CHARLES PIERCE—Hamas and PIJ had demonstrated a willingness to establish and maintain truces (long-term and short-term) with the Zionist state. Israel, however, evidently expected, despite cease-fires in effect, to have impunity as it perpetrated attacks, including assassinations, upon Palestinian resistance organizations. When resistance organizations responded with counter-attacks; Israel subjected Gaza to grossly disproportionate violence. Moreover, the current extreme racist Israeli government increased its persecutions and violations of Palestinian human rights: impunity for settler attacks upon West Bank Palestinians; stepped up grabs of land and water rights; dispossessions and expulsions; arbitrary detentions; increased killings of unarmed Palestinians; blocking of Muslim access to the Al-Aqsa Mosque; continued assassinations of resistance leaders; etc. Finally, Hamas responded with its “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood” (October 7, 2023) against Israeli forces in areas around Gaza.
