Desperate Palestinians have begun attacking Hamas security forces as tensions grow in Gaza over chronic shortages of food, water and medicine.
In rare acts of defiance, Gazans hurled rocks at Hamas police who tried to jump a queue for water, and openly insulted Hamas officials, witnesses said.
The clashes suggest that Hamas’s authoritarian rule is beginning to crumble and that locals hold it at least partly to blame for the humanitarian crisis brought about by the Israeli invasion.
The signs of mounting dissent were revealed by Gazans who spoke to the Associated Press news agency.
They described a breakdown in law and order brought on by food shortages, with fights breaking out in bread queues. People were carrying knives and sticks to protect themselves, they said.
One Gazan who was scolded by a Hamas officer for trying to jump a bread queue hit the accuser over the head with a chair, according to an aid worker standing in the line.
A woman said her nephew, a father of five in the urban Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, was stabbed after being accused of jumping a water queue.
Israel on Monday night claimed to have uncovered a hospital basement with evidence children had been held hostage there by Hamas terrorists.
Israeli commanders said that troops who entered Gaza City’s Rantisi Hospital found baby bottles, nappies, chairs with rope and a motorbike like those used by Hamas to ferry back captives from the October 7 raids into Israel.