The entire world shook when the Izz Ad-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, the army of Hamas group of Palestine, staged a daring armed action that shattered Israel’s terrorism and oppressive control over Gaza. The Al-Aqsa Flood operation began at dawn of October 7 by firing missiles aimed at Israeli’s bases and military forces.

This was followed by the assault of thousands of armed Palestinians that broke through the walls of Israel which imprisoned Gaza. They quickly overpowered and captured scores of Israeli forces.

Hamas declared that first, Al-Aqsa Flood was a defensive armed action in response to the people’s 75-year-old suffering under Israel’s brutal occupation. Second, that it abides by the laws of war, thereby targeting mainly Israel’s armed forces and giving primacy to the safety of civilians.

“For the past 75 years, the Palestinian people have been eager for freedom and self-determination,” the Hamas leadership said in a video statement. Enjoying this basic human right has been obstructed by Israeli occupation and the failure of the international community to stand by their obligations in line with the many resolutions of the United Nations guaranteeing Palestine’s national rights.

“No one can deny the right of any people under the occupation to resist their occupiers by all available means including armed resistance,” Hamas said. It said it has repeatedly warned of the explosion of the Palestinian people’s wrath over Israel’s impunity and grave atrocities. These include Israeli forces’ repeated invasion of the Al-Aqsa mosque, which Palestinians consider sacred, occupation of their remaining areas in Jerusalem, and atrocities against political prisoners. Hamas also cited Israel’s 17-year relentless siege of Gaza and the construction of a wall to keep millions of Palestinians inside the so-called “biggest open-air prison.”

“The heroic Palestinian resistance has opened a chapter of battles of dignity”, declared the Masar Badil (Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement).

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine also called on all Palestinians in the West Bank, Al Quds and territories occupied by Israel to “move and ignite a comprehensive intifada in the face of this criminal enemy and herds of its settlers” in response to the Israeli massacre.

Brutal occupation

The Palestine nation was violently crushed in 1948 in the so-called Al Nakba (The Catastrophe) which came with the formation of the Israeli state. An estimated 500 communities were destroyed, 15,000 Palestinians were killed and 750,000 were evicted by then paramilitary Zionists. It occupied 78% of the then Palestinian nation, driving Palestinians to separate settlements in the West Bank and Gaza.

The following decades saw thousands of Palestinians killed and millions evacuated by the Zionist regime’s insatiable divestment of land and resources. Up to 250 “settlements” were illegally built in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. In East Jerusalem alone, Israel seized up to 100,000 hectares.

The Zionist regime took over the wealth and resources and every aspect of Palestinian life, especially in the West Bank. In collusion with Palestinian Authority, established and funded by Israel and the US, it set up a fascist machinery to suppress all Palestinian people’s struggles and gradually annihilate them. In addition to the daily oppression and violence, at least four major military campaigns have been launched at Gaza since 2007 in an attempt to subjugate and eventually silence the people’s resistance here.