Palestinian October: Between Trial, Evaluation, and Summary

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

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

Since the news of Hamas's success in invading the Gaza envelope settlements and killing and capturing hundreds of Israelis, a feeling has spread among the Palestinians that mixed admiration with fear of the Israeli reaction to it. This was a spontaneous feeling not unique to the Palestinians alone, but shared by the entire world.

The Israelis did not content themselves with responding to the flood in the same manner they had previously responded to military operations launched from Gaza, such as retaliatory bombings, tightening the siege, and partial and temporary military incursions; rather, they developed their response to reach an actual genocide and total destruction.

On the political front, the situation has reached the point of working to destroy the Palestinian cause with a project to displace Gaza and intensify 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 harm on the people and the cause. In Gaza, where 'Hamas' has control, it believes it has done what should have been done in response to the long-standing suffocating siege imposed by Israel since 'Hamas' took over power. In the West Bank, where the official 'Fatah' authority is, there has been a complete silence with no official opinion on what transpired, based on the notion that 'Hamas' acted on its own accord and opened a war behind the back of the official authority. However, the silence did not last long, as voices emerged condemning what 'Hamas' did directly, which was 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, reaching Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen, it is important to read the overall situation as it 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, as Israel controls one hundred percent of Gaza through siege and firepower, controlling how many calories enter the sector, how many medicines and doses of water are available.

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 this appeal is futile. Israel, for its part, translates the American initiative regarding Gaza according to its interests rather than its texts, as Trump's 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 happened so far, although it has recorded 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 located, 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 calculated and anticipated. The situation does not stop at the loss of a rule that was never legitimate in Gaza; it has reached the point of negotiating what remains of their light weapons, which for Israel serves more as a means of blackmail than as a security threat.

Hamas has lost leaders and cadres from its own ranks, which it cannot compensate for, if it is still thinking about 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 heavy losses in the Gaza war, is that its only remaining support 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 still does, did not originate 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 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 the transfer of the issue of the long-awaited settlement from the hands of the Palestinians and Israelis to the world, particularly America. It 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 something far worse than all that has preceded it.