by MIKAIL AHMED SHAIKH
A look into the group’s origins and history may explain the violent nature of the ongoing conflict.
The attacks of October 7, 2023, saw over 1,000 people killed in Israel, while over 250 were taken hostage by Hamas. Israel was caught off guard, as was the rest of the world. Nobody saw it coming, nor did anyone see the Israeli military’s retaliatory scorched-earth campaign in the Gaza Strip.
It’s been over a year since that day, during which time Gaza has borne witness to one of the bloodiest conflicts in the region in decades.
Over 42,000 people have been killed in Gaza, with Israel no closer to rescuing the hostages, although the Israeli military assassinated Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in July and his successor Yahya Sinwar in October, who was the alleged mastermind of the October 7 attacks.
Meanwhile, South Africa has filed a “genocide” case against Israel with the International Court of Justice, while the International Criminal Court has applied for arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes.
Attempts at truce talks and mediation have thus far failed and with an extensive bombing spree in Lebanon having followed — which killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah — there is a very real fear of the conflict expanding into a regional conflagration.
So, it warrants asking why Hamas attacked Israelis in the first place. An attack that led to one of the most violent asymmetric conflicts of the 21st century.
According to a 2023 analysis by Joe Macaron for Qatari state-run broadcaster Al Jazeera, Hamas’ attack was triggered following “growing demands for a response” to far-right Israeli policy in the occupied West Bank, especially surrounding illegal settlements.
“The rising tensions in the West Bank caused by these policies necessitated the shift of Israeli forces away from the south and into the north to guard the settlements,” Macaron writes. “This gave Hamas both a justification and an opportunity to attack.”
Moreover, Macaron argues that the normalisation of Arab-Israeli relations was an additional motive for the attack since the process “further diminished the significance of the Palestinian issue for Arab leaders who became less keen on pressuring Israel on this matter”.
On the other hand, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) a bipartisan, nonprofit policy research organisation, argues, “One of Hamas’s goals was simply to kill Israelis,” citing a report by The Washington Post which reported that attackers had written instructions to do so.
The CSIS piece also suggests that Hamas was driven by revenge for past Israeli violence and the illegal occupation of the West Bank.
Alternatively, a senior Hamas official told Al Jazeera in October 2023 that the group took hostages and expressed hope that the kidnappings would ensure the release of “all” Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
“We managed to kill and capture many Israeli soldiers,” said Hamas deputy chief Saleh al-Arouri. “Our detainees in [Israeli] prisons, their freedom is looming large. What we have in our hands will release all our prisoners. The longer fighting continues, the higher the number of prisoners will become.”
But the answer to why the attack was launched on Israel perhaps lies in the group’s past, in how Tel Aviv or the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood influenced the genesis of the group to control the Palestinian sphere of influence before it eventually became powerful enough to outgrow its creators.
October 7
Fighters from the Palestinian group Hamas attacked Israeli towns on Oct 7, 2023, killing and capturing scores of civilians and soldiers in a surprise assault.
The worst attack on Israel for decades unleashed a conflict that both sides vowed to escalate. According to the Rand Corporation, a US-based think tank, at least 1,200 Israelis were killed on October 7, with 250 others taken hostage and moved to the Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile, in retaliatory airstrikes that began the same day, Palestinian health officials reported that more than 230 people were killed and 1,600 were wounded in the Gaza Strip. That number has since ballooned to 42,847 fatalities as of October 24, 2024.
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