Sunday saw some beautiful images of joyous celebrations from the besieged people of Gaza who have endured unprecedented violence for 15 straight months with the most destructive weapons known to man dropped over their heads multiple times day and night. Those who survived the death machines raining terror from the skies were picked off by the genocidal Israeli terrorists sniping them from roof tops and behind window panes. Those lucky enough to survive both, succumbed to hunger and thirst courtesy of the inhuman blockade intensified since October 7, 2023, when the former Israeli war minister Yoav Gallant called all Palestinians in Gaza “human animals” and proceeded to deprive them of all essentials, including food and water.
Yet, the Palestinians in Gaza — nearly 10 percent of whom have been exterminated over the last 15 months — have emerged smiling after the guns fell silent on Sunday morning. They could finally sleep in peace with some assurance that a Zionist warplane won’t bury them in the rubble of their own house overnight. That their flimsy tents won’t go up in flames in the middle of the night, reducing everyone inside it to unrecognisable heaps of ash. That they won’t be getting rushed to a nearby barely-functioning hospital having lost a limb or two after a US-supplied bomb ripped through their fragile, emaciated body.
We were greeted with scenes that right until Sunday afternoon seemed impossible. There didn’t appear to be any end in sight to the Palestinian suffering. International institutions gave up any pretense of upholding international law a long time ago. Western politicians with their inaction revealed how firmly they have bought into the vile ideology of Zionism. The anger on the streets across the world couldn’t amount to much either.
Ultimately, the Palestinians got the ceasefire with their resilience and on their own terms. After a months-long battle that wasn’t just fought in the trenches by the resistance but also by the ordinary folk who contended with psychological warfare waged against their minds and with the grumbling innards deprived of nutrition, Palestinians across all strata of society showed incomparable resilience and steadfastness to come out with their heads held high. The resistance prevailed. Before the end of the day, 90 Palestinians suffering in Israeli dungeons could breathe free again. They could see their families again.
Among the many remarkable and uplifting images from the day was the ubiquitous sight of resistance men being greeted with waves, kisses, and adulation from their public whom they defended with all their might for 15 months. They oversaw a transfer of the three Israeli prisoners of war — complete with customised souvenirs, which in the case of one released prisoner read, “Issued by the Ezz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, a decision to release prisoner Emily Damari. Identity number: 316003581. Date of birth: 6/10/1996. Place of detention: Re’im. Place of residence: Kibbutz Kfar Aza. Place of work: Kibbutz Kfar Aza. Date of detention: 10/7/2023. Date of release: 1/19/2025.”
The conspicuous presence of Hamas throughout the enclave and its personnel taking charge of Gaza’s governance immediately after the ceasefire was a spear into the heart of the Israeli occupation. The genocidal Israeli public — a vast majority of whom gave full backing to their army’s assault on Gaza month after month — couldn’t comprehend the images that were being beamed into their screens. Hamas here, Hamas there, Hamas everywhere even after their criminal government carried out a months-long Holocaust and made explicit its intention of a “post-Hamas” Gaza. However, the stunning sequence of Israeli failures that began on October 7 forced even the rabid Zionists to acknowledge the victory of the Palestinian resistance. One Israeli commentator stated the forbidden obvious, “Vague terms like ‘toppling Hamas’ or ‘total victory’ are abstract slogans suited to literature and poetry, not realistic objectives for a responsible government confronting a brutal ideological adversary.”
The genocidaires couldn’t achieve any of their stated genocidal goals despite being armed to the teeth by the world’s strongest militaries and being provided diplomatic shield at international forums. Their every request for weapons shipment was granted in a jiffy. They dropped 2,000-pound incendiary bombs on ramshackle tents without consequence. They dismantled hospital after hospital with impunity. They raped and tortured innocent Palestinians, including children, they abducted without so much as a rap on the wrist. Still, the resistance rubbed the Israeli noses in the sands of Gaza — and got what it wanted from the Al-Aqsa Flood operation: an exchange of prisoners. It will get 1,900 Palestinians — 290 of whom have been serving life sentences — out of the Zionist dungeons in the first phase of the ceasefire deal and many hundreds will likely be free again in the subsequent two phases. While the vile Zionist leadership sold their vile genocidal public dreams of settling northern Gaza with beachfront condos built on the blood and bones of Palestinian children, not an inch of Gaza has been ceded by the Palestinians.
Indeed, Palestinians have endured insufferable pain in the process, but their resilience in the face of a live-streamed Holocaust has bared the true nature of their adversary to the whole world. Let no one fool you into thinking there was ever going to be a peaceful way to liberation for the Palestinians. All means to a peaceful resolution had been exhausted before October 7. In his speech marking the one-year anniversary of the Al-Aqsa Flood, Abu Obeida, the Al-Qassam Brigades spokesman, laid out the factors that necessitated October 7, “Our decision to ignite the Battle of Al-Aqsa Flood was a cry in the face of the enemy and the silent, conspiratorial, or helpless world in the face of the oppression of our people. The current occupation government, with its terrorist hatred, does not want to see a Palestinian west of the Jordan River. This is what Netanyahu expressed in his maps that he presented to the world.” Simply put, there was no other way out for the Palestinians to make themselves heard.
The Israeli genocide, which was relatively discrete until October 7, accelerated after that day. What was hidden until then has come to the fore. And it has revealed the ghastly nature of the Israeli occupation in all its nakedness. The Palestinian cause will not fade into the background ever again. It has been placed firmly on the map.
In his address on Sunday, Abu Obeida gave an assessment of the achievements of the past 15 months, remarking that the Israeli occupation is “the greatest sin of our time” and that its existence impacts everyone.
“The Battle of Al-Aqsa Flood began on Gaza’s border, but it changed the face of the region — indeed, far beyond it — and introduced new equations into the struggle against the occupying entity,” said Abu Obeida. “The shock that befell the Zionist entity in this battle — starting with the collapse of its so-called deterrence, the killing and wounding of thousands of its soldiers, destroying and disabling nearly 2,000 of its military vehicles, damaging the foundations of what it calls its national security, striking a severe blow to its economy, forcing displacement of large areas of the occupied land, opening multiple fronts against it, besieging it by sea, and forcing it to hide, to seek refuge, and to plead with global powers to defend it — all of this in addition to exposing it as a barbaric, criminal entity, tarnishing its image, and exposing those who back it, the tyrants of the world and their hollow organisations, culminating in its condemnation, the prosecution of its leaders and its soldiers as war criminals wanted for justice — all of this and more has convinced the vast majority of the peoples of the world that this occupation is the greatest sin of our time, and that its continued occupation of our land impacts the entire region and the world.”
The Qassam spokesman then made some prescient remarks that the global public would do well to heed, “And the silence and collusion of oppressive powers in the so-called international community regarding the enemy’s crimes in Gaza will have far-reaching effects, well beyond Gaza, and will be disastrous for the occupation and all those who support it, for those who collude with it, those who fail to act, and the tyrants, let alone the Zionist entity itself.”
Yahya Sinwar, the architect of Al-Aqsa Flood operation, served over two decades of his life in the Israeli dungeons before his release in the Wafa al-Ahrar exchange deal of 2011. At the time of his release, he had vowed to free all the Palestinian captives in the Israeli dungeons. The Al-Aqsa Flood was a step in that direction. Sinwar isn’t there to see the day his operation managed to free thousands of his compatriots in the Toufan al-Ahrar exchange, but the flood that he initiated on October 7 has achieved way more than liberating Palestinian captives: it has exposed the reality of the occupation he spent his whole life fighting in all its ugliness and, in the process, threatens to drown it out of existence once and for all.
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Thanks for this synopsis of the last 15 months centered on resistance. Because The West will try to erase our memory with their propaganda from the professors of our places for education that will get published and serialized. They told us we weren’t seeing the Nakba, the hysteria will rise to subvert solidarity and salvation. In reality the resistance vanquished“the tyrants of the world and their hollow organisations, culminating in its condemnation, the prosecution of its leaders and its soldiers as war criminals wanted for justice.”
We haven seen more than the ghastly nature of the Israeli occupation. We’ve also seen the real face of of the supposedly “liberal democratic western” empire that employs the Israeli regime as a battering ram in its attempt to colonize the entire planet.