The ugly near-riots in Gaza around Thursday’s release of Israeli hostages proves just how deep the terror rot runs.

Before the handover, as Hamas killers (plus members of three other terror orgs, including Islamic Jihad) paraded those to be released through the streets, enormous, threatening crowds closed in around them, shouting and seething.

There was, of course, nothing comparable on the Israeli side — because Israel is not a terror-loving proxy power for an aspirant regional hegemon, committed to genocidal antisemitism and total war.

It forces any rational person to ask himself: Do ordinary Palestinians actually want this cease-fire?

This show of hate and implicit violence — directed against two Israeli women and an 80-year-old man, all visibly ailing after 15 months in captivity — suggests that, despite the whinging of some international analysts, Gaza fully backs the masked killers who rule over them.

No matter that Hamas began this war, which has done nothing but immiserate those very same average Palestinians.

Nor that the group’s kleptocratic leadership lives in luxury and safety while the larger Palestinian people suffer the consequences of their war. 

The scenes prove that Israel’s fight for survival isn’t over, though its armed forces and intel services have inflicted devastating blows to Hamas and its allies, even though Iran’s ascent has been seemingly checked for the moment. 

Hamas has reportedly replenished the full complement of its killers. And the propaganda apparatus masking itself as ”education” — managed and funded by UNRWA — among Palestinians is clearly still spitting out poison.

Decades of propaganda have left much of the Palestinian populace enthusiastic about terror: No wonder Egypt and Jordan loudly refuse to accept Gazan refugees. 

Anyone trying to extend the uneasy Hamas-Israel cease-fire must reckon with this seething, toxic fury.