Silenced Voices: Power, War and Representation
by u/DemosthenesRex
The Israel-Hamas war has rendered Gaza the crucible of a conflict that reverberates far beyond its narrow borders, yet the voices of its people remain curiously absent from the political and diplomatic discourses that determine their fate. Whether in Washington, Tel Aviv, Doha, or Cairo, negotiations and ceasefire arrangements are framed through the perspectives of state actors, military leaders, or international intermediaries, while those who endure the siege, bombardment, and privation of daily life are spoken for but rarely heard. This silence is not merely incidental. It reflects a reality in which Gazans, though positioned at the center of global attention, are denied the agency to articulate their own political vision or define their own role in shaping the conflict’s resolution.
What emerges is a profound paradox. Gaza is both hyper-visible and politically invisible. Media coverage fixates on the destruction of neighborhoods, the humanitarian convoys stalled at border crossings, and the funerals of the war dead, yet the lived perspectives of Gazans themselves are reduced to fragments, either testimonies of suffering or abstracted polling data that policymakers selectively cite. Meanwhile, in the halls of diplomacy, Gazans are neither interlocutors nor negotiators but objects of policy, cast alternately as victims to be rescued, populations to be managed, or potential threats to be contained. This exclusion underscores a broader dynamic in international politics: those most affected by war are often the least empowered to shape its trajectory or aftermath.

Palestinians attend a protest against the war and Hamas in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip, on March 26, 2025, in a rare show of public anger against the militant group that rules the territory. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi, File)
The question that follows is both ethical and strategic. What does it mean to prosecute a war, or even to negotiate its cessation, without affording meaningful representation to those most affected? If Hamas claims to fight on behalf of Gazans, Israel claims to act in self-defense against them, and the Palestinian Authority purports to represent them, who then speaks for the people themselves? Examining how Gazans perceive Hamas, Israel, the PA, and international actors reveals not only the fragmented nature of Palestinian political identity but also the profound absence of mechanisms through which their collective voice might influence outcomes. The war’s eventual conclusion will not only reshape the physical landscape of Gaza but may also determine whether its people emerge with diminished political agency, or whether their silenced perspectives compel a reckoning with the very terms of representation in international conflict.
The contemporary crisis of political representation for Gazans is inseparable from the historical trajectory that has defined the Strip since 1967. Following the Six-Day War, Gaza fell under Israeli military occupation, an arrangement that persisted until the unilateral withdrawal in 2005. Yet the end of permanent ground presence did not mark genuine autonomy. Instead, it inaugurated a new era of conditional sovereignty under blockade and external control, one in which Gazans’ capacity to define their own political and civic institutions was systematically constrained. Israel retained effective authority over borders, airspace, and trade, while the international community oscillated between rhetorical commitments to Palestinian statehood and a pragmatic reliance on crisis management. In this context, political agency for ordinary Gazans was never situated within the realm of choice but within the narrow margins tolerated by external actors and local factions.
The fragmentation of Palestinian politics after the Hamas–Fatah split in 2007 further eroded this fragile landscape. Hamas’ violent takeover of Gaza was both a rejection of the Palestinian Authority’s legitimacy and an assertion of its own claim to embody resistance against occupation, albeit under the banner of Islamism. The consequence, however, was the crystallization of a bifurcated political order. Ramallah maintained its tenuous governance in the West Bank, while Gaza became synonymous with Hamas rule. For Palestinians, this meant that representation was no longer collective but territorially divided, reinforcing a sense of disenfranchisement. Polling from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research consistently demonstrates that significant segments of the population express little confidence in either authority, underscoring the vacuum that has emerged between formal institutions and the lived realities of Palestinians.
The persistence of blockade and recurrent wars compounded this vacuum by rendering political agency subordinate to the logic of survival. Each successive conflict, whether in 2008–09, 2014, or the devastating escalation in 2023, further entrenched the perception that Gazans were pawns in a contest defined by Israel’s military imperatives, Hamas’ resistance narrative, and the Palestinian Authority’s incapacity to intervene. For many civilians, politics became an abstraction: a discourse conducted in international forums or elite meetings, divorced from the immediacy of destroyed homes, fractured families, and restricted livelihoods. In this sense, the absence of representation is not merely procedural but existential; it reflects a condition in which one’s political subjectivity is subordinated to external designs of war and governance.
International mediation efforts have historically done little to remedy this condition. Whether in the Oslo Accords, the Annapolis process, or more recent ceasefire negotiations, Palestinians have seldom been recognized as legitimate political actors with agency of their own. Instead, representation has been monopolized by elites, either Palestinian factions or state negotiators, who treat Gaza as a bargaining chip rather than a community with inherent political rights. The result has been the institutionalization of Gazans’ exclusion, a phenomenon that simultaneously undermines any peace framework and accelerates the erosion of trust in political processes. Without a reconstitution of representation that acknowledges Gazans as more than humanitarian subjects, the cycle of dispossession and disenfranchisement will endure, perpetuating instability across generations.
For many Gazans, Hamas represents a paradox. It is simultaneously a force of resistance against an entrenched occupation and an authoritarian regime that constrains daily life. On one hand, Hamas’ rise to power was rooted in its ability to present itself as a more credible and incorruptible alternative to the Palestinian Authority, capable of standing firm against Israel where others had compromised. In moments of acute crisis, such as the October 7 attacks, some Palestinians perceived Hamas’ actions as a demonstration of defiance, a symbolic assertion that Gaza, however besieged, had not been silenced. Yet even within this perception, the admiration for resistance is tempered by unease at the cost it exacts on civilian lives, costs paid disproportionately by those with the least agency in the conflict.
At the same time, Hamas’ governance has generated deep frustration within Gaza itself. Reports of corruption, heavy-handed security practices, and suppression of dissent have left many people feeling trapped under a government that invokes resistance as its legitimating principle but often governs through coercion rather than consensus. For ordinary Gazans, the constant militarization of the territory, where civilian neighborhoods serve as both targets and shields, has blurred the line between survival and complicity, leaving little room for civic life outside the shadow of armed struggle. This dynamic has produced an ambivalence among Palestinians. Hamas is acknowledged as a shield against external aggression, but also as a source of internal repression and political stagnation.

Al-Qassam Brigades showed off a home-made rocket during a military parade in 2014. (Reuters: Mohammed Salem )
The war has sharpened this ambivalence, exposing the fragility of Hamas’ claim to legitimacy. While some continue to regard Hamas as the only entity capable of confronting Israel militarily, others increasingly view its actions as reckless provocations that invite devastating retaliation. Polling data reflects this division: support for Hamas often rises in the immediate aftermath of Israeli offensives, only to diminish as the humanitarian toll mounts and prospects for recovery dim. What emerges is not a uniform endorsement of Hamas, but a complex negotiation of fear and disillusionment, one in which Gazans must balance the symbolic power of resistance against the lived reality of authoritarian governance and endless war.
For most Gazans, Israel is not simply a distant political adversary but a structuring force in nearly every dimension of daily life, from mobility to electricity to survival itself. The war has entrenched a reality in which access to food, medicine, and employment remains hostage to political calculus. Israeli bombardments, repeated displacements, and the destruction of civilian infrastructure have generated an enduring perception of Israel not merely as a state in conflict but as the architect of Gaza’s immiseration. In surveys and interviews, Palestinians consistently identify Israel as the primary obstacle to normal life and the main impediment to any vision of self-determination. Even when the rhetoric of “self-defense” is invoked by Israeli officials, Palestinians overwhelmingly interpret Israeli actions as collective punishment, designed less to neutralize Hamas than to delegitimize and destabilize Palestinian society at large.
This perception is compounded by the generational imprint of war. Young Gazans, many of whom have never left the strip, know Israel primarily as the entity that enforces siege and delivers violence from the skies. Their political imagination has been shaped under conditions of scarcity and precarity, where the possibility of coexistence has been eclipsed by the immediacy of survival. For these individuals, Israel is not a potential negotiating partner but the omnipresent antagonist whose actions have defined the contours of their existence. The Israeli narrative of existential threat, therefore, is met with deep skepticism, as Palestinians argue that the disproportionate scale of Israel’s military response undermines its claim to defensive legitimacy. What emerges is a relationship defined not by reciprocal recognition but by asymmetry: the overwhelming power of the occupier against a population whose grievances are neither adequately acknowledged nor meaningfully addressed.
Among Gazans, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has become a symbol less of governance than of absence. Its security apparatus, once envisioned as the institutional backbone of Palestinian statehood, is effectively excluded from Gaza following Hamas’s 2007 takeover, leaving residents to view the PA as both geographically and politically remote. Polling conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) consistently demonstrates declining confidence in Mahmoud Abbas and his leadership, with majorities perceiving the Authority as corrupt, incapable of effective governance, and structurally dependent upon international donors and Israeli coordination. For many Gazans, the PA’s presence is experienced indirectly through punitive measures, such as salary cuts for civil servants and utility restrictions, that were wielded as levers against Hamas but in practice deepened popular hardship. Rather than serving as a conduit for Gazan representation in the international arena, the PA is often understood as a rival faction whose claims to legitimacy are increasingly tenuous.
This erosion of trust in the PA generates a vacuum that has profound implications for Gaza’s political trajectory. On one hand, the absence of a credible national leadership alternative enables Hamas to present itself as the sole guardian of Palestinian resistance, despite civilian ambivalence toward its authoritarian practices. On the other hand, the PA’s weakness deprives Gazans of any institutional framework through which their political aspirations might be translated into diplomacy or governance. In effect, the PA’s paralysis compounds Gaza’s marginalization. It reinforces the enclave’s exclusion from ceasefire negotiations, denies its population the representation that could anchor a political resolution, and amplifies the perception that Gazans are objects of geopolitical calculation rather than participants in their own future. This dual dynamic, Hamas’ entrenchment and the PA’s illegitimacy, leaves the population in a state of political orphanhood, bereft of effective mechanisms to assert their agency within the Palestinian national project or the international system.
The architecture of ceasefire negotiations and diplomatic frameworks surrounding the Israel-Hamas war reveals a striking paradox. While the civilian population of Gaza bears the brunt of destruction, displacement, and humanitarian collapse, they remain absent from the very processes that determine their future. Negotiations are dominated by state actors, armed factions, and international mediators, each with divergent strategic interests, yet the perspectives of ordinary Gazans are systematically excluded. In this sense, the war underscores a long-standing pattern in which Palestinians are constructed as subjects of humanitarian concern rather than agents of political will, a framing that not only disempowers them but also perpetuates cycles of conflict by denying legitimacy to their civic voice.
This absence has profound implications for both the credibility and sustainability of any eventual settlement. When ceasefire agreements are brokered between Israel, Hamas, and external states such as Egypt or Qatar, they inevitably reflect elite or geopolitical calculations rather than the lived realities of the people trapped within Gaza’s borders. Such frameworks risk collapsing under the weight of their own illegitimacy, as agreements imposed from above often fail to address grassroots grievances, public mistrust, or the demand for self-determination. By relegating Gazans to the status of passive recipients of aid or security guarantees, international diplomacy inadvertently erases the very constituency whose buy-in is indispensable for long-term stability.

A Palestinian woman votes in a polling station in Gaza on Jan. 20, 1996. (Fayez Nureldine/AFP via Getty Images)
Moreover, the silencing of Gazan voices raises urgent questions about the future of Palestinian political agency more broadly. If neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority is perceived as a legitimate representative, and if international actors persist in treating Gazans as objects of negotiation rather than participants, the pathway toward meaningful political inclusion narrows further. This vacuum risks radicalizing new generations, for whom the absence of nonviolent political avenues may validate the logic of armed resistance. In the long run, any postwar architecture that fails to integrate Gaza’s people as stakeholders is likely to reproduce the very instability it seeks to resolve, ensuring that Gaza remains both a site of recurring conflict and a symbol of disenfranchised sovereignty.
The trajectory of Palestinian political agency in Gaza will, in many respects, be determined by the degree to which people are allowed to participate in shaping the political order that emerges from the war. To date, agency has been systematically constrained: Hamas monopolizes political life through its claim to resistance, the Palestinian Authority projects authority that has little legitimacy in Gaza, and international actors impose frameworks that prioritize stability over representation. The net result is a civic vacuum in which ordinary Palestinians are positioned as passive recipients of aid or as collateral victims of military campaigns, rather than as political agents with autonomous aspirations. This exclusion risks producing a political environment in which Gazans internalize the futility of participation, thereby entrenching cycles of alienation and disenfranchisement.
In this context, one plausible outcome is the further entrenchment of Hamas’ role as the de facto representative of Gaza, not because of its popular legitimacy but because no alternative structures of governance are permitted to emerge. Hamas’ ability to fuse military action with claims of political representation ensures that, in the absence of credible institutions, it will remain the default actor both domestically and in external negotiations. Such a development would reinforce the logic of militarized politics, wherein the use of violence, rather than civic participation, becomes the primary vehicle for political expression. The risk is that subsequent generations of Palestinians, raised under siege and bombardment, will inherit not only the trauma of war but also a political culture in which force substitutes for voice.
Conversely, the erosion of the Palestinian Authority, already viewed with deep skepticism by Gazans, raises the possibility of complete institutional fragmentation. Polling data indicates that the PA is perceived as both corrupt and incapable of delivering tangible improvements to Palestinian life, let alone negotiating effectively on behalf of Gaza. If the PA continues to lose legitimacy without a new political entity emerging to fill the void, the result may be not only a further concentration of power in the hands of Hamas but also the collapse of even the pretense of unified Palestinian representation. Such an outcome would reverberate beyond Gaza, weakening the Palestinian national project itself and diminishing the capacity of Palestinians to act collectively on the international stage.
The more profound implication, however, lies in the precedent being set for the exclusion of civilian populations from determining their own political destinies. If Gazans are denied a voice in postwar arrangements, whether through occupation, displacement, or externally imposed governance, the very notion of Palestinian self-determination risks becoming permanently hollowed out. This silencing will not yield stability; rather, it will perpetuate radicalization and despair, as a population stripped of political agency seeks alternative, often destructive, means of asserting its existence. To avert such a trajectory, any viable future must recognize Palestinians in Gaza not merely as objects of humanitarian concern or as proxies in regional rivalries, but as political subjects whose agency is indispensable to the creation of a just and durable peace.
The Israel-Hamas war has amplified not only the devastation within Gaza but also the profound silence surrounding its civilian population in the diplomatic domain. Palestinians endure the consequences of military bombardment, siege, and displacement, yet they remain strikingly absent in the conversations that determine their collective future. Ceasefire negotiations and reconstruction proposals are formulated by governments, international organizations, and armed factions, while the lived realities and political aspirations of ordinary Gazans are consistently excluded. This structural absence transforms Palestinians into objects of humanitarian concern rather than participants in shaping their political destiny, undermining the very legitimacy of any resolution purportedly designed to secure peace.
The paradox is acute. Gaza is the central arena in which regional power struggles converge, but Gazans themselves possess almost no agency in determining the outcome. Their relationship with Hamas is fraught with ambivalence, oscillating between reluctant dependence and outright opposition, while their views of Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and international actors reflect deep skepticism and disillusionment. Yet these complexities rarely enter formal negotiations, which privilege elite bargains and security guarantees over the articulation of civilian interests. By excluding Gazans, the international system entrenches the very conditions that perpetuate radicalization, as the absence of legitimate representation drives younger generations toward despair or militancy, convinced that only violence can force recognition.
Any postwar arrangement that fails to integrate Gaza’s population into the political process risks replicating the cycle of instability and repression that has defined the conflict for decades. A sustainable peace cannot be constructed upon the marginalization of those most directly affected, nor can legitimacy be manufactured without meaningful participation. The challenge, therefore, is not simply to negotiate an end to violence but to reimagine the architecture of diplomacy so that Palestinians are recognized not as passive recipients of aid or pawns in regional rivalries but as political agents with the capacity to articulate and pursue their own future. Without this recognition, the war’s aftermath will not mark the beginning of peace but the continuation of silence, a silence that corrodes both justice and stability.