“To have a calm, stable, quiet life”… Why some Palestinians are ready to accept the idea of ​​a lasting Israeli presence in Gaza

Some Gaza residents, who are highly critical of Hamas, want the Israelis to take control of the Gaza Strip. Their hope: to finally glimpse a better future.

Will the Israeli army reoccupy Gaza? The offensive of the Hebrew state is getting bogged down with, on Wednesday July 10, the evacuation of the city where a major offensive resumed at the end of June while the territories were supposed to have been pacified since the end of January. The question of a long-term presence of the Israelis in the enclave therefore arises, and part of the population could even adhere to it.

The Israeli left-wing daily Haaretz calculated from satellite images that the army of the Hebrew state occupied a little more than a quarter of the enclave. First, a strip one kilometer wide along the 50 kilometers of border between the two territories, and then the two corridors: “Philadelphia”, on the edge of Egypt, and “Netzarim”, named after a former colony dismantled nearly twenty years ago and which cuts Gaza in two.

“I am in favor of the Israelis controlling the situation here in Gaza”Samira, in Gaza, testifies. For residents exhausted by ten months of war like this woman, the fighting must stop at all costs, even if the price to pay is a temporary Israeli occupation. “Hamas failed to control the Gaza Strip. On the contrary, Hamas helped the Israelis to return to Gaza again,” confides Samira. “From 2007 until today, Hamas has only caused disastersshe snaps. What are people looking for? They are looking for a good life. Money, a good future. I am not interested in who is going to control the government here,” she decides.

“What interests me is whether this government will help me have a job, a house, a good future, have an airport, a bridge, have the freedom to travel, enter and exit, have a good passport.”

Samira, resident of Gaza

to franceinfo

Samira who concludes with this wish: “to have a calm, stable, quiet life, before politics, before everything.” A rare and courageous word in a Palestinian society torn between fear of Hamas and hatred of the Israelis. On the side of the Hebrew state, the army defends the idea of ​​a strategic occupation while the most right-wing fringe of the government has a clearly ideological vision and wants to allow Jews to resettle in Gaza.