War fatigue settles among Palestinians
One year after the Hamas atrocities in southern Israel ignited a multi-front war between the Jewish state and Iran’s regional proxies, a discernible trend is emerging among many Palestinians, especially those in Gaza. They are getting tired of the war.
A school in Khan Yunis—many of them serve as weapons depots, using civilians, even students, as human shields—in the southern Gaza Strip after an Israeli airstrike on Oct. 9, 2024. Photo by Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90.
War fatigue doesn’t mean that the Palestinians have suddenly developed an appetite for real peace—a peace, that is, in which Israel’s right to exist is welcomed, not contested, along with trade, educational and cultural agreements replacing boycotts, and a shared focus on regional security and regional development. The eliminationist ideology that resides at the heart of the Palestinian national movement, which expressed itself with astonishing brutality during the Oct. 7 pogrom in southern Israel, still prevails. But unlike the well-fed performative morons donning keffiyehs, banging drums and chanting antisemitic slogans in the streets and on the university campuses of Western cities, the Palestinians of Gaza have suffered immensely because of the actions of Hamas. Many of them are now asking whether it was all worth it.
Indeed, throughout this year, pockets of dissent have emerged among ordinary Palestinians fed up with Hamas thugs stealing humanitarian aid intended for their families, with some of them rightly accusing the terrorist organization of not giving a damn about their welfare, given that a punishing response from Israel was never in doubt in the wake of the massacre of 1,200 people. A report from the Reuters news agency last week quoted a Gazan mother named Samira wistfully remembering what her life was like before Oct. 7. “Despite all the hardships, our life was going well. We had jobs, houses and a city,” she said. Her dutiful description of Israel as “our prime enemy” didn’t prevent her from blaming Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the atrocity, for inviting the Israeli response. “What was he thinking? Didn’t he expect that Israel would destroy Gaza?” she asked.
Sinwar did expect precisely that. It was, moreover, something that he wanted. The “Butcher of Khan Yunis”—a moniker that Sinwar earned due to his reputation for torturing and murdering Palestinians opposed to Hamas—doubtless regards “martyrdom” as a fitting end to his blood-drenched campaign. His Qatar-based billionaire comrade, Khaled Mashaal, thinks similarly, declaring in an interview last week that Hamas will “rise like a phoenix” from the ashes of Gaza. That’s easy to say if you’re lounging at the Four Seasons in Doha wearing an expensive Italian suit. It’s not so easy if you’re a Gazan compelled to live with the consequences of Hamas’s pathology.
Polling by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research, a Ramallah-based institute that has usefully observed the shifting sentiments among Palestinians over the last year, bears that out. Its most recent survey, dated Sept. 14, reveals that for the first time, the majority of Gaza civilians—some 57%—now believe that the Oct. 7 atrocities were a mistake. Belief in the proposition that Hamas will still control Gaza at the end of the war has also declined, with 37% of Gazans agreeing with it compared with 70% of respondents in the West Bank. Also worth noting are the shifting opinions on a final settlement of the conflict. Some 39% of respondents support a two-state solution—a figure that rises to 59% when the phrase “two-state solution” is not mentioned but the borders of a Palestinian state are defined by the armistice lines of 1949. Only 19% of respondents expressed support for an Israeli-Palestinian confederation, while just 10% backed the single state—“from the river to the sea”—that would entail the complete elimination of Israel.
The latest mood of realism among Palestinians has been seen before, which is a good reason not to become overly optimistic. Given the heavy blows that have been sustained in the last year, with Hamas decimated as a cohesive fighting force and much of Gaza reduced to rubble, it isn’t surprising that more and more Palestinians are acknowledging that they have had enough. The shift may help secure a ceasefire and the release of the 101 Israeli hostages still languishing in Hamas captivity (although even then, as long as Sinwar calls the shots and ignores the pleas of his people, there is less likelihood of that outcome.) What it won’t do is bring about a peace where Israel is accepted by the Palestinians and the broader Arab world on its own terms.
Israelis will correctly remain sceptical of reading too much into the changing mood. The idea of a democratic Jewish state with a permanent presence in the region still represents a red line that most Palestinians won’t cross. As the folksy observation has it, it’s one thing to think with your head, and another to feel with your heart. With Hamas on the ropes, with its Hezbollah ally in Lebanon humiliated and emasculated by Israel’s operations north of the border, and with Iran facing an Israeli counterattack that could yet bring an end to the regime of Ali Khamenei in Tehran—the ultimate source of all this suffering—a sensible head will conclude that the time is right for an interim deal. But eliminationism will continue to fester in Palestinian hearts unless and until it is properly addressed.
It’s often said that the wholesale transformation of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan at the end of World War II was only possible because both of the regimes in those countries were unambiguously defeated. Looking at Palestinian politics now, we are very far from such a scenario. All the leaders and all the factions that predominate—Islamist or nationalist, Marwan Barghouti of Fatah or Yahya Sinwar of Hamas—are wedded to the idea that Zionism lies at the root of their ills. Whatever divides them, they are united in the belief that their “liberation” can only be achieved at the expense of another state and another nation; essentially, a zero-sum game that determines for Palestine to live, Israel must die. I dare to hope, given the progress in the field in recent months, that Israel can significantly lessen, if not banish, the prospect of another Oct. 7. I dare not hope for much more than that.
