For the first time since Hamas took power in the Gaza Strip in 2007, its forces breached the 21 foot walls enclosing the Gaza Strip and occupied several Israeli settlements and military installations in the western Negev region early Saturday morning.
Hamas began the offensive by launching 2,500 to 5,000 rockets into Southern Israel. At the same time, over a thousand Hamas fighters breached the border wall on motorcycles, hang gliders and bulldozers, occupying several Israeli military postings and settlements around Gaza. Militants went on to indiscriminately kill hundreds of Israeli civilians, settlers and soldiers in settlements, outposts and at a music festival, taking over 130 hostages in the process.
Qatar is currently attempting to mediate a prisoner swap between these hostages and Palestinian political prisoners being held in Israeli prisons, many without due process.
Israeli retaliation was immediate. Later Saturday morning, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared war on Hamas and quickly ordered airstrikes on Gaza. Over the next 48 hours, Hamas forces continued to fight Israeli troops in 22 settlements near the Gaza Strip while Israeli forces bombarded residential areas, military targets, mosques, hospitals and schools in Gaza, killing hundreds of civilians and destroying critical civilian infrastructure.
Israeli troops also killed at least six Palestinian journalists reporting in Gaza, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Several videos and images have also circulated on social media showing suspected cases of sexual violence against Israeli captives by Hamas fighters, according to the Times of Israel.
Organizations including the United Nations, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and B’tselem have long advocated for Palestinian human rights and a peaceful resolution to the Israeli occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Palestinians have also staged numerous peaceful protests, including the Great March of Return in 2018, in which Israeli forces killed over 200 peaceful Palestinian demonstrators and injured approximately 36,000, and the ongoing work of Human Rights Defenders, an advocacy organization based in Hebron which models its methods on non-violent techniques from the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, in hopes of attaining peace.
Many Palestinians are frustrated at what they see as lack of progress achieved by these avenues and by the failure of diplomatic negotiations to change the harsh day-to-day reality of living under occupation.
“I’ve heard some of the stories about the human rights violations and honestly if they actually do that, that is wrong,” said Kris Azzeh, a Palestinian-Jordanian university student. “But at the same time, [Hamas] are the only ones trying to do something to free Palestine.”
Since the initial offensive, both Hamas and Israeli forces have killed hundreds of civilians. As of Wednesday, the death toll stands at over 1,100 Palestinian civilians in Gaza and 1,200 Israeli soldiers and civilians, with at least 5,000 Palestinians and 3,000 Israelis injured. In addition, Israeli forces have killed at least 1,500 Hamas fighters.
There was no intelligence “chatter” leading up to Hamas’ attacks into Israel, which took the Israeli military and the international intelligence community by complete surprise.
“The image of Israel’s security is completely broken,” said Badee Dwaik, a Palestinian human rights activist who works with Human Rights Defenders. “So they will try now to kill as many people as they can.”
Response from U.S. and Europe
The Israeli military is still recovering from the surprise attacks, which many are calling “unprecedented” in Israel’s history of blockading the Gaza Strip. In a speech in which he declared U.S. support for Israel’s right to defend itself, President Joe Biden called the attacks “appalling” and “unconscionable”; House Speaker Kevin McCarthy compared them to “Pearl Harbor” in a tweet. The U.S. has since sent a group of warships including an aircraft carrier and several destroyers to the Eastern Mediterranean Sea and has pledged to provide the Israeli military with additional weapons and munitions.
European leaders were just as quick to announce their support. “Europe stands with Israel,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. “And we fully support Israel’s right to defend itself.”
Dwaik saw Western leaders’ comments as hypocritical.
“They never say this for Palestinians, that we have a right to self-defense,” said Dwaik. “We are the people who are living under the occupation, we are the people paying the price in blood.”
The editorial board of Haaretz, an Israeli news outlet, wrote that “the disaster that befell Israel on the holiday of Simchat Torah is the clear responsibility of one person: Benjamin Netanyahu.” Calling Netanyahu’s far-right coalition “horrific”, the editorial pointed to the Prime Minister’s “overt” efforts to “carry out ethnic cleansing” in the Occupied West Bank as creating the opportunity for Hamas to attack on Saturday.
Historical context
Prior to this weekend, the 2.3 million people living in the Gaza Strip had been subject to a brutal blockade on movement, commerce, and basic necessities since 2007.
Without freedom of movement or regular access to electricity, high-quality medical care and jobs, Gazans have struggled tremendously under the blockade. The Israeli government has also killed 5,365 and injured 62,935 Palestinians in Gaza through bombing campaigns since 2008. Most of these victims were civilians; many were children, who make up nearly half of Gaza’s population.
Today, the UN estimates that a third of Gaza’s population needs psychological and social support as a result of “constant exposure to violence.” 65% live in poverty, a figure that has almost doubled since before the blockade.
“Israel has always been the oppressor and it’s occupied land,” said Azzeh. “Palestine is the one defending themselves, not Israel.”
Netanyahu orders siege on Gaza
Escalating retaliation against civilians in Gaza, Israeli Minister of Energy Israel Katz ordered all electricity in Gaza to be shut off on Saturday. Netanyahu ordered a siege on Gaza to begin Monday morning, stopping all electricity, food and fuel from entering Gaza. Human Rights Watch called the siege “a call to commit a war crime.”
In Denver, the Colorado Palestine Coalition held an emergency protest Saturday night in support of the Palestinian people’s right to self-defense and liberation. A coalition spokesperson said via Instagram that they were happy with the turnout of “about 100 people with five hours notice.”
While he’s scared for the violence to come, Dwaik saw the weekend’s attacks as a paradigm shift in Palestinian’s path to liberation.
“The first intifada shifted the [possibility of the] existence of a Palestinian state from imagination to reality,” said Dwaik. “Today, this complicated and complex operation shifted the reality of liberation from Israeli occupation from something in a dream to something more realistic.”
Correction: the initial version of this article did not clarify the number of Hamas fighters killed in Israel. In addition to the civilians killed in Gaza, Israeli forces have said that they’ve killed at least 1,500 Hamas fighters. The figure for the death toll in Israel includes Israeli military casualties which were estimated at 220 at the time of publication.
