One year after, what has Hamas achieved?

Did the Hamas leadership think about the deadly consequences of its attack on Israel? How the unarmed and helpless people of Gaza are going to be massacred for days and months, while most of them are hiding, protected, in their tunnels? Indeed, does it take a genocide of this scale, to make Palestine an international issue? 

By Amit Sengupta

One year has passed since the dramatic and deadly attack by Hamas inside the occupied territory of Israel. The attack broke the myth that Israel has the most formidable security and surveillance system in the world. 

Almost 1200 Israelis were killed, including, reportedly, 400 soldiers. Around 250 hostages were taken by Hamas. One hundred of them are still somewhere out there, perhaps, rotting in the dark and dingy tunnels below the rubble in Gaza. 

Clearly, their leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, has no intention of getting them released, or, going for a ceasefire, despite their everyday condemnation, and the relentless suffering of their desperate families and loved ones. With this one-dimensional war having spilled over in Lebanon, at the behest of Israel, all he wants is war. 

And more dead bodies on either side. Many more mass murders of ordinary folks, women, kids. Mass suffering. 

While the world will continue to watch in silent horror. And the US, both Democrats and Republicans, will continue to fully support this infinite spiral of daily killings.

 Indeed, this has been one year, which seems to go on and on. Forever. 

As if it will never ever end. 

In this one-sided war waged on the tiny strip of Gaza in Palestine, even today, scores of people are being killed, children are being maimed, and blood flows like water in the rubble. Unofficial estimates claim that at least 10,000 people are still buried inside the rubble — all dead, of course.

As of now, the number of dead is 42,000, including 17,000 children. It is bound to increase every day.

Clearly, the blood is not only on the hands of Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu. It is on the entire American establishment led by Joe Biden, Anthony Blinken, Kamala Harris, among others. The history of barbarism must continue in its vicious cycle, as it is has continued all through in the past.  

The US government and its weapons industry will continue to supply bombs worth billions to Israel, so that it can continue to butcher innocent women and children inside refugee camps, mosques, hospitals and make-shift schools. The entire world will look on with shock and awe, as usual. And the world will go on, as usual, round and round, like a circus clown laughing at the tragedy with tears rolling down his cheeks.

To say that that history will take its revenge, one fated day, is as speculative and metaphysical, as the belief that justice will one day prevail. Will justice prevail — one day? 

Will the unarmed, bruatilized, dehumanized, degraded and demoralized people of Palestine ever get justice? 

Is it possible, in this lifetime, that the thousands of children who are now maimed, traumatized and stunted, and who will perhaps grow up to witness history repeating itself in the same manner when they are  young adults, that they can live in a free homeland?

Will Palestine ever be free?

According to media reports, in the last 24 hours itself, on the ‘second anniversary’ of the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, the bombing has continued relentlessly in Gaza. There are refugee camps, make-shift medical centers, schools and mosques. The Jabaliya camp is the center of activity with most of the internally displaced having taken shelter there. Including the refugee camps at Bureiji and Nusierat. 

The bombs have targeted all these camps. Killing people everyday since the last few days, including volunteers who have risked their lives to help the people.

Obviously, Israel says, they are the new underground centers of Hamas. Obviously, we know by now, when they can’t get through to the Hamas, hiding in the tunnels, they target civilians, who are out in the open, like waiting for target practice. 

Kill them, as and when they are tempted to kill human beings! Like the Nazis did in the concentration camps. That is the new Israeli strategy.

It is the same strategy that they are now practicing in Lebanon. Unable to get the Hezbollah, perhaps the biggest and most well-trained guerilla army in the world, hiding inside a gigantic network of underground tunnels and overground networks, they are bombing civilian areas in Beirut and elsewhere. 

That is why the sudden and provocative pager explosions — killing scores of people, and injuring thousands — their limbs, torso, faces, blown away, while they will now be compelled to live their lives like maimed creatures, condemned for ever. Why?

And, yet, America says that Israel has a right to protect its own security!

Meanwhile, the exodus, has yet again begun. From one ravaged landscape to another.

Over, 300,000 displaced refugees have now been asked by Tel Aviv to leave the refugee camps of Northern Gaza. Israel is now going to make it a militarized zone, in occupied Gaza. West Bank is already under their control, with a puppet administration in place.  Effectively, entire Palestine is now under the control of Israel, backed by Joe Biden etc, and the entire pro-Israel, cash-rich, powerful Jewish lobby in America and the West. America, of course, has its inherited lackeys — Britain, Germany and France. All with blood on their hands. 

So what has Hamas achieved after the attack on October 7?

Palestine has become an international issue. The International Court of Justice has pronounced its verdict against Israel. Almost the entire world stands against Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu is isolated and hated across the world, and by a large section of his own people.

Tens of thousands of people across the world have relentlessly protested against the genocide in Gaza. Students across America and the West have led protests for months, rejected their degrees, occupied campuses, booed Joe Biden and others, and did all they could. Even this week, thousands are out on the streets in London and elsewhere in solidarity with the people  of Gaza. 

And this will continue.

So will the bombings. In Gaza, in Beirut, and elsewhere in Lebanon.

And, now, in Iran. 

As Israel prepares for a massive strike in retaliation, with Iran having effectively targeted many of its military establishments, including in urban areas. The Iron Dome seems to have finally failed. People in almost all big cities in Israel are, reportedly, living underground. Indeed, it has not been easy for them, though no news trickles in beyond the Iron Dome. Israel too is in a state of siege.

Israel is in state of war. And with Hezbollah still waiting to strike big, this war is going to be long and bloody!

So what has Hamas achieved after the attack on October 7?

As many as 1200 Israelis dead. And how many Palestinians in Gaza? And how many more now in Iran and Lebanon?

As observers argue, it might be a successful strike tactically, breaking entrenched myths about Israel. However, did the Hamas leadership think about the deadly consequences? How the unarmed and helpless people of Gaza are going to be massacred in a daily ritual for days and months, while most of them are hiding, protected, in their tunnels?

Palestine has once again become an international issue. However, has the talks towards a two-nation solution moved one inch? Can the world stop the ongoing murders in Gaza?

No.

That is the crucial question. To argue that the killings and brutalization would have continued, in any case, as it has been since the last 70 plus years, does it take away from the bitter reality of contemporary Gaza? 

Indeed, does it take a genocide of this scale, in modern times, to make Palestine an international issue? 

If Hamas, indeed, wanted that!