Across the Gaza Strip – from markets to evacuee camps to social media channels – Palestinian frustration and anger with Hamas is on the rise.

Complaints began with Hamas’ apparent disregard for Gaza civilians who faced the brunt of Israel’s punishing military response to the Oct. 7 attack while Hamas fighters remained in tunnels.

Now, with starvation, profiteering, and internal chaos on the rise, the militant group that has ruled the strip for 17 years is nowhere to be found.

“We did not choose to be in a war that takes us from our homes, [takes] the lives of loved ones, and puts our lives in a death game that we knew nothing about,” says Bisan Nateel, a youth organizer for a local Gaza nongovernmental organization.

“Hamas didn’t warn us or give any instructions to protect or help people. I don’t know what they were thinking or what they expected people to do, but this is unacceptable for everyone in Gaza,” says Walid, an aid worker in central Gaza who declined to use his full name. “I feel that Hamas gambled with our lives at stake, and lost.”

Rafaat Naim, a Gaza businessman and former member of the Palestine Chamber of Commerce, says prior to the war, support for Hamas among Gaza residents was already limited. “Hamas’ popularity in the Gaza Strip was waning, due to its governance failures [and] misallocation of funds,” he says. “The devastating impact of the conflict further entrenched this sentiment.”

The anger that has been simmering since the early days of the war, meanwhile, has only in recent weeks come to the surface. These are not organized calls or political protests against Hamas, but conversational complaints growing louder by the day. Tiny protests have been scattered.

Kosay Al Nemer/Reuters

Palestinians carry bags of flour they grabbed from an aid truck near an Israeli checkpoint, as Gaza residents face crisis levels of hunger, in Gaza City, Feb. 19, 2024. Rising chaos in the strip is one factor spurring local criticism of Hamas.

“People now are very angry with Hamas, but at the same time they are afraid to express the anger inside them by protesting or holding sit-ins,” notes Wael Mohammad, a civil engineer and longtime Hamas critic in Gaza. He says 16 years of the Islamic Hamas’ intimidation tactics, as well as its use of religious faith to push its ideology, made “the population in Gaza docile.”

Now with the lack of Hamas police officers on the streets, and a reduced threat of being dragged off by its security services, people in Gaza, facing starvation, are more emboldened to criticize the movement in public. Some even curse it.

This outspokenness, however, does not mean Gazans’ support, in principle, for armed resistance against the Israeli occupation has lessened. Nor has their view changed that the conflict is an Israeli war against the Palestinian people.

There remains a belief among most residents that, with a 17-year siege of Gaza, they have been punished for two decades by Israel, the international community, and the Palestinian Authority for Hamas’ presence, and that the movement has never had the chance to act as a normal government.

Yet growing disillusion with Hamas’ rule is impacting the group’s future prospects each day the war goes on, as residents see it as unresponsive, irresponsible, and lacking basic care for Gaza’s people.

Evading responsibility

All those interviewed stressed that Hamas left the Gaza public “in the dark” about its plans even after Israel’s counterattack began. Added to the lack of communication was a seeming lack of concern for civilians as Hamas forces retreated to their tunnels.

“Hamas followed the same old war plan and left the people to the mercy of Israelis,” says Walid, the aid worker.

“We gave in to Hamas for a long time, and we thought Hamas as a party would be prepared for the war after Oct. 7 as they claimed. But they were only ready to protect themselves,” says Rana Alsayed, a mother and feminist activist from Gaza City who was displaced four times by Israel’s offensives.

“This war is beyond Hamas’ capabilities,” says Ahmed, a Gaza photojournalist who blames intense targeting by Israel’s military for the movement’s inability to govern or protect its citizens. “It cannot help itself, let alone the people.”

Fatima Shbair/AP

Palestinians line up for a free meal in Rafah, Gaza Strip, Feb. 16, 2024. People who are at an increased risk of starvation, yet a lower risk of being hauled off by Hamas security services, are now more emboldened to criticize the movement in public.

For some Palestinians in Gaza, the war has cemented the idea of Hamas as a militant faction looking out only for itself rather than for the people it has governed since first being elected by a plurality in 2006. It has ruled unopposed since 2007, when it drove out its rival Fatah and seized the strip.

“They see their role is to fight Israelis and not to care for the people. But since Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip, they implicitly agreed to care for its people,” says Walid, who, like many, sees Hamas as “evading that responsibility.”

“At least provide enough food for the people to not die of hunger. Build shelters and safe places for the people to go to. Establish a form of civic protection and law enforcement to keep people in check,” the aid worker says.

“The Oct. 7 operation was nothing but a continuation of the series of political and military gambles that the movement has made since its inception, an operation that brought nothing but destruction, killing, displacement, and deportation of the residents of the Gaza Strip,” says Mr. Mohammad, the civil engineer.

He likens the movement to “a group of mercenaries and militias that do not rise to the level of a Palestinian movement” and don’t “care about Palestinian blood.”

He, and others, point to statements by Hamas’ leadership abroad at the onset of the war that it was the responsibility of the United Nations and the international community, not Hamas, to protect Gaza civilians.

Anger over aid, profiteering

With a breakdown of law and order, organized crime is increasing and aid is looted and sold on the secondary market before many can get it. And there is a growing belief that not only does Hamas bear responsibility for the looting and profiteering through its absence, but it also may be complicit or participating in it.

“We have to buy food that was sent to Gaza as aid. We hear lots of rumors that this aid was stolen under the eyes of Hamas, sometimes in complicity with people from the government,” says Walid.

Mohammed, an accountant and former government employee now in Rafah, says the links between Hamas and aid theft across Gaza are “clear.”

“We cannot provide definitive proof, but who has the guns? Who has the monopoly on force in Gaza? It’s Hamas. The work of organized criminal groups wouldn’t happen without their consent,” Mohammed says via WhatsApp messaging. “They are profiting politically and economically from our death and misery.”

Dissent is also growing in the local business community. Members say they have long chafed under Hamas’ restrictions, appropriation of incoming materials, corruption, and wars.

They have lost businesses, farms, and homes in this war – but also have found no entity to facilitate a return of trade or even the distribution of basic aid to stave off a famine.

Despite the rising anger, fear persists amid occasional reports of mosque imams or civil society organizers being dragged off and “disappeared” by Hamas for voicing public criticism. Protesters gathering in northern Gaza were shot at by armed men.

“At the grassroots level, Hamas persists in its oppression even amid these dire circumstances,” notes Mr. Naim, the businessman.

Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters

Displaced Palestinians, who fled their homes amid Israeli strikes, shelter at a tent camp in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, Feb. 27, 2024.

Alternatives emerging?

In the void left behind by Hamas, some Gazans are attempting to organize at the grassroots to provide services and a sense of order.

In Rafah, so-called Protection Committees – groups of local young men, dressed in matching black clothes and masks, armed with batons – are providing basic security to markets and public areas.

Mr. Naim is one of several local Gaza business owners and community leaders who are attempting to form a council to facilitate the entry and distribution of aid and goods.

They have set their sights on advocating for the border to open to resume a robust flow of aid and commerce into the besieged strip.

“The people demand resolute, clear, and strategic decisions to pave the way for stability,” says Mr. Naim.

Yet attempts by the people to organize and circumvent Hamas face steep obstacles – and danger.

This week, unverified reports emerged that Hamas executed a mukhtar, or local community leader, in northern Gaza, allegedly for coordinating with the Israeli military for a separate initiative to facilitate aid.

The incident appeared to confirm what Palestinians in Gaza already knew or believed: Any Israeli involvement would delegitimize and kill any alternative group providing services in Gaza.

“The occupation’s civil administration has engaged with some community leaders and members of the private sector,” notes Mr. Naim. “This initiative is both unacceptable and risky for all involved on the Palestinian side.”

While the majority of Palestinians in Gaza interviewed say they no longer want Hamas’ rule, a significant portion still support its existence as an armed movement. A lack of alternatives leaves Gazans unsure of their future.

“I still support Hamas as a liberation movement, but I am not satisfied with its uncalculated actions,” notes Ahmed, the photojournalist.

With the losses piling up for families in Gaza facing missile strikes, famine, and profiteering, more Gazans say the idea of trusting Hamas as rulers governing the strip again is unthinkable.

“I lost my mother, my husband lost half his family, and we lost our house. My children have known nothing but wars and escalations,” says Ms. Alsayed, the Gaza feminist.

“How can my children ever believe in Hamas, who are neither providing us with a bite to eat nor allowing anyone else to do so?”

Joe Biden has a huge Mideast decision to make. And it goes beyond the increasingly urgent tasks of securing a hostage deal between Hamas and Israel, a cease-fire in Gaza, and relief from the humanitarian crisis engulfing its civilian population. 

At stake is whether Gaza’s descent into lawlessness and hunger can be arrested, and a path toward Mideast stability – and eventual peace – can be discerned.

And the decision facing the American president?

Whether to break a cardinal rule that has guided decades of American diplomacy seeking to resolve the conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbors. 

That we can’t want peace more than they do.

In other words, without a readiness for engagement and compromise by the parties involved, no amount of American diplomatic heavy lifting will make any difference.

The main risk in tearing up the old rulebook is that in the current Israeli-Palestinian political climate, any full-bore U.S. diplomatic push could end in abject failure.

But Mr. Biden has to balance that risk with others. Unless Washington leads a sustained new push for Arab-Israeli peace, the situation in Gaza could worsen further. More moderate, U.S.-allied Arab governments could be destabilized, and both Iran and its proxy militias across the region could be emboldened. As a result, violence could spread more widely in the region.

That is why he has been hinting at a diplomatic intervention.

It would be based on a trade-off between things each side clearly wants. Israel would win recognition and normalization from Saudi Arabia, the most influential country in the Arab and Islamic world. In return, Israel would commit itself explicitly to a two-state peace deal and a readiness to live alongside a Palestinian state. 

Shawn Thew/AP/File

President Joe Biden announced that the U.S. will set up a temporary port off Gaza's coast to receive humanitarian aid.

The first risk – abject diplomatic failure – remains all too real.

The last meaningful Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts occurred a decade ago. The events of the past five months – Hamas’ abuse, kidnapping, and killing of more than a thousand Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, and the destruction and suffering the Israeli military has visited upon Gaza – have left both sides disinclined to contemplate, much less engage in, a diplomatic exit.

Persuading Israel’s leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, looks like an especially tall order. Popular support for the Israeli military action in Gaza is still strong, and the public is showing little appetite for peace moves. Mr. Netanyahu’s main focus is on preserving his majority in Israel’s legislature, the Knesset.

That hinges on his far-right coalition partners, who oppose a peace deal of any sort with the Palestinians, much less the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Mr. Netanyahu’s chilly response to suggestions of a new U.S. diplomatic initiative prompted an unusually blunt speech this week by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York. Speaking on the Senate floor, he portrayed the Israeli Prime Minister and his “radical right-wing” partners as among the obstacles to peace.

The experiences of past American peacemakers in the region also point to the importance of getting Israeli – and Palestinian – leaders’ strong commitment.

America’s two main Mideast successes in recent decades were President Jimmy Carter’s 1978 Camp David summit, which paved the way for a historic peace between Israel and Egypt, and President Bill Clinton’s role in the landmark 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinians.

Yet the critical impetus came from the parties themselves. In 1978, it was Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat’s audacious decision to travel to Israel and address the Knesset. During the Oslo Accords, it was successive rounds of secret talks between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators in Norway.

Mr. Biden does not have that luxury.

In this peacemaking effort, the United States would have to do almost all the spadework. And there would be no prospect of success unless Mr. Biden was ready not only to argue the merits of a deal, but also to place the full weight of his office and America’s power and influence behind trying to achieve it.

So why might he risk taking that plunge, especially in a U.S. election year?

Tomer Appelbaum/Reuters

Israeli demonstrators demand the release of female hostages seized by Hamas fighters during their Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

Perhaps because the alternative could be even riskier: the potentially dire fallout, for Gaza and the wider region, of not acting.

The president would also be acknowledging a profound change in Arab-Israeli politics in recent years. Arab states, especially the oil-wealthy countries of the Gulf, are readier than they have ever been to normalize relations with Israel. They see not only mutual economic benefits but also a common interest in curbing the security threat from Iran.

And as Gaza’s deepening humanitarian plight hardens grassroots Arab views of Israel, a number of rulers in the region see Mr. Biden’s vision as the best – and perhaps the only – way of defusing the popular discontent that might threaten their leadership.

Washington also knows it can rely on support from much of the world for such an initiative. Its allies in Europe have made it clear they would be on board. And should the outlines of a deal make their way to the United Nations Security Council, it is hard to see how either of America’s main rivals, China and Russia, would opt to exercise their veto.

The prospect of such a diplomatic endgame, amid the continuing war in Gaza, remains distant.

Yet in contemplating whether to jettison the cardinal rule of past Mideast diplomacy, Mr. Biden may take encouragement from a 21st-century subclause.

Yes, Washington does want peace more than either Israelis or Palestinians do at present.

But other key parties, above all the Saudis, want it every bit as much.

Editor’s note: This story was updated to reflect Sen. Chuck Schumer’s floor speech on Thursday, March 14. 

Butch Dill/AP

S’Heelia Marks instructs students to prepare them for the digital SAT, Wednesday, March 6, 2024, at Holy Family Cristo Rey Catholic High School in Birmingham, Ala.

Pandemic-era response to disruptions in college admissions is coming to an end at some of the most highly selective colleges in the United States. Standardized testing largely became optional for admittance for first-year students in fall 2021. It remains that way at a majority of institutions issuing four-year degrees. Earlier this month, Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, became the latest to reinstate a testing requirement. And soon it will no longer be optional at schools such as Yale, Dartmouth, Georgetown, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Some think it’s a sign of what’s to come.

In late February, Yale University announced that, to be admitted starting in fall 2025, students will have to submit some form of standardized test results. They can choose from traditional SAT or ACT scores, or subject-based scores from Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate tests. The university says this decision came after a few years of test-optional admissions had been shown to hurt low-income students who withheld test scores.

Also in February, Dartmouth College announced a return to standardized-test admissions requirements after school President Sian Beilock ordered an internal study. Dartmouth found that rejected low-income students who omitted SAT scores but scored in the 1400s would otherwise have been admitted. The school would have taken those scores into account had the students reported them.

Q: Why has Yale, for example, taken another look at testing?

Jeremiah Quinlan, dean of undergraduate admissions at Yale, says that application reviewers and researchers had placed greater weight on other parts of the application for people who applied without submitting test scores. But reviewers noticed it worked to the disadvantage of some applicants.

“We found that applicants without scores from lower socioeconomic backgrounds were less likely to be admitted than others, because they were less likely to have that evidence in other parts of their applications,” says Mr. Quinlan via email.

Yale said that it has admitted more than 1,000 applicants who did not submit test scores and that those students have performed relatively well in their coursework. Where it noticed a difference was in grade-point averages, with students who submitted test scores getting better grades than those who did not.

Ted Shaffrey/AP

Yale University, in New Haven, Connecticut, has announced that students will have to submit some form of standardized test scores to be admitted in fall 2025.

Q: What happened when schools went test-optional?

Highly selective schools at one point experienced a backlash for being sticklers in requiring standardized test scores, as critics noted that those tests favored wealthy students who could afford test preparation classes and tutors to improve their results. Complaints also arose that the tests were culturally biased against students of color and those who didn’t speak English as a first language. In 2020, Cornell became the first in the Ivy League to go test-optional. That same year, amid the pandemic, some 650 schools in America did likewise.

A 2021 study of 99 colleges that went test-optional between the 2005-2006 academic year and 2015-2016 found that this resulted in a 3% to 4% gain in low-income Pell Grant recipients and a 10% to 12% gain in Black, Latino, and Native American students. But the study’s author said there were so few of those students on campuses that the effective change in campus makeup was more like a 1% gain in Pell Grant recipients and a 1% gain in Black, Latino, and Indigenous students. 

Individual schools, such as the University of Chicago – which went test-optional in 2018 – cited broader gains. It saw 20% more first-generation and low-income students the year after it dropped the testing requirement, and rural student admissions spiked 56%. It also saw record classes of Black and Latino students. But dropping the testing requirement came amid a slate of policies designed to diversify enrollment, and the university said the increases could not be attributed solely to dropping the SAT and ACT.

In a statement, the College Board, which administers the SAT, said schools requiring the test have done so because research shows that SAT scores are more predictive of college success than are high school grades alone. “A growing body of research confirms that the SAT is a valuable, objective measure useful not just in admissions but in creating data-driven programs to ensure admitted students get the supports they need to graduate,” the organization wrote.

Q: If not tests, then what?

Erik Loomis is an associate professor of history and the director of graduate studies at the University of Rhode Island, and has written about why standardized testing should return as a metric for admissions. He thinks schools should reinstate standardized testing for equity reasons.

“It’s a sad state of affairs because everybody who says that standardized tests reflect racial inequality, I think are actually correct. The problem is that everything that replaces that seems to be even worse,” Dr. Loomis says.

One main culprit is the college essay, he adds. Just as well-resourced families have a leg up for SAT or ACT prep, people can also pay others to teach students to write an effective essay. Those less scrupulous sometimes pay others to write college essays, or experienced adults simply write them for their children.

“And the people who are just trying to tell their stories, but maybe are coming from a situation in which they are totally brilliant, but they live in Central Falls, Rhode Island, which is an incredibly poor, mostly Colombian and African American town – maybe the grammar is not as good, it’s not as sharp and polished, but that person might be incredibly brilliant,” Dr. Loomis notes.

Dr. Loomis says that college admissions committees have realized that people game the system and that a return to tests might be a little less problematic. He also guesses that highly selective schools are trying to head off potential lawsuits from students not being admitted while others are under test-optional policies.

Q: What about public universities?

While some highly selective schools have reinstituted test requirements, the University of Michigan, a premier public university, announced in February that it was moving to a permanent test-optional policy for 2025. This came after Michigan went test-flexible in 2020, accepting SAT, ACT, PSAT, IB, or AP scores. Now only SAT and ACT scores will be accepted if students choose to submit them. Michigan says this is to provide access to high-achieving students from all backgrounds. Other highly selective schools such as Harvard, Columbia, and the University of Chicago also remain test-optional.

The University of California, including its premier Berkeley and Los Angeles campuses, also has test-free admissions.

In that regard, Brown, Dartmouth, and Yale look like outliers. “It’s definitely not a harbinger,” says Bob Schaeffer, director of public education for the National Center for Fair & Open Testing. “There are nearly 2,300 four-year colleges in the U.S., and the fact that a handful have reverted to requiring testing when more than 1,700 are permanently test-optional or test-blind is a minor development.” 

He says that although a small number of schools have concluded that test scores have some value in the admissions process, in the end the proof will be in the numbers. He will be looking to see if diversity declines or if academic performance changes, he says. Research dating to 1969, when Bowdoin College in Maine became the first school to go test-optional, overwhelmingly points to more applications and stronger applicants in terms of grade-point averages and academic rigor, Mr. Schaeffer says.

“You get more diversity of all sorts – race, family income, first-generation, immigrants, etc.”

Correction: Cornell was the first Ivy League university to go test-optional in 2020. The University of California’s admissions process is now entirely test-free.

A year after Miami police lost control of spring break crowds on the city’s Ocean Drive, the annual fun-in-the-sun rite of college students has darkened into a new focus on law and order that stretches far beyond Magic City.

Miami’s advertisement-led campaign to “break up with spring break” has included $100 parking fees, curfews, bag checks, DUI checkpoints, and police officers on every corner.

The move comes after a chaotic 2023 spring break, which saw two deadly shootings and 488 arrests – half of them felony offenses, according to Miami Beach Police. More than 100 firearms were seized. Scenes of the Ocean Drive mayhem appeared on national news shows. The city called a state of emergency.

Beyond the disruption of rowdy outsiders that tourist hot spots have always had to tolerate, Miami and others may still be in heightened, post-pandemic caution mode. But the fact that many of the Miami spring breakers were Black, critics say, also shows how responses by local authorities and the media can hinge on who attends. 

The crackdowns, rooted in the cycle of wear-and-tear borne by sleepy beachside towns, sometimes reveal more about the host towns than about the hordes of incoming guests.

Many factors have come into play with this spring break breakup.

Most COVID-19 warnings have now been modified, if not lifted. But many year-round beach town residents are retirees, wary of hypersocial and boisterous college students. 

Pedro Portal/Miami Herald/AP

City of Miami police cruisers track Saturday night activity along Ocean Drive during spring break on South Beach, in Miami Beach, Florida, March 9, 2024.

Race isn’t always a driving factor behind shifting policies. Panama City Beach, Florida, whose spring break college crowd is primarily white, also has new rules and stepped-up enforcement.

Other Florida communities with new safety efforts range from Destin (a “zero-tolerance” policy for law-breaking behavior) to Key West (extra mounted patrols) to New Smyrna Beach (a new curfew).

Gov. Ron DeSantis last week announced that state troopers will assist 17 communities that have asked for help. Behavior that may be acceptable elsewhere, he said, “is not going to fly in the Sunshine State.”

But amid such toughening of police posture, these coastal conflicts put a spotlight on a U.S. beach town history often fraught with class and racial tensions, eager for tourism income yet wary of disruption.

From Miami to Tybee Island, Georgia, race complicates the management of the good times. Many U.S. beach towns have been the sites of wade-in protests and battles over property rights, public safety, and the more profound notion of the public trust doctrine, which guarantees that “no one ... is forbidden to approach the seashore.”

That means that amid shifting desires by young people for travel and fun, seaside communities often have to confront their own histories and how those arc forward.

“You get democracy in action,” says John Laurie, who wrote his college dissertation at the University of New Orleans on the host-guest dynamics of the U.S. spring break season. “At a certain point, people have to decide, what do I want my city to emphasize or be like? That’s when action happens.”

Stepped-up law enforcement in Miami – where Black people have been fighting for beach access since the 1940s – is nothing new.

In the 1980s, Time magazine dubbed the Florida city “Paradise Lost” given its reputation for violence, some of it tied to spring break antics. In 1985, Fort Lauderdale saw over a quarter million students pack the beaches, leading to new laws against public drinking and using balconies to jump into pools.

According to global tourism expert Jungho Suh, such reactions are important because travel serves as a means of exchanging culture, ideas, and economic value.

“It is understandable to implement such measures this year because of all the horrific cases that happened in the past year,” says Dr. Suh, who teaches at George Washington University’s School of Business. But policymakers “have to think about their brand or authenticity from a long-term perspective. ... The community could lose its identity.”

Josh Galemore/Savannah Morning News/AP/File

Police officers watch a crowd gather on the beach for Orange Crush at Tybee Island, Georgia, April 22, 2017. The annual spring break gathering of college students on Tybee is more restricted this year after an alcohol ban and other laws were enacted.

Here, an annual spring break pilgrimage by Black college students to Tybee Island, called Orange Crush, went off the rails last year. There was a shooting, stampedes through sensitive dune areas, and a massive traffic jam that shut down the island’s two-lane causeway, preventing access for emergency vehicles. After a long and unsuccessful effort by the island council to bar future Orange Crush gatherings, Georgia lawmakers passed a bill earlier this year that allows the council to sue online promoters for unpermitted events. Tybee Mayor Brian West hopes that the new law will help end the party.

“There were drug overdoses; people were passed out ... on the beach in the dark; police ran out of Narcan to save lives,” says Mayor West. “Police weren’t quite sure how to handle it. It was completely unacceptable what was happening.”

But critics say what islanders deem unacceptable sometimes has to do with the color of revelers’ skin. For some, the search for fun may also double as a sort of resistance movement to the white control of beaches that once belonged to the diaspora of enslaved Black people.

In a state where 1 in 4 residents are Black, 94% of Tybee Island’s residents identify as white. The first brochures advertising a new late 19th-century resort here described its potential as a “white” beach. It was also an early site of the 1950s and ’60s wade-ins, when demonstrators demanded equal access by stepping into whites-only waters.

To be sure, race relations have improved here as in the rest of the South. In recent years, the island has added new markers to document the history of civil rights era wade-ins and promoted a walking tour featuring contributions of Black residents to the island’s history and culture.

Nevertheless, Julia Pearce, head of the Tybee MLK Human Rights Organization, points to the history of Tybee’s tense relationship with Orange Crush.

She cites a study by Georgia Southern University Professor Amy Potter that calls the spring break crackdowns “boundary transgressions,” where laws and customs put in place by white officials unnecessarily restrict Black people’s mobility. Portrayals of mayhem by authorities sometimes clash with reports from Black beachgoers, including one who described Orange Crush to researchers as “the epitome of Black culture – carefree and fun.”

The U.S. Department of Justice has chided the city for trying to set up alcohol-free zones around the Orange Crush event while allowing alcohol for the Fourth of July, a mostly white beach gathering that in the past has created comparable numbers of arrests and cleanup costs. 

Mayor West says the long-running Orange Crush concerns are primarily about public safety.  

As in Miami and other beach towns across the United States, this year’s Orange Crush on Tybee Island will be dominated by law enforcement – and a new traffic plan. 

Such measures can be effective, at least at discouraging major disruptions. So far, spring break in Miami has been far quieter than in the past two years. But cities also run the risk of exacerbating tensions by withdrawing the welcome mat.  

At the end of the day, many beach towns bring these problems on themselves, given marketing that features visitors enjoying the beach, often with drink in hand. So when certain visitors feel unwelcome upon arrival, that can increase hostility and create a downward spiral.

“If you already see us as a threat, and you’ve made it clear that we’re not welcome here, that puts a chip on someone’s shoulder, quite naturally,” says Andrew Kahrl, a beach access expert and a professor of African American studies at the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville. “These kinds of measures ultimately backfire.”

Reuters

Palestinians in Rafah break their fast March 13 amid the rubble of their destroyed home during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan as the conflict between Israel and Hamas continues in the Gaza Strip.

Facing an American demand to “put civilians first” even as it rids Gaza of Hamas fighters, Israel announced Wednesday that it would follow that core principle of the rules of war in a particularly difficult choice. Palestinian civilians in Rafah – perhaps all 1.4 million of them – would be moved out of harm’s way before Israel launches major assaults on Hamas sites in the besieged city. The civilians would be settled in “humanitarian islands,” or guarded encampments of tents across southern Gaza.

In the history of modern warfare, negotiating such a deal to protect the innocent and ensure them aid is never easy. It requires those who uphold international law to take a principled stand. “Humanitarian actors are bound to abide by principles that are not negotiable,” said Claude Bruderlein, a former longtime negotiator on the front lines of conflicts for the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Those principles include an impartial commitment to the welfare of people who are not party to a war. A negotiator’s neutrality along with sincere interest in saving war-trapped civilians can build enough trust to allow the creation of a safe zone or a “humanitarian corridor.” If the parties to a war can agree on meeting the needs of the innocent, that shared interest opens a door for the tougher task of political negotiations.

Why do the innocent in a conflict so often evoke empathy from belligerents? U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken addressed that question in a recent press conference as he negotiated protections for the people in Gaza while supporting Israel’s right to protect itself.

“The overwhelming majority of people in Gaza had nothing to do with the attacks of October 7th, and the families in Gaza whose survival depends on deliveries of aid from Israel are just like our families,” he said. “They’re mothers and fathers, sons and daughters – want to earn a decent living, send their kids to school, have a normal life. That’s who they are; that’s what they want. ... We cannot, we must not lose sight of our common humanity.”

Israel’s goal of ending a military threat from Hamas can be met even as humanitarian law is upheld. For Israelis, their security is not negotiable. For innocent Palestinians as well, their protection from harm and access to humanitarian aid are not negotiable under international law. “There is no transaction about principles,” explained Mr. Bruderlein, the former front-line negotiator. On both sides, innocence can win.