By Youssef Fares – Mar 25, 2026
People in Gaza are following the war as though they are living it themselves, drawing constant comparisons between the brutality unfolding across different fronts and their own experience. Last week’s barrage of rockets from South Lebanon has reignited a dwindling hope.
“One of the missiles launched from Lebanon landed on the outskirts of Jabalia camp, in areas where the occupation army is positioned along what is known as the Yellow Line,” Abu Mahmoud Al-Atawneh told Al-Akhbar. “The feeling was overwhelming. It was Hezbollah, whose blood and tears are mixed with ours, sending us a message of hope: that the resistance will neither die nor be defeated, no matter how brutal and criminal the occupation becomes.”
“I’m certain this campaign will be defeated, and that it will end with the retreat of US-Israeli tyranny,” Ghassan Abdel Wahed told Al-Akhbar. “Gaza is only 365 square kilometers, smaller than a village on the outskirts of Tehran, yet the occupation army, despite two years of destruction and mass killing, has failed to decisively settle the battle with a decisive victory.”
Umm Mohammed al-Zard, for her part, sees the war through the lens of displacement. Speaking to Al-Akhbar, she said she feels she is reliving, alongside “our people” in south Lebanon, the same ordeal Gaza has endured.
“My heart aches for our people in south Lebanon,” she said. “They are generously paying the price for their dignity and their refusal of injustice. We experienced displacement in Gaza, and it is a torment worse than death. May God ease their suffering and reward them. They are our people.”
The resistance is, however, facing immense political pressure from Gulf countries. According to sources close to Hamas, Qatari authorities asked Hamas-affiliated activists living in Qatar to issue statements condemning the Iranian attack on Qatari oil facilities. When most refused, the authorities expelled several prominent activists and detained political analyst Saeed Ziad, a frequent Al-Jazeera guest throughout the two years of war on Gaza.
The same sources said that most of the movement’s “shadow leaders” left Qatar over the past week, leaving behind only a small number from the inner circle around Khaled Meshaal. Meshaal himself, according to one source, issued “a statement in the movement’s name condemning what were described as Iranian attacks on Gulf states.”
Reflecting the depth of internal polarization within the movement, that statement was followed by a message from the Hamas leadership congratulating the new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei. Yet despite the efforts of Gulf media networks to manufacture hostility toward what they called “the sinking Iranian ship,” they have failed to alter the underlying mood in Gaza.
The military media of the Qassam Brigades reposted a video featuring a line by the late Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah addressed to the Israeli occupation: “You will not merely suffer a shortage of tanks; you will have no tanks left,” invoking the Taybeh ambush, in which the resistance destroyed five Merkava tanks.
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