On 7 October, Hamas's armed faction, the Qassam Brigades, broke through a high-tech militarized barrier that Israel used to imprison Palestinians in Gaza for 16 years.
The attack was indeed unprecedented, but calling it "unprovoked" reflects an attempt to cover up the fact that Israel has created the violent conditions that make a violent response inevitable.
Nearly two months after the events in Gaza, the Israeli army is killing and maiming another generation of Palestinians – and triggering the next cycle of violence.
History didn't start on October 7. What happened that day, after 75 years of Israeli colonialism, was triggered by unbearable conditions in Gaza. Israel has besieged and imprisoned more than 2 million people in the territory for 16 years.
The majority of Gaza's inhabitants are descendants of refugees who have been forced to flee their homes across Palestine. Gaza remained under Egyptian control until 1967, when Israel invaded and occupied the area.
Since then, the Israeli occupation of Gaza has intensified year by year, isolating the inhabitants of Gaza from Palestine and the rest of the world. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 in the face of relentless Palestinian resistance, but imposed a suffocating siege that continues to this day.
The fact is that the Israeli occupation of Gaza has never ended;It just changed. Today, Gaza is often described as the largest open-air prison in the world. But even such a description does not do justice to the extent of Israel's brutality.
What Israel is doing in Gaza is much worse: it is a project dedicated to the collective punishment of all those who dare to resist.
With more than 2.3 million people crammed into an area of about 365 square kilometers and surrounded by electronic fences and concrete walls, Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on Earth.
The Israeli blockade has affected almost every aspect of Palestinian life in Gaza. The Israeli regime controls the movement of people in and out of the Gaza Strip with an archaic permit system, which is often used as leverage over the entire population.
What happened on 7 October was not an accidental outbreak of violence. This is a "tooth for a tooth" for a people who have been brutally treated.
Surrounded by Israel and Egypt, most Palestinians in Gaza have never been allowed to leave the enclave. Israel even controls its airspace and territorial waters.
The blockade has devastated Gaza's economy and led to what the United Nations calls "de-development". This has led to the unemployment of nearly half of the population, with the unemployment rate among young people exceeding 70%.
For many Palestinians in Gaza, life is a struggle for survival. Between 2007 and 2010, Israeli authorities conducted calorie counts on the nutritional needs of Palestinians to ensure that they received only the bare minimum of food to avoid starvation.
As if the blockade wasn't enough, Israel carried out protracted military assaults on Gaza in 2008-2009, 2012, 2014 and 2021, killing thousands and destroying the region's infrastructure and exacerbating already dire living conditions.
Houses, schools and hospitals have been destroyed, while reconstruction efforts have been hampered by Israel's refusal to allow construction materials such as steel and cement to enter Gaza. In 2014, Israel attacked Gaza's only power plant, exacerbating an energy crisis that continues to this day, with an average of only 13 hours of electricity per day**.
While the physical and psychological damage caused by Israel's brutal attacks has been widely documented, little attention has been paid to the human and psychological damage inflicted on an entire generation. An 18-year-old in Gaza is experiencing the fifth large-scale Israeli assault. They have witnessed friends and family being attacked by Israeli missiles, artillery shells and sniper shells**.
For many years, the international community has embraced the fallacy that the Palestinian plight can be ignored and swept under the rug-up.
Despite repeated warnings, much of the United States and Western society believes that the Palestinians will eventually succumb to ethnic cleansing. It took Hamas's unprecedented assault on Israel to put Palestine back on the global agenda.
What happened on 7 October showed us that the question of Palestine needs to be answered. It shows us that Israel must be held responsible. It was incumbent upon the international community to uphold United Nations resolutions, because the status quo was unsustainable.
Recently, the United States and Israel notified Arab countries of their readiness to create a "buffer zone" in Gaza. This is a "post-war arrangement" for the post-war period. This is another form of blockade and cannibalization. Nothing will change the fate of the Palestinians.
The important thing is said three times: the Hamas movement is a product of the times, the sublimation of Palestinian hatred. As long as the Palestinians live under constant oppression and provocation, armed resistance will remain inevitable. Israel will never be able to eliminate the !! Hamas