What happened
The protests were notable precisely because they broke with the conflict's usual framing: demonstrators, mostly young Gazans facing unemployment estimated at well over 40% at the time, blamed Hamas's own governance — new taxes on basic goods, a bloated and unaccountable public sector, and the group's continued prioritisation of its military wing's spending over civilian welfare — rather than solely blaming Israel's blockade, which Hamas's own officials had long pointed to as the sole cause of Gaza's economic hardship.
Hamas's response was to treat the protests as a security threat rather than a legitimate grievance: HRW documented named individuals being summoned for interrogation, beaten in custody, and in some cases held for weeks, while journalists attempting to film the demonstrations had their equipment confiscated and were themselves assaulted or detained by Hamas's internal security services. The crackdown succeeded in suppressing the movement within weeks, and no comparable protest movement against Hamas's own rule emerged again until pressures generated by the 2023-2025 war and its aftermath. The episode is a useful data point against any account of Gaza politics that treats Hamas purely as a resistance movement responding to external pressure — this was Hamas suppressing its own population's economic grievances using the same security apparatus it has used against political rivals more broadly.