A long war between Israel and Palestine, or worse, a widening of the conflict. The Hamas attack is a leap into the unknown. But how did things come to this?
"For the intelligence services, this was the worst defeat since the Yom Kippur War of 1973." Journalists, observers and experts on the Israeli-Palestinian question have pointed out how the 7 October attack by the Palestinian extremist organisation Hamas on the Jewish state caught not only the Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency, but also the government of Tel Aviv itself, off guard. Along with them, academics, diplomatic staff and parliamentarians. The reality, however, is that the explosive nature of the situation in the Gaza Strip (but also in Nablus, Bethlehem, Jericho and Hebron) was invisible only to those who chose, for too long, to look the other way.
The operation launched at dawn by fighters of the Palestinian fundamentalist party raises countless questions about the future. No one can predict what, at the present time, might happen: international diplomatic efforts could succeed in interceding so that the parties accept a ceasefire in short order. Or it could be the beginning of a long-running war that might remain confined to Palestine and Israel, though an extension to other nations in the Middle East cannot be ruled out. The situation is volatile and impossible to predict. Some facts are, however, clear. They are bound up with the reactions of the international community, the recent and less recent history of the Palestinian people, and the manner in which the attack was carried out.
The casualties number more than 700 (and 2,150 wounded) among Israelis, and more than 400 (including 78 children, so far) among the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip. The vast majority on both sides were civilians, and therefore innocent. Hundreds were young people attending a concert at the time of the attack. "This is our 11 September," Israeli sources declared. The parallel may or may not be considered apt. But, today as then, condemning an act while at the same time contextualising it cannot be a mistake. One cannot say that "this is simply the moment to stand by Israel's side," because it is always the moment to stand as far as possible on the side of truth. Even and above all when human lives are at stake.
There are also reports of dozens of hostages in Palestinian hands. For all of this, Hamas must be condemned. After the condemnation, however, an exercise in moral consistency, intellectual honesty and historical truth is necessary. Because these three elements are essential for all those whose goal is what we should all strive for: unconditional peace.
In the state of Israel, as recognised by some eminent American university scholars (neither Iranian nor Lebanese, therefore), between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean there are not "two states", as the Oslo Accords envisaged in a rare moment of international enthusiasm — signed by the then president of the Palestinian Authority (at the time the PLO), Yasser Arafat, and by Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister, under the aegis of the then United States president, Bill Clinton. No: today there is a single state, with two populations subject to differentiated laws and rules, and differentiated courts. This defines, in every respect, a situation of apartheid. And until this reality is confronted, it is impossible to imagine change, reconciliation, compromise, or peace.
The international community must acknowledge, with the same firmness with which it rightly condemns the killing of innocents by Hamas, that a nation which creates, permits and perpetuates what takes place in the Gaza Strip cannot be considered a fully functioning democracy. At the very least, "it is a democracy in its death throes," as stated by the Franco-Israeli journalist Charles Enderlin, one of the foremost experts on the conflict, who has been on the ground since the Yom Kippur War of 1973.
Let us start from the facts. The first: an attack of this kind must have been in preparation for a long time. And it is difficult to imagine that Hamas did not enjoy external support, not only from groups linked to Islamic jihad. Iran's diplomatic position leaves no doubt about an Iranian "blessing": the commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Yahya Rahim-Safavi, quoted by the Isna agency, declared that he "proudly" supports "the Palestinian operation." And Hezbollah, in Lebanon, responded to the attack by launching rockets against Israel in turn (whose army replied with air strikes).
From a military standpoint, Hamas fighters, after the dawn prayer, breached the fortified border line with Israel at multiple points, with attacks from land, air and sea. They designated precise tactical targets, employed various means of infiltrating enemy territory, and demonstrated an unprecedented capacity for coordination. Nothing is yet known about the potential weapons stockpiles currently present in the Gaza Strip (nor how they may have got there).
What is known, however, is that Israel responded to the Hamas attacks with heavy air raids and artillery strikes, already on Saturday and then during the night between Sunday 8 and Monday 9 October: "more than 500 targets" in Gaza were struck. In Khan Younis, a Palestinian city in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, a mosque was bombed. In Gaza, Israeli fighter jets struck and destroyed the "Palestine" tower: a fourteen-storey residential building in the al-Rimal neighbourhood, in the city centre.
Men, women and children have fled the areas bordering Israel in an attempt to take shelter further inland. At least 70,000 people have sought refuge in schools or other facilities, according to Unrwa, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees. Médecins Sans Frontières reports attacks on ambulances and hospitals as well.
The second piece of data available concerns the date. The reference to the 1973 war, which broke out on precisely 6 October, is all too obvious. In this sense, the Palestinian offensive could be part of a more worrying picture: a replay of the devastating conflict of 50 years ago, which cost the lives of at least 16,000 people.
The third element concerns the internal politics of Palestine: the Hamas operation highlights the marginalisation of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), whose leader Mahmoud Abbas has an ever-weakening grip even in the West Bank. A defeat for Israel, too: having refused for years to open genuine dialogue with the more moderate PNA, while simultaneously forcing the Palestinian population to live in conditions that are often inhumane, could only increase support for extremist factions.
After the first Palestinian attacks, there were reports that the streets of Ramallah filled with Hamas flags. And many responded to the call issued by Mohammed Deif (head of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades) to take to the streets and support the military operation. If Hamas militants were to become Tel Aviv's potential interlocutors in the future, it would take a miracle to imagine a negotiating table — one that would already be weighed down not only by Hamas's latest attack but also by the hundreds of Palestinians killed over the years, alongside the apartheid conditions in which the inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza are forced to live.
The Gaza Strip is, moreover, a kind of prison: no one can leave, nor can anyone enter. Those who live there are effectively imprisoned as if in a vast jail, left to exist in shameful conditions. "The data provided by the latest report from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad) indicate that 36 per cent of the Palestinian population lives below the poverty line and that food insecurity has risen from 9 to 23 per cent in the West Bank and from 50 to 53 per cent in Gaza," the Italian news agency Ansa reported just one year ago.
To this must be added the question of Israeli settlements. When, in November 2022, Benjamin Netanyahu presented the policy guidelines of his government to the Knesset, Tel Aviv's parliament, he focused precisely on the choice to expand settlements in the occupied West Bank — despite these having long since been declared illegal by the United Nations. Here too, to put it plainly: the current Israeli prime minister proclaimed to his parliament that the solution, in his view, lies in perpetuating and worsening a situation of illegality.
The fourth element to consider is the positioning of international diplomacies. With the exception of the enthusiasm of Iran and Hezbollah, the vast majority of reactions to the attack were condemnations of Hamas and expressions of unconditional support for Israel. A near-unanimous chorus rose across the entire Western world. And the few who pointed out that, if the goal is peace, a profound change is also required on Israel's part were treated essentially as irresponsible.
For their part, Russia and Egypt responded by calling for "calm" from the parties involved and expressing "concern" over the risks of escalation and a widening of the conflict. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres urged the international community to deploy every possible diplomatic effort to prevent a broadening and further deterioration of the situation between Israel and Palestine: "Violence," the Portuguese diplomat declared, "cannot provide any solution; only negotiations can bring peace between the two states."
The Gulf states, among them some — such as Morocco, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, which normalised their relations with Israel from 2020 onwards — issued appeals for calm. Exactly as Saudi Arabia did, which is in the midst of negotiations with Israel to establish peaceful relations — a factor that may well have played a part in Hamas's decision to attack.
The Saudi foreign ministry, in a communiqué, called for "an immediate end to the violence between Israelis and Palestinians." It added: "We are following these unprecedented events between Gaza factions and occupation forces." Carefully measured words from a country now forced into a difficult balancing act between the need not to upset the apple cart and the need to continue stressing that the Israeli presence is, precisely, an occupation.
The game that opened at dawn on Saturday is also being played on this terrain. Bringing violence and killings to an end will require the goodwill — or at least the self-interest — of the two belligerents. But it will also require the support of numerous diplomacies, whether pro-Arab or pro-Israeli.
Peace, historically, has always come about either through acceptance by the parties involved or through the defeat of one of them — with everything that the second option entails in terms of death and suffering. If a peaceful solution is what is sought, it will not come through one-sided positioning in favour of one party or the other. This is why confining oneself to the rightful condemnation of the Hamas attack, of the brutal violence and the killing of innocent Israeli civilians, without keeping firmly in mind what led to such barbarity — forgetting half a century of embargoes, assassinations and every manner of oppression — is the surest way to fuel more violence, more wars, more escalation.