As spectacular as the infiltration from Gaza – the concentration camp – and the ensuing attacks inside southern settler towns in Israel, seized from indigenous Palestinians during the past ethnic cleansing, the reasons for these actions are clear to anyone who looks at them with an open mind and a sense of justice.
These resisters are driven by the suffering of their people, which has resulted from the wholesale theft of their land, ethnic cleansing and increasing genocide, as a result of the racist Zionist project that arose even before the establishment of Israel 75 years ago. They were motivated by the justice of the Palestinian cause and the struggle for freedom.
After five hundred Palestinian villages were wiped out in 1967 to cover them with artificial forests, the Netanyahu regime now aims to wipe Gaza off the face of the earth if it manages to get away with it. The Israeli military commander refers to Palestinians as animals.
Inhumane blockade
The current resistance comes after 16 years of an inhumane blockade of Gaza, which has seen – along with famine and deprivation – a series of shelling from land, sea and air by Israeli forces.
These attacks have killed thousands of women and children, and entire families, amid a fascist wave of collective punishment. The words of a survivor of the raid on an Israeli music festival near the border with Gaza mock the endless chorus of Western leaders and media claiming that the attacks – no matter how shocking they were – were "unjustified."
"You can thank the Israeli government for terrorizing Palestinians daily and radicalizing the opposition to behave in this way," he said. These Western leaders and media have been part of Israel's provocations and warmongs throughout its history, and in its impunity for its crimes against humanity and punishment.
In the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, regular military attacks, massacres by bloodthirsty settlers under the slogan "kill Arabs" and land grabbing for illegal settlements have terrorized Palestinians. The resistance in cities such as Jenin and Nablus, against the daily nightmare of military occupation, signaled a new phase of armed struggle before the attack on Gaza.
The worst ordeal
South Africans – who fought for freedom time and time again – have compared the plight of Palestinians to ours, describing it as worse. The situation has become even more provocative under Netanyahu's far-right regime, a logical development of Zionism, with Interior Minister Ben Gvir proud to call himself a fascist. We have suffered atrocities and horrific massacres, but never before have we suffered on the scale committed by the Israeli army against the Palestinians.
Like them, our people have suffered from land deprivation, the abolition of rights and the loss of freedoms, so we resorted to armed action for the same reason that prompted the Palestinians to do so, and there was no other option. In the final phase of our armed struggle, our leaders issued the call to "take the struggle to white areas" and make the country ungovernable; so that whites understand that we will not simply continue to allow the regime to confine death and destruction to our hands, to black towns and neighboring states.
We exposed the regime's lies that they were in control; that their intelligence, security, and defense capabilities were high, and that our efforts were ridiculous. The psychological impact on the oppressor and oppressed was incalculable. For the former it was full of awe, and for the latter it was inspired by hope. The apartheid regime in South Africa was forced to pay the price for its racist arrogance. This seems to be exactly what Operation Flood of Al-Aqsa achieved.
It is true that the people of Gaza will pay the price – and the price was high for these actions – but the famous journalist Mohammed Mahawesh, who was afraid for the life of his family, wrote: "For those of us who are watching Gaza from inside it besieged, the situation was nothing less than terrifying... The world was watching as we were, we lived here, trapped in this open prison longing for freedom. We have endured this presence for decades, and yet we have clung to our hope and determination to resist, if given the opportunity to do so. "
"What the world does not understand is that the Palestinian people have the right to use armed resistance in the struggle for freedom and to defend themselves against Israeli aggression." Indeed, many of those currently condemning Hamas's attacks on civilians remain completely silent while Israel commits unspeakable crimes against the Palestinian people, including collective punishment against Gazans. Any analysis or comment that fails to acknowledge this fact is not only hollow, but also immoral and degrading to humanity.
Whatever the outcome of this current episode of Palestine's protracted struggle for liberation from racist settler colonialism, and the carnage Israel is now committing, it should be noted that Hamas, operating under less favorable conditions, has taken guerrilla tactics to new heights. This ability and determination must be understood by the oppressor.
Jews around the world should remember the audacity and contempt for the death of those who participated in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, in which prisoners preferred to die fighting rather than surrender to death or be slaughtered like animals.
One remembers the audacity and contempt of death for our people who faced the enemy's guns with their own hands. At this point, we can only speculate on the impact of this Palestinian intifada on cooperating Arab states, and the fate of the Abraham Accords brokered by the United States.
Certainly, the Palestinian resistance holds a trump card: the prisoners it is holding for exchange with detainees in Israeli prisons, including women and children. Of course, one feels humane towards civilians – women, children and the elderly – if not towards those who are soldiers in a criminal occupation army.
As soon as possible
If Israel is interested in these "abductees," it must relieve them and their families of the ordeal as soon as possible, end the brutal assault on Gaza, and negotiate a prisoner exchange. No one should enjoy human suffering, but the responsibility for death and destruction lies with those responsible for oppression. Do not expect pity from those who have been imprisoned in the most horrific conditions imposed by Israel all these years.
As with the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, the international community needs to strengthen global solidarity with the Palestinian people and more so now struggle against the unholy alliance between the United States and Israel in a path of revenge war, to wipe out Gaza, while keeping Palestinians elsewhere within Israel's reach.
Palestinians continue to pay a heavy price for resistance, but not resisting means continuing to live as prisoners in the most terrible conditions. They are not the first in history to refuse submission. Their yearning for freedom, peace and justice is invincible.
If Palestinians can match the tactical prowess of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood by consolidating and developing a political strategy to establish an inclusive secular and democratic state, in contrast to Zionism, an end to racist settler colonialism, represented by Israel in its current structure, could be possible. It's a matter of time. This is the only way Muslims, Christians, Jews and others can coexist in peace and security in historic Palestine.