Add to that the failure of the Iron Dome and the latest and most expensive spy systems worldwide, along with the penetration of the massive and costly wall from below and above ground. Palestinian capabilities in planning, execution, and coordination among various units, similar to modern armies, have emerged.
The invincible army was defeated, and the intelligence that anticipates danger from all directions, equipped with the latest spy devices, did not foresee anything. The protective wall above and below ground, equipped with electronic sensors, cameras, and guard towers, did not provide protection. The Iron Dome, which destroys missiles before reaching their targets, allowed missiles to cross the border and penetrate into Israeli territory. The capture of soldiers and officers was widespread, including the capture of high-ranking military officials, contrary to the ‘Hannibal Protocol.’ This shocking and sudden change that brought Israel down from its heights occurred for hours, a day, or a few days. Then the wounded giant emerged, and the Israeli security and political institutions woke up from their slumber to engage in the worst massacre in Gaza.
What happened on October 7 has symbolic and moral implications far exceeding what was achieved practically against an institution proud of its massive and decisive deterrent power. What made a military organization like Hamas challenge Israeli deterrence from within a tight blockade, penetrate the security system, and inflict significant losses can prompt countries that relied on Israeli superiority and absolute deterrence to reconsider. Why shouldn’t a country of Egypt’s stature reconsider the unjust terms of peace treaties, at the very least, and return to competing for a regional role!
One of the most dangerous meanings of the ‘flood’ was casting doubt on the statement that Israel is the “safest place for Jews worldwide.” Undermining this statement could lead to a shift in a fundamental component of Zionist strategy, favoring emigration over immigration in the short and perhaps medium term. Indicators of this include the return of most Ukrainian refugees who fled the war in their country to Israel back to Ukraine.
The ‘flood’ has other meanings, as described by Ehud Barak: “On October 7, the state’s contract with its citizens collapsed, centered around the state’s duty to ensure their security. The assumption that Hamas is supported with $1.5 billion and that the Palestinian Authority is a burden collapsed. The assumption that the path to peace is open with the Arab world and closed with the Palestinians also collapsed.”
What happened on October 7 is both a realistic and symbolic event that does not pose an existential threat to a militarily superior state with a nuclear arsenal and protection from U.S. fleets. The artificially inflated existential threat is related to shaking the confidence of the Israeli public in the roles of the dominant institution in Israeli psychology. It might also shake American and European confidence in Israel’s functional role. The exaggerated existential threat justifies the genocidal war against the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza and threatens the existence of the Palestinian people in their homeland.
In response to the shaken belief in superiority and deterrence, the Israeli security and political establishment revealed its fangs and invoked all elements of power, anger, punishment, revenge, and destruction to rebuild the deterrence power and the arrogance of strength. Since day one, Netanyahu and his army have declared a state of emergency and war. The war machine invaded Gaza, and fighter jets have not stopped dropping bombs and missiles by the tons, demolishing towers, houses, and markets, leaving more than 16,000 casualties before the ceasefire. Over 45 percent of urban areas in Gaza were destroyed, displacing 1.7 million citizens from the north to the south of the Gaza Strip. Hospitals, Red Crescent buildings, ambulances, civil defense equipment, government and UNRWA schools, communications, and the banking system were not spared. The war machine rendered all infrastructure out of service, incapable of performing its humanitarian and service-based tasks, threatening the collapse of the societal structure.
Netanyahu invoked all of his arsenal against the Palestinian people, starting by urging 2.3 million Gazan residents to leave their homes in an explicit call for displacement. Defense Minister Yoav Galant announced collective sanctions against citizens, stating: ‘We impose a complete blockade on Gaza, no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel, everything is closed.’ Palestinians were described as ‘human monsters,’ and actions were taken accordingly. This degrades the highest military official from the rules of war stipulated in the Fourth Geneva Convention and its protocols. Others called for “returning Gaza to the Stone Age.”
A Dangerous Existential Discourse
The Netanyahu government portrayed Hamas as an existential threat to Israel through its policies, ideology, and practices on October 7. It compared Hamas to the Islamic State (ISIS) and sometimes to the Nazis. This came alongside the most brutal and destructive wars. Strikingly, Netanyahu’s government integrated the people in Gaza into the existential threat that endangers Israel, considering them responsible for Hamas’s actions.
Member of the Knesset Revital Gottlieb called for the use of a nuclear bomb on Gaza. An official in the Israeli army told Channel 13: “Gaza will be leveled to the ground and turned into a city of tents.” Alon Ben David said in Maariv, “We are in a war for existence, if we do not win it conclusively, we will not be able to exist in this place.”
Getting rid of the existential threat means settling the battle decisively by eradicating the infrastructure, meaning the destruction of most built-up areas in the northern part of the Strip – Shujaiya, Gaza City, Jabalia, Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahia – and expelling Hamas, alongside many others. Ben David explains that when forces enter, there will be no buildings or civilians on the ground.
Minister of Israeli Heritage Amihai Eliyahu repeated the call to drop a nuclear bomb on Gaza. Former general Giora Eiland, former head of the National Security Council, emphasized the complete evacuation of all Gaza residents to Egypt or the Gulf. To achieve this, every building, including schools and hospitals where Hamas offices are located in their lower levels, is considered a military target, as well as every vehicle in the Strip used to transport fighters, regardless of whether the vehicles are for water or other vital supplies.
Prior to that, a flood of threats and warnings loaded with hatred and incitement to racial cleansing for 2.3 million citizens initially, and subsequently for most Palestinians, is an exercise in collective punishment that qualifies as crimes against humanity. The threat has begun to manifest itself in a terrifying manner, a genocidal war undermining the existence of a people on their homeland, waged under the pretext of ‘Israel’s right to self-defense.’ This right has been echoed by the United States, Britain, Germany, Italy, France, Canada, and others. Despite linking this right to respect for international law, these countries turn a blind eye to Israel’s practical interpretation of this right contrary to international law. They continue to provide political cover for ‘Israel’s right’ in transforming the Gaza Strip into ruins above the heads of its citizens.
Why Did the Explosion Happen?
Israel, the Biden administration, Western circles, and all those involved in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict were surprised by what happened on October 7. It crowned shifts in the Palestinian public stance and escalating changes in political polarization due to Israel’s insistence on excluding the resolution of this conflict from all existing and potential Arab-Israeli agreements. Netanyahu boasted about rising agreements with other Arab and Islamic countries while obstinately rejecting the resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, considering it the essence of the conflict in the Middle East. Consequently, other regional understandings between Israel and Turkey, negotiations regarding the Iranian nuclear issue, and even the agreement on delineating the Lebanese maritime borders, did not have any reference to resolving this conflict.
Since 2009, Israeli governments, particularly the Netanyahu government, have propagated the idea that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is unsolvable. The utmost that can be done is to reduce tension and improve the economic living conditions of the population, with the support or complicity of the US and EU administrations, which also ceased to propose a political process. They left Netanyahu as the sole player, while Israel’s systematic actions continue to undermine the components of the Palestinian political entity by abolishing any political solution to the conflict, the right to self-determination for the Palestinian people, settlement expansion, ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley, and Hebron Governorate, participating in the Arab states’ financial siege, violating sacred sites, especially Al Aqsa Mosque, attempting vehemently to break the will of the prisoners, and stripping the Palestinian Authority of all powers, except “security coordination.”
All of this has caused a crisis of trust and an increasing popular disengagement from the authority, organization, and Fatah. This disengagement has led to further political and representative fragmentation, opening the doors to international and regional interventions in the Palestinian affairs and their future. In essence, Israel and the Biden administration sought to transform the Palestinian cause from an issue of national liberation and self-determination into a matter of “securing better living conditions for Palestinians.” In the absence of a democratic national movement within the framework of Palestinian legitimacy, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) has taken initiative and addresses challenging questions in the political and economic fronts, as well as matters of national struggle. Nevertheless, a growing political vacuum has emerged, prompting Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements to quickly fill it by offering the “resistance” option in the West Bank. This is supported politically and financially by the Iranian regional axis, which exploits the plight of the Palestinian people, separate from supporting the liberation of the Palestinian people and their deliverance from occupation. It contentedly claims the ability to “destroy Israel,” in line with the inevitability of Israel’s demise according to political Islam. Both movements acknowledge that destruction and demise belong to the realm of fantasy.
The unannounced Iranian goal is to use the valuable Palestinian card geopolitically, to pressure and improve the positions of the Iranian regime and its shares in the region directly and indirectly, regardless of Palestinian achievements leading to liberation from occupation and self-determination.
Iran’s use of Palestinian resistance serves the purpose of enhancing its regional influence and position. This intersects with the Palestinians’ fervent popular desire to find a savior—any savior—under the conditions of oppression, humiliation, and Israeli oppression of the vast majority of the Palestinian people.
In the comparison between the symbolic and charismatic resistance option—despite its randomness, primitiveness, and its transformation of the Palestinian public into spectators rather than participants in other forms of resistance—and the option of authority and political organization, which no longer convinces anyone, accompanied by acute economic failure, social elites and public sentiment leaned towards resistance. Its option prevailed in the West Bank after the Gaza Strip with Iranian support; a resistance without the most basic of requirements, and without a liberation project applicable in the short and medium term, which receives support from friendly countries and peoples.
The option of resistance was presented in the West Bank in an improvised way, floating in its goals and wrapped in a religious ideology consistent with popular sentiment. Hamas did not stop at the goal of seizing power, representation, and official decision; this was a major goal for the movement and the axis of resistance. Hamas believed that it could achieve this through a flood that would gain decisive popular support, as happened in the first two weeks. It also believed that its success in releasing Palestinian prisoners through an exchange process would increasingly enhance its popularity, pushing Fatah, the PLO, and their authority to the margins.
Kaab Akil, October 7
What happened on October 7, was summarized by Western Israeli propaganda as Hamas targeting Israeli civilians in a provocative manner. Although some propaganda was fabricated using artificial intelligence, the negative impact persisted, leading to the alignment of countries, forces, and human rights institutions with Israel, treating it as a victim entitled to “self-defense.”
There is no doubt that killing unarmed children, civilians, and the elderly, or taking them as hostages, and directly targeting civilian objectives, as well as ‘body impersonation,’ requires careful and impartial scrutiny. It calls for a responsible stance that acknowledges the wrongdoing and works to address it as quickly as possible.
Certainly, targeting civilians known under international law contradicts what military commander Mohammed al Deif called for in the announcement of the attack: “Do not kill an elderly person, a woman, or a child.” It fundamentally violates international law, considering that the deliberate killing of civilians is a war crime. It is worth mentioning that Hamas’s violations and abuses have been and continue to be used to secure international political cover for the violation, and by design, threaten the fate of 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza. However, that has begun to conflict with the international stance and is not receiving political cover, not even from the United States. Despite the historical American cover placing Israel above the law and outside accountability and punishment, this cover did not extend to overt crimes and the existential threat posed by Israel through acts of genocide as is happening now.
Hamas leadership did not stop at the principle that resistance should not respond to the crimes committed by the occupiers with similar crimes. Ethical superiority is the most important element in the national liberation process, making public opinion from countries, peoples, political forces, and human rights organizations align with the resistors and their struggling people. Hamas’s adherence to the rules of war specified in the Fourth Geneva Conventions and its protocols, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and human rights, besides constituting a humanitarian and ethical superiority, is one of the most important elements helping to secure protection for the besieged Palestinian people against the brutality of power.
Unfortunately, the broadcast of killings in the global media had a reverse and dangerous effect threatening the security of the Palestinian people and their safety. Therefore, every error and violation committed during the operation needed to be criticized and apologized for to the public opinion that has always been with Palestine. Considering the violations as individual acts to be investigated and held accountable for.
Hamas leadership did not stop at the assumption that any solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, such as the two-state solution, a secular one-state, or a binational state, is impossible without an Israeli-Jewish partner aligned with Palestinian liberation. This requires sensitivities and recognized rights consistent with international law. The anti-Jewish discourse, denial of the objective existence of Israelis, and responding to Israeli violations on religious and racist grounds lead to disastrous results. The weaker party, the Palestinians, always pay a high price, especially with Jewish Israelis still haunted by the Holocaust and supported by an international system placing Israel above the law, armed with the ideological claim of the promised land, obscuring their colonial reality.
The wars of the previous four confrontations in Gaza and the invasion of the West Bank in 2002 clearly demonstrated that Palestinian losses outweigh the Israeli losses significantly. The logical result of the power balance between a besieged people and Israeli control over resources, imports, energy, water, medicine, food, communications, and freedom of movement, a state of colonizers with a massive and modern military arsenal, a developed economy, and unlimited external support.
Any objective and sympathetic reading of the Palestinian people would say that any confrontation between a modern army with immense destructive power, controlling all aspects of Palestinian life within its minimum borders, against a besieged resistance force with limited arms, would be an unpredictable adventure and a disaster for the besieged people. By design, any resistance cannot initiate a full-scale war with a hellish war machine. The resistance was supposed to follow the law of contradictory properties, which, when adhered to, places the elements of the resistance’s power and its people against the weaknesses of the brutal war machine, as happened in the Great National Uprising in 1987, and not invoke the enemy’s power elements.
Hamas’s initiative for a full-scale war by launching thousands of missiles across Israel, accompanied by infiltrating dozens of sites of the Israeli army and kibbutzim in the Gaza Strip, was not well thought out. It did not take into account the insane Israeli reaction, threatening 2.3 million Palestinians and possibly the entire population in the West Bank, Gaza, and the 1948 areas, placing them all under the mercy of a mad war machine and an unknown fate.
Responding to Israeli aggression and denial of Palestinian rights should have clear and tangible political objectives, the essence of which is to roll back the occupation’s policies toward ending it. The response should not be limited to revenge and inflicting losses. The objectives should include breaking the siege on Gaza, ending settlements and ethnic cleansing operations, removing settlement hotspots, ending administrative detention, stopping the Judaization of Jerusalem, Al-Aqsa Mosque incursions, paying compensation, changing the Paris economic agreement, and altering security coordination. All of this was a prelude to implementing the legitimate international decisions calling for ending the occupation.
This was not clear in Hamas’s discourse.
Future Approaches
The imagination of the Resistance and the camp calling for the generalization of the October 7 moment and turning it into a victory is far from reality and comes with a heavy price paid by the Palestinian people, especially after the failure of the unity of the arenas. In contrast, Israel’s discourse states: “There is no need for peace; the Israeli army can protect the state of Israel without it. Israel can control the Palestinian people and persecute them while Israel flourishes alongside it. The settlements also guard Israel and protect it.” Power balances do not allow turning symbolism into reality. On the contrary, the colonial state and its allies seek to erase and eliminate that moment and its tools, as the Americans did after Pearl Harbor and after the World Trade Center attacks.
The arrogance of power cannot control a people and subjugate them endlessly.
The interest of the Palestinian people and the peoples of the region calls for an immediate cessation of war, destruction, and displacement, and serious consideration of a just political solution. This issue exacerbates the conflict in the region with global repercussions. The failure to resolve it threatens all the progress made towards stability in the region. People have never forgotten that the Palestinian cause and the injustice suffered by the Palestinian people have been important sources of mobilization among billions of Muslims, as former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin says. When the occupation ends, the double threat to the Palestinian people, Israeli security, and stability disappears. There is no alternative to a political solution, and it is not in the interest of the Palestinian people to consider the military option in the face of the maximum mobilization of the arrogance of power.
What matters now is to overcome the stigma of terrorism, which is being used to erase Hamas,Islamic Jihad, and all resistance organizations, merging national liberation with terrorism and distorting the Palestinian cause. This requires adopting all Palestinian political components in accordance with international law, including the Geneva agreements and protocols, human rights law, and international legitimacy resolutions.
The Palestinian people can be united and effective with a national program and political goals based on international legitimacy, achievable, and receiving Arab and global support. It has been proven by experience that combining Palestinian forces that reject international legitimacy with forces that accept it within one political framework and belonging to a national political project achievable simultaneously is difficult.
If the Palestinian people unite nationally and politically on the basis of international legitimacy, they will be closer to their liberation despite the bitterness of the previous experience, where international legitimacy turned into an international distraction. If the Palestinian people unite on the basis of rejecting legitimacy, they will merge with terrorism and provide additional justifications to liquidate their national cause. Now, more than ever, it is not in the interest of the Palestinian people to have a division in their political movement.
It must be noted that the current international alignment is highly dangerous, and dealing with it requires wisdom, rationality, and intelligence, away from the populist provocative discourse calling for expanding the war and moving into the trench of Hamas and its military adventure. This helps exacerbate the war of destruction and displacement and helps the aggression achieve its criminal objectives.
Resistance was created to lift its people from the clutches of occupation, to defend its people, protect them, alleviate their suffering, and minimize their losses. The equation cannot be reversed by saying that the people redeem the resistance with everything. The safety of the people is fundamental and occupies the center of attention. The responsibility to protect the people is a shared responsibility of the organization, the authority, the resistance, and the opposition. It is a responsibility that begins with opening a political horizon and blocking the path to extermination, displacement, and disasters created by the policies of occupation.
Israel is dedicating, through the “war of extermination” it is waging, an isolated and surrounded Sparta-like choice against hostile peoples. Israel, coming out of a war of extermination and displacement, will only be met with disdain and isolation, and its components will not be able to coexist with each other after committing war crimes and atrocities.
