#no but seriously why the fuck are palestinian politics so confusing tho

[autismserenity]

It's been incredibly difficult to hear from Palestinians in Gaza, not to mention center their experiences and platform their voices. Because ever since Hamas violently kicked the Palestinian government out of Gaza in 2007, it's denied Palestinians the right to free speech.

(Here's Palestinian human rights activist Hamza Howidy sarcastically wondering why Hamas isn't stopping the theft of humanitarian aid when it had the power to arrest him for a social media post within 4 hours.)

I'm working on a series of posts of Palestinians to platform. I came across this thread from someone who used Snapchat to talk to people in Gaza, so I thought I'd post it here in the meantime.

I've seen videos of Palestinians talking about not being able to evacuate because "Hamas has closed all the roads," a video of a Palestinian telling the IDF that Hamas has a car blocking the Salah-al-Din road (the evacuation route) and is pointing guns at people and telling them to turn around. But even as someone searching for Palestinian voices and looking for information about this, I hadn't heard that Hamas had been killing civilians trying to evacuate. (And probably reporting their deaths as part of the daily total.)

I mean, just the fact that the Gaza Strip is run as a separate country from the rest of Palestine is a huge barrier for Palestinians. It's hard to be accepted as a full member of the UN when your country functionally has two or three different governments.

(Confusingly, the PLO is considered the government of Palestine internationally. Abbas is the president of both PLO and the Palestinian Authority, so it sort of works as long as nobody has an election. But the fact that Palestinians have been denied an election for 18+ years, because Abbas keeps cancelling elections and Hamas is Hamas, is also a pretty big fucking problem.)

But it's also true that a huge number of the people in the Gaza Strip, while obviously having a big problem with the Israeli government, have at least as big of a problem with Hamas.

And for all of our decades of talk about Free Palestine, in the progressive movement, we pay shockingly little attention to that.

#you don't need rights #fuck hamas #free gaza #free palestine #free palestine from hamas #hamas is evil #no but seriously why the fuck are palestinian politics so confusing tho #ngl i didn't find out they have three (3) governments until a couple of months ago and i almost screeched #how the fuck is anyone supposed to have a functional country when its leaders are like you just need uhhhhh (checks notes) three times the g #"and also maybe like. we could throw a violent coup in there and then just like totally suppress everyone's political rights and oh yeah. #“zero times the elections. perfect!” #like seriously i have an entire unnecessarily long post in me just about how badly the palestinians have been fucked over by their leaders #pretty much ever since britain showed up #ANYWAY #wall of words