Why Gazans Voted for Hamas—and Why Blaming Them Today Is Misleading

 

When Carl Higbie of Newsmax says that the people of Gaza are responsible for the deaths and destruction because they elected Hamas, he misses the deeper history. The choice made in 2006 was not the open-ended endorsement of Hamas that many in the West assume. It was one election, held nearly two decades ago, in a moment of frustration and despair.

In January 2006, Palestinians went to the polls in legislative elections. Hamas, the Islamist movement that had built its reputation in the first intifada, won a decisive victory. Why did it happen? Many observers agree that it was less a vote for religious rule than a vote against corruption. Fatah, the ruling party of the Palestinian Authority, had been in charge for over a decade. It was seen as weak, compromised, and riddled with self-enrichment.

“People were tired of Fatah’s failures, both in governance and in negotiations,” explained Khalil Shikaki, director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, in an interview with NPR. “Hamas represented change. It represented clean hands.”

Hamas also built influence by providing social services. Long before it entered the ballot box, it ran schools, health clinics, and charities. In a society where official institutions often failed, that mattered. A shopkeeper in Gaza City told The New York Times at the time, “At least they take care of the poor. Fatah only takes care of itself.”

The political appeal was reinforced by its image of resistance. For Palestinians who saw the peace process collapse and settlements expand, Hamas’s refusal to compromise felt like dignity. “People were voting against Oslo, against the status quo,” said Nathan Brown, a scholar of Middle Eastern politics at George Washington University.

Yet the 2006 victory was the last time Gazans had a real say. The U.S. and Israel refused to accept the result, sanctions followed, and fighting broke out between Fatah and Hamas. By 2007, Gaza and the West Bank were divided. Hamas controlled Gaza, Fatah remained in the West Bank, and no further elections were held. Today, nearly half the population of Gaza is under eighteen. They never had the chance to vote in the first place.

Critics of Higbie’s framing point out that holding all Gazans responsible is unjust. The International Crisis Group observed, “The lack of elections has locked Palestinians into a leadership they may or may not support, with no peaceful avenue for change.” That is the reality of life under blockade and factional conflict.

There is also the question of coercion. Since 2007, Hamas has consolidated power in Gaza by silencing rivals. Independent voices face pressure, arrest, or worse. Ordinary people cannot openly oppose them. To suggest that 2 million civilians—most of them children—are collectively guilty for decisions made in one frozen election is morally unsound.

The deeper tragedy is that Gaza’s people are trapped between external siege and internal repression. They were given one choice, almost twenty years ago, in a moment when anger outweighed hope. That choice has since been weaponized by critics who argue that Gazans brought this on themselves.

History does not support that view. The election was a protest, not a blank check. The absence of new elections is not the people’s decision. And the suffering of civilians today cannot be excused by a single ballot cast in 2006.

As the late Palestinian analyst Ghassan Khatib once said, “Voting for Hamas was not voting for endless war. It was voting against the corruption that was strangling us.” That distinction still matters.

What Palestinian Kids Learn About Jews

 

A little girl in Nablus stands up to recite a poem. Her voice wavers, but her words are sharp: “I am the daughter of stones / and my brother is the fire.” Her classmates clap. She is seven years old. Her brother is in prison.

In Palestine, childhood is laced with geopolitics before it has a chance to be innocent. The classroom doesn’t just teach math or history — it teaches memory. And in that memory, Jews are often not people, but symbols: of occupation, of loss, of a wound that never closes.

And that’s where the danger begins.

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A Nation in Exile, Taught to Resist

Palestinian education is built on a single, aching premise: displacement.

In both West Bank and Gaza schools, textbooks emphasize national identity through the lens of catastrophe. The Nakba — Arabic for “catastrophe,” referring to the 1948 expulsion of Palestinians — is not just a historical event. It is an inheritance.

In a 9th grade Arabic-language textbook, students read:

“The martyrs are the candles that light the path to freedom.”

Another passage from a 7th grade Social Studies book states:

“The Zionist gangs invaded our peaceful villages and expelled our people from their homes.”

These phrases aren’t rare. They are standard fare — appearing in literature, geography, civics. They map the world not in political boundaries but in grief. Israel is rarely named as a legitimate state. Instead, students are often taught that the land from the river to the sea is Palestinian — always was, always should be.

Maps in these textbooks reflect this belief. Israel is either labeled Palestine or omitted entirely. Jerusalem is described as the capital of Palestine, with no recognition of Israeli sovereignty.

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Absent Faces, Flattened Identities

Here’s what’s strange: while “Zionist enemy” or “the occupier” appears often, the word Jew is almost entirely missing.

This erasure is intentional — and complicated. It’s a way to avoid religious hatred, Palestinian educators argue. The target is the occupier, not the Jew.

But in reality, this omission flattens all Israelis into a single faceless enemy. There’s no distinction between a Jewish civilian and a soldier, between a rabbi and a sniper. Children grow up without ever learning about Jewish history, religious customs, or even the Holocaust — one of the most defining traumas of the 20th century.

In fact, according to the Georg Eckert Institute’s 2023 report commissioned by the EU, not a single Palestinian textbook surveyed included Holocaust education. One geography book, asked to describe the impact of WWII, omits the genocide entirely.

This is not just about omission. It’s about shaping empathy — or the absence of it.

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“Al-Jazeera for Kids”: The War at Home

Even beyond the classroom, Palestinian children are surrounded by a culture that memorializes resistance.

On Palestinian Authority TV and Hamas-run channels, children’s segments often feature songs about martyrdom. One popular song that aired on Al-Aqsa TV went:

“When we die as martyrs, we go to heaven smiling.”

In Gaza, murals depict children with slingshots, facing tanks. Streets are named after “martyrs.”
Children grow up seeing billboards of cousins and neighbors who died in airstrikes or Israeli raids — always smiling, always honored.

For a child who watches his uncle bleed out in a doorway, how can he imagine a Jewish child frightened by rockets in Ashkelon?

Here’s what I noticed: there are no mirrors. Only windows — and all of them shattered.

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A Brief Spark — and Why It Faded

Not all hope is gone. In 2016, the PA piloted a program with the United Nations to introduce “Human Rights, Tolerance and Civics” into 10th-grade curricula. The books included lessons on religious diversity and even referenced Jewish history — cautiously, but sincerely.

But by 2019, those books were pulled.

Why? Critics said they were too “soft,” too “Western,” too “normalizing.” Political pressure from both the street and Hamas forced the Ministry of Education to retreat.

“We are under occupation,” one official said. “We cannot teach our children to forget that.”

But maybe the real question is: can we teach them to remember without hating?

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Closing Thought

In a refugee camp in Jenin, a boy showed a visiting journalist his schoolwork. On one page, he’d drawn a map with no Israel. On another, he’d written: “One day I will return to my grandfather’s home in Haifa.”

When asked if he knew anyone Jewish, he shook his head.

“Only the soldiers.”