A Palestinian teacher struggling to rebuild his life amid the rubble in Gaza said he has no faith in Hamas to help him and his family, and is not counting on the Arab world to come to the defense of the Palestinians anytime soon.
Instead, Marwan, 37, told The Post in an exclusive interview that he is relying on the US and European countries to help the devastated Gaza Strip after two years of war with Israel. In fact, he supports the idea of relocation — a plan President Trump has proposed.
“The first victim of Hamas is the Palestinian people,” said Marwan, who refused to provide his last name or any other details of his life, citing fears of retaliation from Hamas terrorists. “My message to the world is, don’t think that we are all Hamas.”
Marwan said he and his family fled to the southern part of Gaza during the recent war and, when they recently returned to their home, they found it almost completely destroyed.
“Only two rooms were standing,” he told The Post, adding that he and 19 other displaced members of his extended family now live in those rooms.
Marwan spoke to The Post in a telephone interview that was organized and translated from Arabic by the Center for Peace Communications, a New York-based nonprofit that has collected interviews with activists resisting totalitarian regimes in Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries.
In 2023, the group released a collection of interviews with Gazans who are against Hamas, the terrorist group that launched the October 7 attack against Israel that same year, killing 1,200 Israelis and taking 250 hostages.
In a video shared exclusively with The Post, other Gaza residents expressed frustration with their Arab neighbors, who they say have not done much to help them — ever.
“Based on our experience … from past wars, unfortunately the Arab League hasn’t provided anything except for some countries offering humanitarian and charitable assistance,” said one man in the video, which CPC said was shot in the last two weeks in Gaza.
“They’re all traitors,” said another man on the video, referring to Arab countries. “They’re all cheats. Only God stood with us, not Arab states, not Algeria, not Tunisia, not Egypt.”
Last month, Jordan’s King Abdullah agreed to take 2,000 sick children from Gaza at the urging of President Trump. On Tuesday, 29 children arrived in the country, according to reports.
Marwan said he believes the only way to save the Gaza Strip is to evacuate its residents to “a country that works,” to begin the process of rebuilding. He said he supports Trump’s vision of a rebuilt “Gaza Riviera” or a city-state like Singapore, as long as whoever comes in respects the property rights of the people of Gaza.
Joseph Braude, founder and president of CPC, said Trump’s call to allow Gazans to emigrate would be welcomed by many Gazan civilians seeking a safe place to live.
“Those who denigrate Trump’s proposal as a call for ‘ethnic cleansing’ ignore the urgent pleas of Gazans to be granted refuge from Hamas brutality and the horrors of war,” he said in a statement. “No plan to rebuild Gaza is viable without the removal of Hamas — a root cause of suffering for Israelis and Gazans alike — as well as freedom of movement for the many civilians in Gaza who choose to pursue a better life elsewhere.”
Marwan agreed.
“Nobody likes Hamas in Gaza,” he said, describing how the terrorist group steals the majority of foreign aid meant for local residents and sells much of it on the black market. “People are fed up with them because they are so corrupt.”
And he said he has a message for campus protestors who continue to support the terrorist group in the US.
“They are fooled by Hamas,” he said. “I was very disappointed with people. If you are pro Hamas, you are anti the Palestinian people. You have to differentiate between the two. We would one day like to speak to [protesters] to educate them about what is really going on.”
He also noted that Palestinians who are against Hamas do not have the luxury of protesting.
“If you go and speak out, they think nothing of killing you. One bullet is equal to one person,” Marwan said. “Nobody in Gaza likes Hamas.”