Hamas's Role and Responsibility for Palestinian Suffering

"The statement fails to focus the pressure on Hamas and fails to recognize Hamas's role and responsibility for the situation."

"Hamas is the sole party responsible for the continuation of the war and the suffering on both sides."

"At these sensitive moments in the ongoing negotiations, it is better to avoid statements of this kind."

"Instead of agreeing to a ceasefire, Hamas is busy running a campaign to spread lies about Israel. At the same time, Hamas is deliberately acting to increase friction and harm to civilians who come to receive humanitarian aid."  

Oren Marmorstein, Israel foreign affairs ministry spokesperson 

 

"The suffering of civilians in Gaza has reached new depths. the Israeli government's aid delivery model is dangerous, fuels instability and deprives Gazans of human dignity."

"We condemn the drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians, including children, seeking to meet their most basic needs of water and food."

"[We call on the Israeli government to lift all restrictions on aid delivery and to] enable the UN and humanitarian NGOs [to do their work safely and effectively]."

Joint statement, foreign ministers of France, Britain, Japan, Canada and 24 others 

Palestinian terrorists move towards the border fence with Israel from Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on October 7.   Said Khatib/AFP/Getty Images

 

Those who signed the joint statement urging that "the war in Gaza must end now", calling on Israel to put a stop to displacing Palestinians, also condemned Hamas for continuing to hold hostages taken from Israel in the October 7, 2023 atrocities, calling for their immediate release. Adding that it is "horrifying that over 800 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid"; a death toll based on figures released both by the UN human rights office and the Hamas-operated health ministry in Gaza. 

 

The United Nations and its offshoots such as UNRWA are notorious for their underlying support for Hamas, since it was proven that UNRWA employs Hamas operatives some of whom were active participants in the October 7 atrocities that took place in  southern Israel. The cooperation between UN member-bodies and Hamas extends to the full acceptance of all Hamas propaganda statements, inclusive of body counts and accusations of Israel withholding food and medical supplies from Palestinian civilians.

 

This, when it has been well documented that Hamas itself has appropriated humanitarian aid supplied by the UN and stockpiling it in Hamas warehouses, withheld from the civilian population, most often ending up in open air markets where the humanitarian aid sells for inflated prices, the profit of which enhances Hamas's bottom line. Claims of starvation among the populace ignore the reality that many areas of Gaza have more than ample food as marketplaces and videos on social media posted by Gazans themselves demonstrate.

 

Photographs of some of those taken hostage by Hamas during the October 7 attack on Israel.   Leon Neal/Getty Images

 

That Palestinians in Gaza are suffering from the incursion of the IDF whose purpose is to defang and neutralize the terrorists that have attacked Israeli citizens for decades, culminating in the savagery of October 7, is a result of Hamas deliberately placing them in harm's way to enhance their propaganda of Israel planning a genocide of Palestinians, a narrative picked up by the Western press and given the credence that is denied Israel's denials. 

 

While the West presses Israel for a ceasefire, it ignores the simple and obvious reality that Hamas rejects that ceasefire. That a terrorist group's contentions can influence the critical thought processes of Western leaders is beyond belief, while those same leaders hold Israel to a standard that they themselves would never countenance if their nations were under attack. For Israel to unilaterally stand back and allow Hamas to continue reorganizing, rearming, and replanning attacks against the Jewish state with the intention of destroying it seems to make no inroads in the mental gymnastics the West engages in.

 

Decrying an expansion of West Bank settlements and the move to separate the West Bank from East Jerusalem, is a lesson in total hypocrisy. The Palestinians have never been satisfied with having the West Bank and Gaza Strip to themselves; they make no secret in demanding the eradication of Israel to enable their sovereignty over the entire geographic area 'from the river (Jordan) to the (Mediterranean) sea, Israel's ancestral patrimony. None of the nations decrying these issues would consider surrendering their capital cities to upstarts, yet with the steady migration of Islamism this is what their future augurs.

 

The 'two-state solution' they insist on imposing on Israel, has been rejected time and time again by Palestinian leaders. Their ideal is a one-state solution, and it is that ideal that they focus on, allowing others to speak of a two-state solution they themselves have no intention of acceding to, and so they continue to deny the 'legality' of Israel's existence. 

 

Palestinians carry supplies from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in May in this file photo.  (Hatem Khaled/Reuters)

 

The food supplies entering Gaza through the auspices of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an American contractor supported by both Israel and the United States, actually provides meals and food products and fuel and medical supplies directly to Palestinian civilians, entirely bypassing Hamas's opportunities to ransack the aid delivery trucks, removing its 'authority' to claim the aid for its own purposes. Hamas has punished Palestinians for going directly to the GHF distribution sites, as traitors to the Hamas cause of exterminating Israel. 

 

The United States, Qatar, Egypt  and Germany did not sign the letter. The first three remain at work on  a feasible ceasefire; all of their efforts to date have been rejected by Hamas. Hamas, a terrorist group whose atrocities are in and of themselves an assault in human decency, permitted to exert control because of the back-handed support given it by negotiating with it to begin with, is controlling the narrative. And the democratic state that is an outpost of Western civilization in a generally uncivilized Middle East doing catch-up to the modern era, is once again a sacrificial gift to the forces of evil. 

 

Armed Palestinians sit on trucks carrying humanitarian aid near the Zikim border crossing between Israel and Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip, June 25, 2025. (Ali Qariqa/Flash90)