CAIRO: Palestinian groups threatened punishment on Thursday for “collaborators” furthering Israeli goals after the first substantial protests against the war in Gaza and Hamas’ rule.

Hundreds of Palestinians have rallied in recent days in north and central Gaza, some chanting “Hamas out” in a rare show of opposition to the group whose October 2023 raid on Israel triggered a devastating offensive in the enclave.

More demonstrations, which Israel’s government has applauded, were being planned on Thursday.

A statement by the “Factions of the Resistance,” an umbrella group including Hamas, threatened punishment for leaders of the “suspicious movement,” which Palestinians took to mean the street marches.

“They persist in blaming the resistance and absolving the occupation, ignoring that the Israeli extermination machine operates nonstop,” it said.

“Therefore, these suspicious individuals are as responsible as the occupation for the bloodshed of our people and will be treated accordingly.”

Hamas officials have said people have the right to protest, but rallies should not be exploited for political ends or to exempt Israel from blame for decades of occupation, conflict, and displacement in Palestinian territories.

Some protesters said they took to the streets to voice rejection of continued war, adding that they were exhausted and lacked basics like food and water.

“We are not against the resistance. We are against war. Enough wars, we are tired,” said a resident of Gaza City’s Shejaia neighborhood, which saw protests on Wednesday.

“You can’t call people collaborators for speaking up against wars, for wanting to live without bombardment and hunger,” he added via a chat app.

Videos on Wednesday, whose authenticity Reuters could not verify, showed protests in Shejaia in the north where the rallies began and in the central Gaza areas of Deir Al-Balah, indicating the protests were spreading.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the rallies showed Israelis’ decision to renew the military offensive in Gaza after a ceasefire was working.

Hamas police, the group’s enforcers, are again off the streets.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz urged Gaza residents to keep expressing their discontent.

“Learn from the residents of Beit Lahia,” he wrote on X, referring to the first protest. “Just as they did, demand the removal of Hamas from Gaza and the immediate release of all Israeli hostages — this is the only way to stop the war.”

A Palestinian official with a militant group said protests were allowed — but not cooperation with Israel.

“Those suspicious figures try to exploit legitimate protests to demand an end to the resistance, which is the same goal as Israel’s,” he told Reuters via a chat app.

KHARTOUM: Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces vowed on Thursday there would be “no retreat and no surrender” after rival troops of the regular army retook nearly all of central Khartoum.
From inside the recaptured presidential palace, Sudan’s army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, at war with his former deputy, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo since April 2023, had on Wednesday declared the capital “free” from the RSF.
But in its first direct comment since the army retook what remains of the capital’s state institutions this week, the RSF said: “Our forces have not lost any battle, but have repositioned.
“Our forces will continue to defend the homeland’s soil and secure a decisive victory. There will be no retreat or surrender,” it said.
“We will deliver crushing defeats to the enemy on all fronts.”
AFP could not independently confirm the RSF’s remaining positions in the capital.
The war has killed tens of thousands of people and uprooted more than 12 million, according to UN figures.
It has also split Africa’s third-largest country in two, with the army holding the north and east while the RSF controls parts of the south and nearly all of the vast western region of Darfur, which borders Chad.
On Wednesday, the army cleared Khartoum airport of RSF fighters and encircled their last major stronghold in the Khartoum area, just south of the city center.
An army source told AFP that RSF fighters were fleeing across the Jebel Awliya bridge, their only way out of greater Khartoum.
A successful withdrawal could link the RSF’s Jebel Awliya troops to its positions west of the city and then to its strongholds in Darfur hundreds of kilometers (miles) away.
On Wednesday, hours after Burhan arrived in the presidential palace for the first time in two years, the RSF announced a “military alliance” with a rebel group, which controls much of South Kordofan state and parts of Blue Nile bordering Ethiopia.
The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North, led by Abdelaziz Al-Hilu, had clashed with both sides, before signing a political charter with the RSF last month to establish a rival government.
On Thursday evening, witnesses in the Blue Nile state capital Damazin reported that both its airport and the nearby Roseires Dam came under drone attack by the paramilitaries and their allies for the first time in the war.
Fighters in retreat across the capital
Following a year and a half of defeats at the hands of the RSF, the army began pushing through central Sudan toward Khartoum late last year.
Analysts have blamed the RSF’s losses on strategic blunders, internal divisions and dwindling supplies.
Since the army recaptured the presidential palace on Friday, witnesses and activists have reported RSF fighters in retreat across the capital.
The army’s gains have been met with celebrations in its wartime headquarters in the Red Sea coastal city of Port Sudan, where displaced Sudanese rejoiced at the prospect of finally returning to Khartoum.
“God willing, we’re going home, we’ll finally celebrate Eid in our own homes,” Khartoum native Motaz Essam told AFP, ululations and fireworks echoing around him.
Burhan, Sudan’s de facto leader since he ousted civilian politicians from power in a 2021 coup, said on Wednesday the army was looking to form a technocratic government and had “no desire to engage in political work.”
“The armed forces are working to create the conditions for an elected civilian government,” Burhan said in a meeting with Germany’s envoy to the Horn of Africa, Heiko Nitzschke, according to a statement from Burhan’s office.
The RSF has its origins in the Janjaweed militia unleashed by then strongman Omar Al-Bashir more than two decades ago in Darfur.
Like the army, the RSF has sought to position itself as the guardian of Sudan’s democratic uprising which ousted Bashir in 2019.
The United States has imposed sanctions on both sides. It accused the army of attacks on civilians and said the RSF had “committed genocide.”
Burhan and Dagalo, in the fragile political transition that followed Bashir’s overthrow, forged an alliance which saw both rise to prominence. Then a bitter power struggle over the potential integration of the RSF into the regular army erupted into all-out war.