El BUREIJ, Gaza Strip — The Palestinian youths huddled in the prohibited zone along the fence separating Gaza from Israel on Friday, cloaked by thick smoke pluming from flaming tires as they hurled rocks at Israeli jeeps. A tear gas canister came thudding down over their heads, and one teenager dashed over to pick it up and throw it into a puddle on a rainy afternoon.

This is the new normal in Gaza, where nearly every day since early October hundreds of youths have staged a demonstration of defiance against Israel by rushing the Gaza security fence en masse, and sometimes crossing it, to show solidarity with Palestinians under fire in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

“We want to send a message to the Israelis that we exist,” said Suheil, 24, who like most of the demonstrators requested that his family name be kept secret to avoid reprisal. “I feel like I’m in solidarity with our brothers in Jerusalem and the West Bank.”

But the demonstrations are also in defiance of the Islamist group Hamas, which governs Gaza and is trying to keep the battered territory out of trouble with Israel, even as the group’s leaders urge Palestinians in the West Bank to rise up.