March 27: Is Hamas Losing Control of Gaza?

Noem in El Salvador; Stefanik nomination withdrawn; U.S. soldiers missing in Lithuania

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The Big Story

Hundreds of Palestinian residents in North Gaza took to the streets Monday and Tuesday to protest against Hamas and advocate for an end to the war with Israel, according to Reuters. The anti-Hamas protests were the biggest in Gaza since the war broke out after Oct. 7, 2023. While some Israeli officials seemed positive about the protests, analysts of the conflict worry that they could be used to propagandize on behalf of the Palestinians hoping to hold on to some form of political power after Hamas is vanquished and the war ends.

“Out, out, out, Hamas get out!” chanted the protesters, videos posted to X show.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the protests prove that Israel’s new offensive is working in Gaza; Hamas police, he said, have disappeared once more after briefly rearing their heads during the cease-fire. Netanyahu then threatened that if hostages aren’t immediately released, Israel would start seizing territory inside Gaza: “The more Hamas persists in its refusal to release our hostages, the more powerful the pressure we will exert. And I say to Hamas—this includes seizing territory, and this includes other things that I will not list here.”

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz was mostly overjoyed about the protests but affirmed Netanyahu’s position: “Learn from the residents of Beit Lahiya—like them, you too should demand the removal of Hamas from Gaza and the immediate release of all Israeli hostages. That is the only way to stop the war.”

The protests began on Monday as generalized anti-war protests, but as thousands of people joined the demonstrations over the past couple of days, anti-Hamas sentiment swelled with it, a demonstrator named Ammar Hassan told the Associated Press. Protests, he said, can’t stop Israel’s strikes but can affect Hamas. Other quotes gathered from the protests suggest a less-clear intention behind the protests, with one Beit Lahiya resident telling All Israel News that he was protesting the war—the one against Hamas, against the Palestinian political factions, and against Israel. Hamas’ approval rating among Gazans, for what it’s worth, dropped from 57% to 39%, according to The Christian Broadcasting Network.

Despite the clearly audible chants in the clips, Hamas claimed (well, lied) Thursday that the protests are directed at Israel, according to The Times of Israel. Senior Hamas official Basem Naim told the Qatari channel Al-Araby that “demonstrations are expected from people facing extermination, against war and destruction.”

It’s not clear who organized the protests, nor is it known how many Palestinians joined the marches with the express intention of rallying against Hamas. Protesters on the ground told various media outlets that they had reached the limit of suffering they could endure and blamed the terror organization for failing to bring an end to the bloodshed.

“We came out to demand that Hamas stop the war and hand the ruling to any merciful body so that God may have mercy upon us,” one man, Eyad Gendia, told NBC News at Wednesday’s protest in the Shujaiya neighborhood of eastern Gaza City. “The impact of the war is that we are sleeping in the streets. ... We have lost all of our children.”

The responses of Tablet’s contributors to the protests are decidedly mixed. Editor at Large Liel Leibovitz finds the demonstrations both relieving and depressing:

Senior News Editor Tony Badran is more pessimistic about what they may mean. He said in an email today:

I’m not sure that these protests aren’t some kind of op, by the Egyptians or something like that. The bottom line, however, is that OF COURSE they don’t mean anything. The people with guns are all that matter. What is interesting, though, is the framing of the protests: that “families or clans” are “upset” with Hamas (though, of course, no one is upset enough to go and release the hostages). That framing plays into conceits and the West about possible “alternate governing structures” in Gaza. This framing suggests that we can build local government structures based on clans and municipalities: “Hamas has no future in Gaza!”

But of course, that’s not President Trump’s plan, and the framing plays into the hands of those looking to kill the plan and maintain some form of Palestinian presence and maintain some form of “government” in Gaza.

President Donald Trump’s plan, of course, is to remove the Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and turn the area into the “Riviera of the Middle East.” Trump’s hard-line position faces opposition from those who believe that Gaza could be rebuilt without Hamas beneath the alternate governing structure of tribes and clans. The Israeli media, for instance, has suggested coordinating with Palestinian tribes in Gaza to bring humanitarian aid into the Strip, according to an article from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Reham Owda from last year. Owda wrote:

This could take the form of protection committees, comprised of youth from each family, to defend property from theft and to facilitate access to humanitarian aid in coordination with international organizations, rather than with Israel. These committees may not have any political role but would instead focus on overseeing the general welfare of each clan, while the Israeli security presence in the Strip continues in some form.

Israel has considered such a plan in the past. The National reported in 2024 that a plan for local tribes to be involved in the administration of Gaza was drawn up by Shin Bet and the military, leading to widespread rebukes from both experts and residents who said a tribal-led government structure in Gaza would lead to widespread chaos. Though Gazan tribes had rejected the plan, it’s perfectly possible that in the face of the recent onslaught of Israeli strikes and Trump’s “Mar-a-Gaza” proposal, Palestinians are hoping to use this protest as a last-ditch effort to maintain some governmental control over the territory after Hamas is defeated.

—Adam Lehrer

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The Rest

→Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem visited the notorious El Salvador prison, the Terrorism Confinement Center, on Tuesday, and emphasized the potential consequences if people continue to cross the border illegally, in statements made to the press, according to Fox News. Noem was photographed and videotaped while touring the confinement cells holding some of the Tren de Aragua members recently deported from the United States. The publicization of her visit and her statement to the press suggest not only that the administration views its alliance with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele as useful for handling its deportations, but also that it sees the threat of deportation to El Salvador’s notoriously rough prisons as a deterrent to illegal immigrants.

→The News of Elise Stefanik being withdrawn from her nomination to United Nations Ambassador has some asking: is there MAGA beyond Trump?

President Trump withdrew the nomination of one of his longtime allies in Congress, New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, to the position of ambassador to the United Nations this afternoon, according to CNBC. Trump said in a post that the move stems from Republicans’ concern about their razor-thin majority in the House.

Why didn’t the Trump administration gauge that Stefanik vacating her position in Congress would be an electoral problem prior to nominating her? Our analyst believes this concern likely derives from the too-late realization that Trump’s monumental influence doesn’t always translate to elections he’s not directly running in: “It’s the fact that Trump is much more popular than the ‘movement’ that is fashioned in his name and which will collapse when the factor of his own personality is removed.”

Our analyst also speculated that the fifth column of right-wing online purists that has formed as an outgrowth of MAGA has undermined Trump’s populist appeal—an appeal that once could have wed political outsiders from a range of ideological positions—with incessant threats to primary anyone who deviated from the online right’s new party orthodoxy. By pushing more extreme candidates that appeal to them but not the average voter, they guarantee failure. Our analyst says:

It’s the equivalent of Democrats routinely nominating trans candidates in marginal working-class districts and then wondering why they lose. This quest for purity has made it particularly hard for Republicans to win both marginal districts and special elections in which the hardcore self-proclaimed MAGA faithful inevitably elect the most obedient party line candidate who inevitably loses the general election.

→A military vehicle that was carrying four U.S. soldiers was found in a swamp in Lithuania on Wednesday, a day after the soldiers were declared missing while on a training mission near the Belarus border, according to The New York Times. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said Wednesday that the soldiers had been declared dead, but NATO clarified later in the day that they were still considered missing. Rutte is meeting with President Trump today to try to convince him that NATO is still an important alliance, according to Politico.

→Chart of the Day

This Reuters/Ipsos poll published yesterday shows that despite widespread opposition from the media and the Democratic Party, Trump’s immigration policies are by far the most popular aspect of his current agenda. While the American public is still feeling pessimistic about corruption, the economy, the cost of living, and foreign policy, among other issues, Trump’s immigration measures are supported by 49% of voters. The poll found that his overall approval number stands at 47%, significantly higher than his approval ratings during his first term and higher than any of Joe Biden’s polls during his presidency.

→The German outlet Spiegel located the private data of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard via a public people search and data leaks, demonstrating additional vulnerabilities in the U.S. defense community after Signalgate, according to the Washington Examiner. The outlet said it was “particularly easy” to find Hegseth’s contact info: In some cases, his email and even his password were available in “20 accessible leaks.” Waltz’s contact information led to even more social media avenues. Profiles for his Microsoft Teams, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, and Signal were found. Gabbard’s info couldn’t be located through a public search, but her information was contained in various data leaks, including a partial phone number that led to her Signal and WhatsApp apps.

→A Turkish PhD student at Tufts University who was living in the United States on an F-1 visa, Rumeysa Ozturk, was detained by masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents yesterday near the Tufts campus in Somerville, Massachusetts. She was reportedly headed to meet friends to break Ramadan fast and share dinner, according to CNN. In a statement released last night, an official of the Department of Homeland Security said that the arrest was due to Ozturk’s engagement in activities “supportive of Hamas.” Ozturk is one of several foreign nationals detained for their connection to American universities, allegedly comprising activities in support of terrorist organizations; her detainment is the most high-profile one since the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil. At a court hearing this morning, Boston district judge Indira Talwani issued an order demanding the government explain the reasons behind Ozturk’s detainment by Friday and ordered that Ozturk not be removed from Massachusetts. An ICE official said this morning, however, that Ozturk had already been moved to a detention center in Louisiana. A DHS official also confirmed that her student visa had been revoked.

→“Never have I seen any instance of political bias determining editorial decisions,” said National Public Radio CEO Katherine Maher during a testimony yesterday held by the House Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency and organized by Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green. The committee is part of Republicans’ broader effort to investigate and strip federal funding from both NPR and PBS, whose CEO Paula Kerger was also questioned, according to The Washington Free Beacon. The subcommittee follows the resignation of former NPR senior editor last year, who hammered the network’s left wing and bias and credited Maher’s personal views with being the source of the problem.

The above quote, pulled from an exchange between Maher and Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, yielded audible laughter from people watching the testimony in the chamber. Maher was pressed by Texas Rep. Brandon Gill on several tweets posted in 2020, including ones where she called President Trump “a deranged sociopath” and expressed support for reparations. While Gill provided the direct tweets in question, Maher claimed she never posted such sentiments. Despite her rejection of the assertion that NPR carries a leftwing bias, she admitted that the network’s coverage of both the Hunter Biden laptop scandal and the “lab leak” COVID-19 theory was poor and worthy of criticism and said that the new CIA evidence verifying the Wuhan lab leak is “worthy of coverage”, which some analysts believe is the most noteworthy revelation from the hearing. Kerger was hit by South Carolina Rep. William Timmons about PBS’s digital segment “Drag Queen Story Hour,” where drag queens read to children. Kerger said the segment was mistakenly added to the website and never aired on PBS.

→Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee Jim Jordan and Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs committee Brian Mast sent a letter to the executive director of the Yigal Allon Center Eran Schwartz demanding all materials related to an inquiry attempting to determine the extent to which the Biden administration used NGO cutouts to try and topple Prime Minister Netanyahu, as pointed out by The Federalist’s senior contributor Benjamin Weingarten on X. The inquiry is related to protests that happened in Israel in 2023 opposing the government’s plan to reform the country’s judicial system. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were both openly against the government’s plan. The inquiry is attempting to determine how much U.S. taxpayer money went to funding the protests, funneled through both American and Israeli NGOs. According to the letter, those funds derived from the United States Agency for International Development as well as grants issued by the State Department that flowed to the Middle East Peace Dialogue Network through Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. Schwartz has until April 9 to provide all relevant documents to the committees.

→Fresh off his return to the United States last month, right-wing influencer Andrew Tate was accused yesterday by one of his girlfriends, Bri Stern, of assaulting her earlier this month during a sexual encounter in Los Angeles, according to The Daily News. “Insiders with direct knowledge” told TMZ yesterday that Stern filed a sexual assault report related to the March 11 incident. Allegedly, Stern says, Tate refused to stop during an incident of rough sex after she pleaded for him to do so multiple times. After he finished and fell asleep, she rushed to the bathroom to photograph her injuries. A model who met Tate last June in Romania for a gig, Stern was diagnosed as “post-concussive” in a Los Angeles hospital days after the alleged incident. TMZ also obtained screenshots that detail the violent nature of their sexual relationship:

In a cryptic post on X, Tate seemingly denied the accusations: “FAKE NEWS!”

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