Bassem Barhoum, a journalist for the Palestinian Authority daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, has written that the only hope for Gaza is that Palestinians in the Strip “rise up, take to the streets en masse and demand that Hamas release the [Israeli] hostages”.
In the August 9 article translated by media watchdog Memri, Barhoum said: “The Palestinian public in Gaza – all of it or at least most of it – must demand that Hamas withdraw from the entire political scene.
“This may be difficult and may involve some risk, but it is the only chance to avoid total devastation, killing and expulsion. If anyone has a different solution, let him share it with all of us… In my opinion, today this is the [only] feasible solution that may put a stop to the war."
The underlying problem, he wrote, was that Hamas did not think or act on the basis of national Palestinian interests but that it was instead aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamist movement’s regional allies.
"After Hamas led the Palestinian people into a deep crisis following the 2006 elections [and its military coup against the PA in 2007] – a crisis that has now led us to a nakba more serious than the first nakba [of 1948] – we find that we were wrong to allow two parallel paths to remain, paths that do not meet and can never meet because the disagreement between them is essential, namely the national Palestinian path and the Islamist path of the [Muslim] Brotherhood,” he wrote.
“On the night between Thursday and Friday [August 7-8, 2025], the Israeli war cabinet decided to occupy the entire Gaza Strip. This large-scale military operation could last several months and perhaps even more than a year.
“However, if it ends with an Israeli occupation of the Strip, we will have to understand that Gaza has been completely destroyed… and that the Gaza Strip may lose its Palestinian national identity for many decades to come.
"This scenario inevitably compels us to question the fate of the Strip, as well as the fate of the long and bitter Palestinian struggle for an independent state and of the Palestinian cause as a whole.”
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