Opinion | Israel-Gaza war: don’t rewrite the past and ignore Hamas’ brutality

The restrictions on Gaza did not give rise to the violence; it was violence that made the restrictions necessary in the first place

The first step to a better future is getting history right and freeing the Gaza Strip of Hamas control

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A woman, whose mother and niece were killed in Hamas’ attack on October 7, cries in the burned-out remains of her mother’s home in Kibbutz Nir Oz, in southern Israel, on October 30. Three members of the family - two children and their father - were kidnapped. Photo: Reuters

Published: 4:30pm, 18 Nov 2023

History is back-to-front for those who seek to justify Hamas’ terrorism. The restrictions on Gaza did not give rise to the violence; it was violence that made the restrictions necessary in the first place.

Some might seek to justify Hamas’ brutality as a response to the lack of progress in negotiating a political solution between Israel and the Palestinians. However, the 1988 Hamas charter calls for the total annihilation of the state of Israel and instead establishing a fundamentalist Islamic state.

Hamas embraces holy war, or jihad, to destroy any people who do not believe in its religious cult. Like Islamic State, Hamas doesn’t believe in political solutions but rather the death of others as a way to fulfil its political and religious goals. The brutality of its atrocities in Israel on October 7 – when 1,200 Israelis were slaughtered, burned alive and tortured to death and 238 others were abducted as hostages – is a reflection of that.

Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, uprooting its 8,000 citizens who lived there. Israeli citizens in Gaza lost their homes and schools, and they carried their cemetries with them. They left behind only the Israeli greenhouses in the hope that these would support the Palestinian agriculture sector.

While the withdrawal was unilateral, at the time, Israel and the Palestinian Authority signed an agreement on movement and access. This included the establishment of an international crossing on the Gaza-Egypt border. The crossing was controlled by the Palestinian Authority, under the supervision of monitors from the European Union. During the 19 months in which the crossing point was in operation, it was used by nearly 450,000 people, or about 1,500 a day.

But Hamas took control in 2007 and violently eliminated the Palestinian Authority’s presence in Gaza. The European monitors, fearful for their safety, fled and the crossing arrangements collapsed.

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