RAMALLAH — The protesters who surged around Ramallah’s Al-Manara Square on Friday repeated a call-and-response chant.
“Who is protecting us?”
“Qassam!” came the reply.
The Al-Qassam Brigades is the military wing of Hamas, the armed group responsible for the Oct. 7 attack on Israel that left 1,400 dead.
The depth of support for Hamas among the five million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza is hard to measure, but two weeks after it carried out the worst attack on Israel in a half-century, Hamas seems to enjoy sympathy at least.
Friday’s demonstration was a show of support for the people of Gaza, but it was notable for the presence of Hamas symbols.
Alongside the Palestinian national flag and the flag of the secular Fatah movement, which recognizes Israel and favours negotiations, was the banner of Hamas, the Islamist group that wants to destroy Israel.
A few protesters wore green Hamas headbands. Others were caped in the group’s flag, including a boy carried on his father’s shoulders.
Even though Fatah controls the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, some Palestinians said it had failed to deliver a solution to the conflict with Israel, leaving Hamas as the only option.
U.S. President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have said, “Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people,” but Palestinians interviewed by Global News said they had it wrong.
“I think that Hamas does represent Palestinians because Hamas at the end of the day is a Palestinian group,” said Dalia, a lawyer.
‘Resistance’
Dalia was born in Canada, but her parents wanted her to grow up in her Palestinian culture, so they moved to the West Bank.
Unlike Gaza, which Israel abandoned in 2005, the West Bank remains an occupied territory, with a patchwork of settlements guarded by Israeli troops.
For Dahlia, a 23-year-old law intern, life in the West Bank means stopping at checkpoints, carrying a permit and geographic confinement.
Attacks from Israeli settlers have encroached into the territory, and Israel Defence Force arrests and raids keep Palestinians on edge and resentful.
“It’s so hard, everything is so hard,” she said. “We want to swim, we want to live, we want to dance … and be able to live a normal life.”
“But under occupation, it’s very hard,” she said. “We are all in a prison, we’re under apartheid, we’re under occupation.”
Military activity has increased in the West Bank since the Oct. 7 attack, with more than 500 arrests, most of them “operatives of Hamas,” according to the Israel Defense Force. The United Nations said 75 Palestinians had been killed.
Israel conducted a rare airstrike in the territory this week, targeting what it said was an “armed terrorist squad” near Nur Shams.
The attack raised concerns about escalating violence in the territory. At the same time, though, the world is focused on Gaza.
Although the West Bank is separated from Gaza, Dalia said Palestinians were one family, and she was heartbroken by the plight of what she called an “open prison” under Israeli siege.
“Oct. 7 was a day that we were resisting. They were just defending themselves,” she said of the Hamas gunmen who carried out the deadly incursion.
Dalia would not discuss details of the attack, which also killed five Canadians. Two Canadians are also missing and possibly among 200 prisoners held in Gaza.
When presented with the view of Trudeau and other Western leaders that Hamas was a terrorist group and Israel had the right to defend itself, she pushed back.
“If the Western countries or the world is saying that Israel has the right to defend itself, then they should educate themselves enough to know that everything that happened was us defending ourselves as well,” she said.
She said Hamas was “fighting for their people and their land,” a cause that has been fuming for almost eight decades.
“So Hamas is a resistance group,” she said. “Of course, it represents Palestine. It represents all of us. It represents how we are going to live.”
Black smoke and gunfire
The rally that began after Friday prayers at Ramallah’s Jamal Abdel Nasser mosque was not unlike those in Western and Arab capitals — until the protesters marched to the edge of a nearby Israeli settlement.
Masked demonstrators set tires on fire and hurled rocks at Israeli soldiers, who responded with gunshots that injured at least three.
After a protester was shot in the leg and ambulance workers rushed him to the hospital, a Palestinian who did not want to be identified expressed his frustration.
“I see this every day, since I was born,” said the youth, who said his brother was shot at age 16, and his father had been imprisoned in Israel.
“Every one of us, the Palestinians, you can’t find anyone who was not affected by the Israeli occupation. Everyone has suffered.”
“And this needs to stop.”
He came to the demonstration to show solidarity with the people of Gaza, whom he said faced a genocide by Israeli forces.
The Hamas attack “put the Palestinian cause in the news again,” he said.
While he said he was against violence and felt sorry for the Israelis who died, he added that “the world has left us no other choice.”
He said that for 30 years, the Palestinian Authority had tried to negotiate a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and had nothing to show.
“That’s why everyone is now supporting and somehow standing with Hamas. It’s part of the Palestinian community, it’s part of us,” he said.
Stewart.Bell@globalnews.ca
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