As truly awful as October 7th 2023 was, one of the things that crossed my minds on that horrific, ghastly morning as I followed the news rolling in was how predictable the coming weeks would be.
October 7th was the inciting event in 2023, but previous conflicts had similar triggers. In 2006 it was a cross-border raid from Gaza by Hamas that killed several Israeli soldiers and saw the abduction of Gilad Shalit (who would end up spending five years in captivity in Gaza) and which was the prelude to the 2006 and 2008 Gaza Wars, which combined saw nearly 2000 Palestinians killed. The 2012 Gaza War (which saw over one hundred Palestinians killed) was triggered by a period of mutual acts of violence, culminating in a barrage of rockets fired at Israel from Gaza and the Israeli assassination of a senior Hamas commander that sent the entire region into yet another death spiral. The inciting event in 2014 was the abduction and murder of three Jewish teenagers in the occupied West Bank which set off a round of violence that culminated in the 2014 Gaza War (which killed well over 2000 Palestinians). The 2021 Gaza conflict (in which some 250 Palestinians were killed) was triggered by Hamas and Palestinian Jihad firing a barrage of rockets at Israel in response to an upsurge of violence in the city of Jerusalem that was itself triggered by Israeli attempts to expand their control over the disputed city.
Each conflict was characterized by enormous death tolls on the Palestinian side yet they followed that same predictable pattern, as if the combatants were following a script. After the inciting event, Israel would have what could be thought of as a period of grace from their allies. Within this period of grace, Israel would be allowed to conduct military operations within Gaza against the Palestinians. The grace was limited of course. The more devastation and death that the public in the majority of Israel’s western allies saw, the greater the clamour from those publics to get their governments to compel Israel to stop. Statements from most western allies would, over the duration of each campaign, get progressively harsher until eventually Israel exhausted the period of grace and stood down. They would declare they had fulfilled their objectives, and Hamas and other Palestinian groups would declare victory because they weren’t dead. And then the situation reset until triggered again, at which point events would play out in a very similar fashion. Israel even coined a term for it, ‘mowing the grass’. The strategy of course suited Israel, as it enabled them to continue their Blockade of the Gaza Strip (which has now persisted for twenty years) without having to seek a political solution.
We all grew familiar with his horrific routine.
And that is what we expected on October 7th as well. Everyone watching that horror unfold and who was even partially acquainted with the conflict knew that the Israeli response would only be different this time because it would be on a far grander scale than what we had ever seen before due to the sheer scale of Hamas’s assault and that thousands of Palestinians were likely to die as the period of grace Israel had received from their allies was of a greater depth and breadth than we had ever seen before. But that ultimately, once they had waded through more blood than they had ever shed before, they would be compelled to stand down.
Perhaps the war would be done by the end of November 2023 some mused. Then it became the New Year. Then Spring. Ceasefires in late 2023 and early 2025 raised hopes that this could mark a beginning of an end to the war, only for those hopes to be dashed later as Israel resumed the assault.
Talk of ‘the day after’ and reliance on what we had seen previously faded as a horrible realization dawned. This was not going to be like all the other times, and the period of grace we had relied upon to pressure Israel before into backing down was no longer applicable.
For Israel, the calculus had changed. For many, the status quo that allowed an enclave ruled by Hamas to exist next door to Israel was now intolerable, but for the extreme right-wing government in Israel it was an opportunity which for them is too good to pass up, and Benjamin Netanyahu (whose political survival and even personal freedom is dependent on these groups within his coalition) is happy to go along with them.
When the war ends, a reckoning awaits Netanyahu over his colossal failures on October 7th, which happened on his watch. It is worth remembering that the border with Gaza was lightly defended as the majority of Israeli forces were stationed in the West Bank, locking that territory down on behalf of the illegal Israeli Settler movement and the Israeli state was overconfident in the ability of its security fence to contain Hamas AND they had been expertly deceived by Hamas’s leader in Gaza, the certifiable psychopath Yahya Sinwar, into believing Hamas wanted calm. On this Netanyahu was too clever by half, he allowed Hamas to build itself up as a competitor to the West Bank-based Fatah movement in a divide and rule strategy that precluded the emergence of a Palestinian partner for peace. He allowed himself to be deceived.
A majority of Israelis want to end the war to save the remaining hostages. “Recent polling by Israel’s Channel 12 found that 61% of Israelis want to end the war and see the hostages returned. Just 25% support expanding the fighting and occupying Gaza” as this BBC report states. Opinion polling for the next Knesset election in 2026 makes grim reading for Netanyahu. A report in Haaretz (which has the figure for ending the war to save the hostages at 67%) shows that if the election were held today the current coalition would lose seats with Netanyahu’s Likud party losing 12 of their current 32 seats, a result that would likely make his position untenable and expose him to facing the consequences of his actions, both domestic and for his negligence over October 7th. Accountability is something Netanyahu has been desperate to avoid at all costs, even to the point of provoking a constitutional crisis within Israel prior to the war (a crisis which helped convince Yahya Sinwar that the moment was ripe for his attack as he perceived the Israeli public to be deeply divided).
To stave it off, he needs the support of the extreme right-wingers in his government to sustain his existing coalition, and it is increasingly clear that the retrieval of the hostages is at best a secondary prize for his government. His only chance for himself is to achieve a victory so stunning that voters in Israel forget it was his mismanagement that led to the attack in the first place (and which has led their country to pariah status) though it does give me pause to realize he accepted the deaths of tens of thousands of people as an acceptable alternative to facing the music, which he may end up doing anyway if he loses his position as Prime Minister or is convicted of the crimes he is accused of.
Two extra years of power at the cost of a hundred thousand lives, that’s the bargain he struck with the extreme right of Israel. And this bargain isn’t a secret one. It is plain for all to see.
The finance minister and extreme right-winger Bezalel Smotrich didn’t even bother to hide the real goal.
An Israeli government minister has vowed that “Gaza will be entirely destroyed” as a result of an Israeli military victory, and that its Palestinian population will “leave in great numbers to third countries”, raising fears of ethnic cleansing in the occupied territory.
The declaration on Tuesday by the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, came a day after Israel’s security cabinet approved a plan for Operation Gideon’s Chariots, which an Israeli official said would entail “the conquest of the Gaza Strip and the holding of the territories”.
If you watched Louis Theroux’s excellent documentary ‘The Settlers’, you are introduced to a community for whom all international law and even common humanity are superseded by their own reading of the Torah under which the land in both the West Bank and Gaza belongs to the Jewish people because God gave it to them. It is from this movement that the Israeli extreme right, now empowered in government, draws much of its strength and they see a potentially once-in-a-generation opportunity that must not be squandered. They dream of settling Gaza with Jews, ‘redeeming the land’ in Zionist terminology and that, by its very nature, involves removing the population who are already there.
And to the immense horror of the rest of the world, they are seizing the chance with gusto. For the past several months, Israel has increasingly used food as a weapon of war in Gaza. Now lest there be any doubt, this is a war crime. Netanyahu protests Hamas is stealing all the food that goes into Gaza and using the funds to keep the war going and that otherwise food is plentiful. Whilst I wouldn’t put it past Hamas to do that, and indeed many of the few trucks that are allowed into Gaza are ransacked long before they make it to distribution points, if you believe Netanyahu that the food is otherwise plentiful you’ll also be thrilled to know he may just have a bridge to sell you.
It has paved the way for Operation Gideon’s Chariots, that is a full out military assault which is the next step of this plan and which involves seizing territory, occupying and ‘relocating’ the Palestinian population. We of course know what this is.
I have always striven to be balanced on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I won’t deny that I regard the creation of Israel as a historic mistake, one that occurred at the one moment in time it could have, as it came at the expense of another people, but I have also argued that undoing that mistake would simply be creating another equal tragedy. I have always felt that the two-state solution was the best way to solve the conflict, and even as unlikely as it feels now, I still think it is the best way to solve it. I have never sought to see the Israelis as inherently monstrous or the Palestinians and those who are friends of their cause as inherently virtuous because of circumstance. The horrific murder of two young Israelis in Washington DC by a man chanting ‘Free Palestine’ underscores this.
There has been good, and there has been bad and there has been blame to share.
But as the author Jonathan Foster once put it to budding journalists, “If someone says it’s raining and another person says it’s dry, it’s not your job to quote them both. It’s your job to look out the window and find out which is true.”
And that is why what I say next is not a pleasant thing to write. The balance between the two sides is now lopsided to the point of absurdity and makes a joke of the phrase ‘Israeli-Palestinian conflict’, evoking as it does the idea of two evenly matched opponents. Right now, at this very moment, Israel is committing genocide. This is what a genocide is. This is what it looks like. Mass death, the destruction of cities, the annihilation of infrastructure, the use of starvation and famines, dispossession, forced movement and people planning to make use of the land once the Palestinians have been removed.
When ‘never again’ was coined as a phrase I bet those who said it imagined that any future genocides would have to be furtive things, conducted in secret and hidden from public view. I bet they never thought that in actual fact the real trick was to do it in public so that everyone watching grew increasingly numb from the carnage whilst the perpetrators essentially said that we shouldn’t believe our lying eyes and whilst politicking stymied friendly governments from pointing out the obvious.
Israel is committing genocide, and as a self-professed Western Democracy we hold them to a higher standard than dictators and autocrats, and we find them severely wanting. They have exhausted the patience of most of their allies and sickened the world.
The UK, France and Canada sent a warning to Israel earlier this week
“We strongly oppose the expansion of Israel’s military operations in Gaza. The level of human suffering in Gaza is intolerable. Yesterday’s announcement that Israel will allow a basic quantity of food into Gaza is wholly inadequate. We call on the Israeli Government to stop its military operations in Gaza and immediately allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza. This must include engaging with the UN to ensure a return to delivery of aid in line with humanitarian principles. We call on Hamas to release immediately the remaining hostages they have so cruelly held since 7 October 2023.
The Israeli Government’s denial of essential humanitarian assistance to the civilian population is unacceptable and risks breaching International Humanitarian Law. We condemn the abhorrent language used recently by members of the Israeli Government, threatening that, in their despair at the destruction of Gaza, civilians will start to relocate. Permanent forced displacement is a breach of international humanitarian law.
Israel suffered a heinous attack on October 7. We have always supported Israel’s right to defend Israelis against terrorism. But this escalation is wholly disproportionate.
We will not stand by while the Netanyahu Government pursues these egregious actions. If Israel does not cease the renewed military offensive and lift its restrictions on humanitarian aid, we will take further concrete actions in response.”
The sympathy gained from October 7th has been squandered in an orgy of bloodletting. In earlier conflicts, a warning this severe would be the point at which we could say the ‘period of grace’ has run out and expect a winding down of Israeli operations. But this war has gone on for far longer than any other, and Israel has found that it could push further than it ever had before with little to no resistance from its allies.
There is no end in sight. A few months ago, I wrote an article that asked ‘What was it all for?’ given that I believed neither side had won. It was written at the start of the last ceasefire, and represented a too optimistic hope that the violence would wind down from that point and that an accounting of what had happened could take place. Far too optimistic as it turns out.
Israel can still win as Netanyahu dreams, but only at the cost of the soul of his country. He may reckon that is another bargain worth striking…
I’d like to give the final word on this piece to Ghada Ageel, a Palestinian professor at the department of Political Science at the University of Alberta, who wrote for Al-Jazeera recently. She pointed out that Palestinians have named those events which have left an indelible and tragic mark on their history. The original expulsion of 1948, they call that ‘the Nakba’ (the Catastrophe). The defeat in the Six Days War which saw the West Bank and Gaza come under Israeli control? That’s ‘the Naksa’ (the Setback). But what has unfolded in Gaza this past year and a half? An entirely new term is needed.
“As such, the word “Nakba” is not appropriate or sufficient to describe what is being done to my people and my homeland today. There is a need for new language – new terminology that accurately describes the reality of this new phase of the Palestinian catastrophe. We need a new word that could hopefully help focus the averted eyes of the world on Palestine….
I propose a new term – al-Ibādah or the Destruction – to define this latest phase of the Nakba. The term reflects the horrifying rhetoric employed by Smotrich and numerous other Zionist fascist leaders and captures the comprehensive and systematic erasure under way not only in Gaza, but across historic Palestine. Al-Ibādah is capacious enough to encompass multiple forms of targeted annihilation, including democide, medicide, ecocide, scholasticide, culturicide and others.
In Arabic, the phrase for genocide, “al-Ibādah jamāʿiyyah” meaning “the annihilation of everyone and everything” has the word al-Ibādah as its root. The proposed term al-Ibādah intentionally truncates this phrase, transforming it into a concept that signifies a permanent and definitive condition of destruction. While it does not assign a specific geographical location, it draws conceptual strength from the work of Pankaj Mishra (The World After Gaza), who argues that the treatment of Palestinians in Gaza represents a qualitatively distinct form of genocidal violence. According to Mishra, Gaza constitutes the front line of Western neocolonial and neoliberal projects, which seek to consolidate global order around the ideology of white supremacy. By pairing the definite article with the noun, al-Ibādah asserts this condition as a historical rupture – a moment that demands recognition as a turning point in both Palestinian experience and global conscience.
And speech does have power. In the Irish play Translations, which documents the linguistic destruction of the Irish language by the British army in the early 1800s, the playwright Brian Friel explains how by naming a thing we give it power, we “make it real”. So in a final act of desperation, let the commemoration of this year’s Nakba be the time when we name this thing and make it real: al-Ibādah, the Destruction.”
And future generations will know that this was livestreamed.
I’m a firm believer in Irish unity and I live in the border regions of Tyrone.
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