Samira, a mother of two in Cairo, yearns for her old life when she was an Arabic teacher and had a comfortable home - before the attack by Hamas on Israel a year ago plunged Gaza into suffering and chaos.
She has joined a growing number of Gazans asking whether they have paid too high a price for Hamas' terrorist assault on Oct. 7 last year. The Israel-Hamas war that followed has effected Gaza, reportedly killed tens of thousands, including Hamas terrorists, and driven Palestinians from their homes.
“Despite all the hardships, our life was going well. We had jobs, houses, and a city,” said Samira, who declined to give her family name for fear of retaliation.
Attributing blame
Samira still described Israel as an enemy, but she also blames Hamas' leader Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the Oct. 7 attacks, for what she sees as a huge miscalculation.
"What was he thinking? Didn't he expect that Israel would destroy Gaza?" she said.
Reuters spoke to dozens of residents of Gaza, all of whom asked not to be identified by their full name to avoid retribution. Some still see Hamas as heroes for the Oct. 7 attack, when the terrorist organization mounted an unprecedented raid into Israel, something they'd never thought they'd see.
But several said that the Iranian-backed terrorist group – which has ruled Gaza since 2007 – had given little thought to their suffering, and some admit the attack had been a terrible mistake.
Sinwar has not been seen publicly since the Oct. 7 raid, in which gunmen killed 1,200 innocent people and kidnapped another 250, including women and children. He has run Hamas from the shadows of a network of labyrinthine tunnels under Gaza and, according to people in contact with him, remains convinced that armed struggle is the only way to force the creation of a Palestinian state.
Hamas claimed that the Oct. 7 attack – the deadliest in Israel's 75-year history – marked a turning point in the decades-long struggle for Palestinian nationhood, which had drifted off the international agenda. Some believe the terrorist group is winning the battle against Israel, which has failed to achieve its war aims of destroying Hamas as a fighting force, eliminating its leaders, or retrieving its hostages.
Opinion poll
An opinion poll published in mid-September by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR), a think tank based in Ramallah and funded by Western donors, showed for the first time the majority of Gazans opposed the decision to attack.
The poll, conducted in early September, found that 57% of people surveyed in the Gaza Strip said the decision to launch the offensive was incorrect, while just 39% said it was correct – down sharply from the previous poll in June.
Hamas has long been accused of crushing dissent in Gaza with beatings or worse. But recent months have seen some rare public displays of dissent.
Former Hamas official Ahmed Youssef Saleh took to Facebook in July to ask whether anybody in Hamas “studied and thought of the consequences” before launching an attack that invited Israel’s uncompromising invasion.
Saleh’s post has since drawn hundreds of comments, many adding their own criticism of the Islamist group. Saleh, who continues to post regularly, did not respond to requests for comment.
In July, Palestinian activist Ameen Abed, who had criticized the Oct. 7 attack, was beaten by masked men and hospitalized. His father walked through the streets of Gaza's Jabalia refugee camp using a loudspeaker to accuse Hamas of the attack.
Sami Abu Zuhri, a senior Hamas official, dismissed such criticism of the group as "limited remarks." "Those remarks result from the pain and nothing more," he told Reuters, adding that the spirit of the Palestinian people was far from breaking.
“We had no choice but to launch this major battle, regardless of the cost, because the Palestinian cause was about to end amid the growing aggression and the Israeli crimes against our people and our sacred sites," he claimed.
Signs of dissent matter to Hamas, which aims to maintain its sway in Gaza once the war ends, despite the insistence of Israel and the United States that it can play no part in governing the enclave after the war.
Ashraf Abouelhoul, managing editor of the Egyptian state-owned paper Al-Ahram and a specialist on Palestinian issues, said the nature of any role for Hamas in a post-war Gaza would depend on how the conflict ended.
"Inside Gaza, the situation will be different, and when people realize that Gaza has become unliveable, the support for Hamas will become less," he said. However, he added that Iran could demand a future role for the militant group as part of a settlement of a broader regional conflict.
Act of Defiance
Many living in Gaza see the Oct. 7 attack as a response to decades-long Israeli occupation and not a reaction to specific Israeli offensive or policies.
Some are advocates of a two-state solution; however, they recognize that in the wake of Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, the possibility seems as remote as ever.
The PSR opinion poll, published on Sept. 17, showed that the proportion of Gazans who said they want Hamas to run a post-war Gaza had dropped to 36%, from 46% in its June poll.
"For the first time, we see more Gazans wanting the PA, not Hamas, to control Gaza after the war. This is probably the most decisive indicator," Khalil Shikaki, director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, told Reuters, referring to the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority led by President Mahmoud Abbas.
Even in the West Bank, where support for Hamas remained stronger, support for the attack has declined, the poll showed, though almost two-thirds of respondents there still thought it was the correct decision. PSR said it surveyed 1,200 people face-to-face, 790 in the West Bank and 410 in Gaza, with a 3.5% margin of error.
In August, the IDF accused Hamas of mounting an effort to falsify the results of PSR polls to show false support for Hamas on Oct. 7, though they said there was no evidence of PSR cooperating with Hamas. PSR said it had investigated the allegation but found no proof of data being manipulated.
Abouelhoul, the Egyptian newspaper editor, said it would be tough to measure the popularity of Hamas in Gaza comprehensively until the war was over. He said the Palestinian Authority, controlled by Hamas’ rival party Fatah, needed to reform itself if it were to play a role in post-war Gaza.
"What is important is that Palestinians must agree on a new government, with new faces, that will be tasked with administering people's affairs and reconstructing Gaza," he said.