Palestinian October: Between Trial, Evaluation, and Conclusion

The writer

As three years pass since the flood operation that began from besieged Gaza, Israel responded with a genocide war, the most horrific war that occurred in the twenty-first century.

The Palestinians do not possess what the Egyptians had in June 1967, where there was investigation and accountability for shortcomings, as the court justified some and condemned others; this is the act of a state and its system, which the Palestinians lack.

Since the news of Hamas's success in storming the settlements surrounding Gaza and killing and capturing hundreds of Israelis, a feeling among Palestinians emerged that mixed admiration with fear of the Israeli reaction to it, and this was a spontaneous feeling shared not only by the Palestinians but by the entire world.

The Israelis did not limit their response to the flood in the same way they had responded to previous military operations that originated from Gaza, such as retaliatory bombing, tightening the siege, and partial and temporary military incursions, but developed their response to reach an actual genocide war and total destruction.

On the political front, the situation has reached the point of working to destroy the Palestinian cause with the project of displacing Gaza and intensifying pressure on the West Bank, making the two areas that are supposed to be the place where the Palestinian state is established into a scorched land unfit for living, let alone establishing a state on it.

The Palestinians are divided regarding the Gaza war, with some seeing it as a strategic achievement that restored the Palestinian cause's status after it had significantly declined, while others view it as a suicidal and even conspiratorial act that inflicted severe damage on the people and the cause. In Gaza, where 'Hamas' has control, they believe they have done what should have been done in response to the long-standing suffocating siege imposed by Israel since 'Hamas' took power. In the West Bank, where the official 'Fatah' authority is, there has been a complete silence with no official opinion regarding what has happened, based on the notion that 'Hamas' acted on its own and opened a war behind the back of the official authority. However, the silence did not last long, as voices began to emerge condemning what 'Hamas' did directly, which represented a new division that reinforced the old one and highlighted the severity of its depth and the difficulty of addressing it.

In the early days of the fourth year of the war, which has developed and expanded to affect the West Bank, and its extension reaching Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen, it is worth reading the overall situation as it exactly is, and to summarize the Palestinian side of it.

Gaza has been completely destroyed, and there is no benefit in determining the percentage of Israeli control at sixty or seventy percent; Israel controls one hundred percent of Gaza through the siege and the power of fire, and it controls how many calories enter the sector, how many pills and doses of water.

After killing many and destroying much, Israel is waging a one-sided war, with no response from 'Hamas' other than appealing to mediators to deter it, knowing that such appeals are futile. Israel, for its part, translates the American initiative regarding Gaza according to its interests and not according to its texts, as the Trump peace plan enters the Gaza equation through what it allows and what it refrains from. It still holds absolute control over the crossings for entry and exit.

However, there is another side to the truth... Israel, in its war on Gaza, has found itself engaged in the longest war in its history, suffering the greatest human, moral, economic, and political losses. Despite its complete control through fire and siege over Gaza, it has failed to achieve the absolute victory promised by Netanyahu, which he continues to pursue. When comparing the results to the declared objectives, what has occurred so far, despite recording a tremendous bloody and destructive achievement, has not translated into political realities that would allow Netanyahu to claim an absolute victory.

On the opposing front, where Hamas and its allies are, and where the goal is to maintain a physical presence in parts of Gaza, after having lost control over all of it, they have lost much more than they anticipated and expected. The situation does not stop at the loss of a regime that was never legitimate in Gaza; it has reached the point of negotiating what little light weaponry they have left, which for Israel serves more as a means of extortion than as a security threat.

Hamas has lost leaders and cadres that it cannot replace, assuming it is still considering new rounds of conflict.

The most important discovery that Hamas has reached after twenty years of attempts to impose itself as a substitute rather than a partner, and after its significant losses in the Gaza war, is that its only remaining base is the Palestinian base. It has realized how illusory it was to assume that it was the 'icon' of the resistance camp, and that what it did on October 7, 2023, was a valuable gift it presented to the camp. It is true that it received direct support from Hezbollah, but it hesitated midway, and modest support from the Houthis, and most dangerously, a clear distancing from the mother of the camp, Iran, which congratulated Hamas on the flood and explicitly informed it, as it informed the world, that it had no connection to what happened.

Gaza... and what it has suffered from the West Bank and continues to suffer, did not arise in October 2023, nor does it record, three years after the genocide war and before the flood, a victory for Hamas or a victory for Israel. Rather, it is, in fact, a more destructive and bloody station than all the previous stations on the long road in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The direct result of what has happened, due to the flood and the Israeli response to it, is that the matter of the long-awaited settlement has moved out of the hands of the Palestinians and Israelis, transferring it to the world, particularly America. Thus, there will either be a settlement for the Middle East, including the Palestinians, similar to the settlements after World War II, or a renewed conflict that threatens to be more catastrophic than all that has preceded it.