Just over a year ago, Basem Naim, former Palestinian minister and head of international relations for Hamas, assured EL PAÍS in Gaza, where the Islamists have ruled de facto for more than three decades, that the decision to stay away from escalation of the war between the Israeli armed forces and the (pro-Iranian) militias of Islamic Jihad marked a turning point in its organization. Last year, Hamas waged its fourth open war with Israel, after 2008-2009, 2012 and especially 2014.
“Even before the Israeli offensive in May 2021, the situation in Gaza was very bad due to the blockade, lack of electricity or water pollution, as well as poverty and unemployment. Now it’s even worse,” he explained his pragmatic position. “The next explosion is only a matter of time and will not occur in the very distant future,” he warned, “as Gaza is dying every day.”
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In a discreet document on its official website on Friday afternoon, Hamas commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War (October War in the Arab world), which was unexpectedly launched by several Arab countries on the Day of Atonement and paralyzed daily life in Jewish Country. “Resistance is the only way to end the occupation,” was the message at the start of the Sabbath day that ended the week of Sukkot, the popular Jewish festival of Tabernacles, or Tabernacles. An image of Egyptian troops crossing the Suez Canal on October 6, 1973 to recapture the Sinai Peninsula occupied by Israel seven years earlier showed red lines drawn to cross.
Hamas claims it has now launched cyberattacks to sabotage electronic surveillance systems, while a massive wave of more than 5,000 rockets in successive bursts toward southern and central Israel overwhelmed the Iron Dome missile defense shield like a tsunami of projectiles. The curtain of fire from the Palestinian Strip provided a smokescreen to encourage the infiltration of elite commandos from the Ezedin al-Qasam Brigades, Hamas’ armed wing, into neighboring kibbutzim (collective farms) with the aim of capturing civilian hostages and Israeli military personnel. To do this, they broke down barriers and walls with excavators and entered enemy territory with vehicles and motorized paragliders.
It is the worst nightmare for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, which was forced to release a thousand Palestinian prisoners in 2011 in return for the release of soldier Gilad Shalit, who had been kidnapped by Hamas in Gaza for five years. The Islamic resistance movement has crossed the red lines it had set for itself since the end of the Gaza conflict in 2014, the longest following the struggle for Jewish state independence and the deadliest since the Six-Day War in which Israel occupied the West Bank and Syria’s Golan Heights as well Sinai, which it returned to Egypt after signing a peace agreement in 1979.
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This Saturday in Sderot (Israel) there are still several bodies lying on the streets. AMMAR AWAD (Portal)
Israeli soldiers passed the body of a civilian shot in his vehicle in the city of Sderot.Ohad Zwigenberg (AP)
A column of smoke rises this Saturday over some buildings attacked by Israel in the Gaza Strip. MAHMUD HAMS (AFP)
An Israeli civilian was taken to Gaza in a golf cart by Palestinian militiamen and captured in southern Israel. – (AFP)
A dog remains in a vehicle attacked by terrorists on a street in the Israeli city of Sderot this Saturday. AMMAR AWAD (Portal)
Several Israeli soldiers next to the bodies of civilians murdered this Saturday in the streets of Sderot (Israel). Ohad Zwigenberg (AP)
A man walks next to the rubble of a collapsed building in Gaza this Saturday after the Israeli army’s attack. Fatima Shbair (AP)
An Israeli woman was transported through Gaza on a motorcycle this Saturday after being abducted by Palestinian militiamen at Kibbutz Kfar Azza. Hatem Ali (AP)
An Israeli woman wept this Saturday next to the body of a person shot while riding a motorcycle on a street in Sderot.Baz Ratner (AP)
A Palestinian child next to a burning Israeli vehicle that armed Palestinians brought into Gaza this Saturday after infiltrating areas in southern Israel. STRINGER (Portal)
An Israeli police officer covered a fallen Palestinian attacker near the Gaza Strip on the outskirts of Ashkelon. Associated Press/LaPresse (APN)
A group of Palestinians carry the body of a young Israeli murdered on the southern border between Israel and Gaza this Saturday. STRINGER (Portal)
A firefighter put out the flames of several vehicles after the Palestinian rocket attack in the city of Ashkelon, Israel, on Saturday. Tsafrir Abayov (AP)
This Saturday a Palestinian rocket was fired from Gaza against Israel. MOHAMMED SALEM (Portal)
A man fled the flames of several burned cars following Saturday’s Palestinian rocket attack in the Israeli city of Ashkelon. AMIR COHEN (Portal)
Several residents of the Israeli city of Ashkelon observed the damage to their homes following the attack from the Gaza Strip this Saturday. AMIR COHEN (Portal)
A firefighter puts out the flames of several vehicles after the Palestinian attack in the Israeli city of Ashkelon. AMIR COHEN (Portal)
A burning residential building in the city of Tel Aviv after the Palestinian attack. ITAI RON (Portal)
Two police officers carry a woman and a girl from an area affected by a Palestinian rocket fire in the city of Ashkelon this Saturday.Tsafrir Abayov (AP)
A building in the city of Gedera (Israel) is burning after it was hit by a Palestinian rocket this Saturday. ABIR SULTAN (EFE)
This Saturday, security forces transported an injured person after the attack by Palestinian militias in the Israeli city of Ashkelon. Oren Ziv (AP)
This Saturday, a woman inspected the damage caused to her home in the Israeli city of Ashkelon following the rocket attack from the Gaza Strip. AMIR COHEN (Portal)
Neighbors of the Israeli city of Ashkelon on the street after the rocket attack from the Gaza Strip. AMIR COHEN (Portal)
This Saturday rockets were fired from Gaza City into Israel. SAID KHATIB (AFP)
The head of the Ezedín al-Qasam Brigades, Mohammed Deif, blamed Israel this Saturday for the start of hostilities after accusing it of desecrating the holy sites of Islam on the Esplanade of Mosques in Jerusalem and of taking thousands of Palestinian prisoners in its of being mistreated in prison. The usual. The unbearable red line for the Islamists in Gaza is nothing other than the threat of an impending deal to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman was preparing to impose the dictates of realpolitik against Iran – in alliance with the greatest enemy of his main enemy – on his father, the elderly King Salman, who in turn had drawn the red line of the establishment of a Palestinian state as a prerequisite for establishing relations with the Israelis. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will plan a tour of the Middle East this month with stops in Jerusalem and Riyadh.
Hamas controls a civil administration that governs the lives of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents, 80% of whom survive thanks to international aid. “In Israel we have no one with whom we can negotiate a political solution. The main parties believe that there is only one Jewish state between the river [Jordán] and the sea [Mediterráneo], which leaves no room for a Palestinian state. They only offer to improve the living conditions of Palestinians,” Basem Naim emphasized in August last year. After 16 years in power, Hamas has become a de facto government, although the United States and the European Union continue to consider the organization a terrorist group.
Gaza’s Islamist leaders took a first step toward pragmatism in 2017 when they announced that they accepted the creation of a state of Palestine on the pre-1967 war borders (Gaza Strip, West Bank and East Jerusalem), although without recognizing this to the State of Israel . After the movement’s founding charter was revised, Ismail Haniye took over top leadership abroad and was replaced in the Gaza Strip by Yahya Sinwar, the former commander of the Ezedín al-Qasam militias. The latter spent 23 years in prison in Israel and was one of those released in 2011 in exchange for the release of soldier Shalit. Sinwar, considered a radical at the time of his appointment, had taken pragmatic measures to maintain the ceasefire that ended the war in 2014 through a long ceasefire, or hudna, to allow the Gaza Strip’s economy to be rebuilt. However, periodic offensives and skirmishes from time to time destroyed good political intentions.
Misery and protests in the Strip
The misery that exists in the Mediterranean region has sometimes led to social unrest, with protests being harshly suppressed. A thousand Gazans were interrogated by the Hamas-controlled security services after taking part in demonstrations in 2019 demanding economic improvements in the enclave’s main cities. Hundreds of them were arrested and dozens suffered severe torture in police custody.
This summer, thousands of demonstrators again took to the streets of Gaza to demand, under the slogan “We want to live,” an improvement in living conditions in an area the United Nations described as “uninhabitable” due to the impact of nearly two decades. the Israeli blockade of the 2.2 million people in the Gaza Strip. The unemployment rate is the highest on the planet. According to the World Bank, it rises to 46.6% (62.5% for those under 30). Two out of three Gazans rely on international aid to feed themselves (1.5 million people are registered as exiles with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA)). The only power station in the area barely covers 50%. Demand drops, resulting in power outages lasting between 12 and 18 hours per day. Almost 80% of the fresh water available in Gaza is unfit for human use. With no guaranteed access to the outside world, in one of the most densely populated areas and in a narrow coastal strip of 365 square kilometers – slightly larger than tiny Malta – 80% of the population lives below the poverty line.
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Essentially, the Islamic resistance movement Hamas is the Palestinian arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, the pan-Arab organization founded a century ago in Egypt (where it once triumphed in elections before being overthrown in a military coup in 2013). It is also spreading throughout Jordan and inspiring political Islamism, which comes to power in an autocratic manner in Turkey with electoral support and in Qatar. Hamas, founded during the First Intifada (1987-1991), has evolved from fundamentalist positions to a certain realism after exercising power in Gaza. After his uncontested victory in the 2006 parliamentary elections, he overthrew the government of Fatah, the nationalist party of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, by force the following year.
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