, like many other families in Gaza. My experience, like many Palestinians here, has been shaped by years of difficult circumstances, but also by a strong sense of community and the desire to build a better future.”
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