For nearly two decades, the people in Gaza have not been able to vote for new leaders. They were stuck with Hamas. Yet as they return to war-battered communities under a month-old ceasefire with Israel, many are voicing strong views on Gaza’s future – as if an election were nigh.
At present, that hope is a distant one. Instead, from Washington to Cairo, international actors are debating Gaza’s future – without much input from the territory’s 2.1 million inhabitants.
So exactly what do these Palestinians really want? Based on a survey in early January, they are holding on to their religious identity, as well as to an attachment to the land and Palestinian unity. With Palestinians having little faith in their past or present leader – only a fifth now support Hamas – that religious identity may open a door for dialogue and direction.
About half expect peace to prevail, while 44% expect a long-term truce. The survey, conducted for the research group Artis International and Oxford University, tried to gauge how the people’s “spiritual strength” might influence potential compromises with Israel.
Although people in Gaza view the conflict with Israel in religious terms, that belief “does not necessarily imply intolerance of other groups,” wrote two researchers about the survey, Scott Atran and Ángel Gómez, in Foreign Affairs.
They cited a previous survey in which Palestinian Muslim youths appeared to place much greater value on the lives of Palestinians than on those of Jewish Israelis. “Yet when they were asked to take the viewpoint of Allah (God), they valued the two more equally,” they wrote.
Injecting more religion into Middle East conflicts may seem fraught. Yet during the height of Hamas-Israel fighting last year, Gaza’s most prominent Muslim scholar, Salman Al-Dayah, issued an edict urging Hamas to “be humble” and “fear Allah” for, among other issues, using civilians as human shields. He stated the people had an increasing aversion to Islam because “of the religious who caused this calamity.”
For both Israelis and Palestinians, “Faith very similarly informs rhetoric, convictions, and actions,” wrote Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, a professor of rabbinic Judaism at Ben-Gurion University, in The Jerusalem Post. “We need to talk much more about God,” especially for a society “striving to discern and live according to what it believes God wants from it.”
“We need to critically examine how the concept of God is constructed in different cultures and explore the ways in which religious leaders use sacred texts to shape ideologies and influence communities.” Such understanding, she added, can then foster “meaningful dialogue between diverse communities.”
Perhaps for people in Gaza, a self-reflection about their religious identity has begun. As big powers plot Gaza’s next steps, they might want to check first with the territory’s residents.
