Gaza Woman on TV Calls Out Hamas for Keeping Aid: 'Let Them Shoot Me'

An elderly woman in Gaza criticized militant group Hamas for taking humanitarian aid intended for Palestinians displaced by the ongoing conflict with Israel, telling an Al Jazeera reporter that "all aid is going down [underground]."

According to a translation by an Israeli correspondent, which Newsweek has independently verified, she tells the reporter: "The aid does not reach the nation and the entire people."

When the Al Jazeera correspondent responds that "a lot is coming" but that "what comes is only a little and it is distributed, so they say," she waggles her finger. "Everything goes to their houses," she says, apparently referring to Hamas militants. "They take it; let them take me, shoot me or do whatever they want with me."

Roi Kais, the Arab affairs correspondent for Kan News, who published the translation, said the exchange had been caught during a live broadcast from Gaza on Al Jazeera's news channel, and took place in Khan Yunis, a city in the south of the Palestinian territory where Israeli forces told residents to evacuate following the breakdown of a ceasefire earlier in the week and which has since been the site of street battles.

Since around Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants staged a surprise attack on Israel on October 7, killing an estimated 1,200 people, including many civilians, Israel has conducted an intensive campaign of airstrikes on Gaza and a subsequent ground offensive. More than 17,100 have been killed, according to the Associated Press citing the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry. There is also a deteriorating humanitarian situation, aid organizations have said.

The U.N. estimates that as many as 80 percent of Gaza's residents have fled their homes due to the fighting. Nawraz Abu Libdeh, who has been displaced six times and is currently sheltering in Khan Yunis, told the AP that people were now fighting over food. "The hunger war has started," he said.

While Hamas has its supporters in Gaza and seeks to portray Israel as the Palestinians' only oppressors, some are occasionally able to express dissent towards the regime. Some Palestinian human rights activists have argued that Hamas was responsible for the high poverty rate in Gaza, using humanitarian aid to fund its attacks.

Israel had previously issued nearly 20,000 work permits for Palestinians to seek wages multiples more than what they could earn in Gaza, and was considering issuing more prior to the October 7 attack—economic ties that run antithetical to Hamas' aims. Others have argued Israel's control of some of Gaza's borders stymies economic development within the territory. In the initial phase of the war, Israel was accused of withholding humanitarian aid

According to Agence France-Press citing analysis of polling data conducted by Princeton's School of Public and International Affairs, a majority of Palestinians in Gaza had little or no trust in Hamas just before the October 7 attack, which they saw as "corrupt" and "authoritarian." It also found that 75 percent of respondents could not afford to feed their households.

It is not the first time a Palestinian in Gaza has defied Hamas on air. According to a translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute, in early November an Al Jazeera correspondent cut off an interview with an elderly wounded man at a hospital after he said the militant organization could "go to hell."

In a November 30 article for The Free Press, Joseph Braude, president of the Center for Peace Communications, gave accounts of Palestinian dissent, including one instance in which locals at a Khan Yunis bakery attacked a Hamas operative when they tried to buy bread.

Earlier the same month, Israel accused Hamas militants of stealing fuel soldiers had supplied to a hospital to power its generators. Israel has faced criticism for cutting off Gaza's fuel supplies, which it says Hamas would use for counterattacks.