On October 7 Gaza broke out of the prison created by the Israeli occupation, waging a new wave of struggle for Palestinian liberation. The unprecedented Hamas attack breached Israel’s illegitimate border, briefly regaining control of occupied towns and Israeli military posts—something that has never happened in the history of the occupation.
Images of bulldozers tearing down Israel’s apartheid wall are a new symbol of the Palestinian resistance. Hamas says their offensive is a reaction to attacks on the al-Aqsa Mosque last month, recent settler violence, and the ongoing Gaza siege. It also takes place in the context of the normalization of Israeli-Saudi relations and over 75 years of Israeli oppression of the Palestinian population.
As of Monday afternoon over 900 Israelis and 500 Palestinians have been killed. It is an enormous escalation of the conflict. Hamas has taken more than 100 Israelis hostage. Early on Monday Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared a total blockade of Gaza in retaliation against Hamas, including cutting off electric, water, food, and fuel supplies. Israel is now bombing Gaza—with US-supplied weapons—and threatens a full ground invasion.
Violence
It is the most basic, first thought, non-analysis to rebuke Hamas’s actions. It offers nothing to explain the context that has led to this moment, much less a solution. Since 2007 Israel has waged war against the 2.3 million civilian population of Gaza. According to the UN, over 6,000 Palestinians have been killed in the years since. 300 Israelis have been killed, most of them soldiers. 152,000 Palestinians and 6,000 Israelis have been injured.
Liberal journalists, crocodile-crying politicians, and various celebrities have issued statements condemning Hamas’s violence. But it must be said that the scale of violence meted out by Israel is incomparable to the deaths that result from Palestine’s periodic acts of resistance. This kind of selective, abstract commitment to non-violence every time Palestinians dare to fight back is part of a deliberate unwillingness to understand where the root of the violence lies: the Israeli occupation.
Occupation
There is no “both sides” argument about Palestine. Israel has the full military might of US imperialism behind it, as well as the world’s most sophisticated defense technology. They have systematically cut off and undermined almost all forms of resistance. Palestinians have no diplomatic pathway out of their oppression after decades of sham negotiations that never resolved core questions like the right of return for refugees, a divided Jerusalem, the illegal settlements, or full civil rights for non-Jews.
In 2005 Palestinians launched the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement (BDS)—a “non-violent” form of resistance that encourages institutions, governments, and companies to cut ties with Israel. It has won substantial victories, while not yet impacting Israel’s actions. The international movement has been roundly condemned by western governments, organizers have been persecuted, and legislation has been handed down to brand the movement as antisemitic.
In other words, Palestinians have tried for decades to get justice through “peaceful” means. All it has delivered is more settlements, regular bombardments, and administrative detention. 60% of Gazans live in poverty without access to safe drinking water or reliable electricity. The instigators of this terror cannot beat Palestine into submission, close every other avenue for resistance, and then turn around wringing their hands, confused as to why Palestinians resort to increasingly desperate tactics.
In fact, Israel has encouraged Palestine to do exactly that. The only time Israel has given up an occupied territory was when they returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt during the 1973 war. The only way Israel returns Palestinian prisoners is through exchange deals. The last Hamas-Israel prisoner swap was one Israeli soldier for 1,025 Palestinians. Hamas’s calculus this weekend was to kidnap enough hostages to trade in exchange for all 5,200 Palestinians in Israeli jails. In other words, Israel has told Palestinians time and again that violence is the only language it speaks.
Hamas
It is almost compulsory for western media channels to spend the bulk of their reports condemning Hamas. What they don’t share is that the organization itself is an outgrowth of the occupation. There was a secular resistance movement in decades prior. It became a subcontractor in apartheid, accepting concession after concession and working in partnership with the Israeli government to police the West Bank. National liberation organizations also collaborated with surrounding Arab regimes to uphold the occupation. Egypt continues to maintain the Gaza blockade at the southern border.
During the 2014 Israeli onslaught, ordinary Gazans were interviewed on how they felt about Hamas. None of them said they thirsted for terror or that they wanted to eradicate all Jews. They explained that Hamas is one of the only organizations still fighting for an end to the occupation.
There are live strategic debates inside the movement to free Palestine and there are limitations to the tactics Hamas uses. An end to the Gaza siege, a return of Palestinian villages to their original inhabitants, the right for refugees to come back to their homes, and a democratic state where all people in greater Israel/Palestine have equal rights would allow more political alternatives to Hamas to emerge from within Palestine. Anything less only guarantees more bloodshed on both sides of the apartheid wall.
Israelis and Jewish people
This is true for people connected with Israel as much as it is for people connected with Palestine. The establishment of the Israeli state and its ongoing illegal expansion have profoundly alienated Jewish people from other communities in the Middle East, destroying centuries of coexistence. Israel forces teenagers into military service and the price for desertion is high. Its religious right wing government is deeply undemocratic, a fact that many Israelis have protested in recent months (albeit usually ignoring the root cause of these problems—the occupation).
All the resources that go into the military, surveillance, and other high tech ways of brutalizing Palestinians—including the $4 billion the US sends every year—didn’t protect the people at the rave. It didn’t save the 900 slain people inside Israel. It didn’t prevent the kidnappings. This is because Israel isn’t ultimately designed to protect Jewish people. Its purpose is to operate as a colonial outpost in the Middle East.
Around the world Hebrew schools are locking down and synagogues are increasing already-high security, escalating fear among Jewish people. There is no comparison between the everyday experience of Palestinians and Israelis—one lives under constant occupation and the other lives with privilege and supremacy. But it is becoming increasingly clear that Israel is harmful to Jewish people and that the Zionist project cannot actually protect them. The only chance for peace for everyone who lives between the river and sea, and beyond, is an end to the occupation.
What next
The coming days will undoubtedly bring more carnage. Netanyahu announced that Gazans should leave the strip in order to avoid an all out land invasion. It’s a patently ridiculous suggestion—if they could, Gazans would have left what everyone describes as the world’s largest open-air prison long ago. Everyone knows this, especially Netanyahu, who has led the Israeli state for most of the Gaza siege. The warning is not so Gazans can leave, it is a public threat of ethnic cleansing as collective punishment.
When the Egyptian revolution began in 2011, Palestinian flags were everywhere in Tahrir Square and across the Arab Spring. They understood that there’s a symbiotic relationship between freedom for Palestine and the liberation of all peoples under imperialist regimes. These movements were ultimately defeated. But they showed the power of Middle Eastern and North African working people to topple all oppressive regimes. This is what Israel, the US, the EU, and all the Arab ruling classes fear most: an international movement from below against imperialism. We should all attend the demonstrations this week for Palestinian liberation, they need the widest possible international solidarity now. None of us can be free until they are.
Marx21 US 