( Three minute read)

The dangers of the situation exploding is a result of the continued occupation [and] the Palestinian people being deprived of their legitimate rights.

Most of the world condemned the attacks on Israel by Hamas but the truth is that this war comes after nearly two decades of the US and world leaders overlooking the more than 2 million people living in Gaza who endure a humanitarian nightmare, with its airspace and borders and sea under Israeli control

Israel’s extreme-right government over the past year has escalated the already brutal daily pain of occupation. Instances of Israeli security forces and Israeli settlers antagonizing Palestinians through violence are on the rise, from the pogrom on the city of Huwara to a new tempo of lethal raids on Jenin.

Israeli far right government ministers have been pursuing annexationist policies and sharing raging rhetoric; both incite further violent response from Palestinians and appear at a time when new militant groups have emerged that claim the mantle of the Palestinian cause.

The now-regular presence of Israeli Jews praying at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, one of Islam’s holiest sites, have further pressurized the situation.

The question must thus be asked to the Israeli government, the Biden administration, and Arab leaders: How did they forget about Palestinians? How did they so brazenly ignore Gaza?

The last time there was a prolonged clash between Israel and Hamas, in May 2021, the conflict lasted 11 days, resulting in the deaths of about 250 people in Gaza and 13 in Israel.

Yet within hours of the surprise attack launched early Saturday by Hamas against Israel, hundreds had already been killed.

This fight will have far more ramifications than previous clashes.

Image’s of resistance to the occupation will be widely circulated in the Arab world, and will endure long beyond this war. Its symbolic power cannot be underestimated.

Negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization have been frozen since 2014, so the symbolism of Hamas breaking through Israeli security barriers and wreaking havoc on Israel — including the kidnapping of at least one Israeli soldier as well as civilians — will resonate across Palestine, the Arab world, and beyond.

No Arab army has entered the territory of Israel since the 1948 war.

Israel and the United States have wished away Palestinians.

The terrible bloodshed of today’s attacks underscores the cost of doing so.

Because the US has long designated Hamas, the Palestinian militant political group with an Islamist worldview, as a terrorist organization, US officials can’t contact them and must work through third countries. It means that the US knowledge base and expertise on Gaza is not just low — it’s absent.

Gaza is in essence a refugee camp (about 70 percent of those living in Gaza come from families displaced from the 1948 war) and an open-air prison, according to human rights groups.

The United Nations describes the occupied territory as a “chronic humanitarian crisis.” Israel has blockaded Gaza since Hamas assumed control of the territory in 2007, and neighbouring Egypt to the south has also imposed severe restrictions on movement.

The current Israeli government has aggravated these realities, by increasing pressure on the Palestinians on multiple fronts: in Jerusalem, squeezing Gaza, assaults on Palestinian villages by settlers, with settler-politicians leading ministries in the Israeli government; and with annexationist policies like the recent major policy change putting the Israeli civilian government (not the Israeli military) in charge of the occupied West Bank.

Hamas’s attacks on Israel won’t change life for Palestinians, and Israel’s government will now use the full force of its advanced military in response. And given Israel’s state of emergency, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is now in talks with the opposition parties to pull together a unity government for the country.

But even if some of the most extreme settler voices currently in the Israeli cabinet are replaced by more mainstream Israeli voices, harsh policies against Palestinians across the West Bank and Gaza will continue.

The dread Israelis are feeling right now, myself included, is a sliver of what Palestinians have been feeling on a daily basis under the decades-long military regime in the West Bank, and under the siege and repeated assaults on Gaza,”

The only solution, as it has always been, is to bring an end of apartheid, occupation, and siege, and promote a future based on justice and equality.

In my opinion just like Northern Ireland there is no two state solution.

The state of Israel was established in 1948 on land that was at that time part of the British mandated territory of Palestine.

Northern Ireland emerged in 1920–22 as a constituent part of the United Kingdom with its own devolved parliament. There are differing views because of the history of conflict over the decision to divide up the island of Ireland, a political and cultural argument which is still going on today, with a one state for all, with equality, the only solution.

It is not in spite of the horror that we have to change course — it is exactly because of it.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

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