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On October 10, 2023, Hamas issued a statement[1] designating the upcoming Friday, October 13, 2023, as a day of general mobilization for the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operations. In the statement, it urged Palestinians in the West Bank and within Israel to participate in large-scale rallies and confront Israeli soldiers at every opportunity.

For more than a decade, Israel has clashed with Hamas in Gaza, with cycles of violence defined by periods of intense fighting followed by relative lulls. This brief summarizes a report focusing on a five-year period of this conflict — from the end of Operation Cast Lead in 2009 to the end of Operation Protective Edge in 2014.

On a Shabbat morning and a religious holiday, on October 7, Hamas operatives invaded Israel and carried out a Hamas Einsatzgruppen attack.[1] This war should not to be compared to the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when Israel was surprised by invading armies of Arab states. Hamas’s operatives cannot also not be compared to Islamic State terrorists.

MSF calls on all parties to the conflict to ensure the safety of civilians and medical facilities.

Early Saturday morning, October 7, the Palestinian militant group Hamas launched a major attack on various sites in Israel, including civilian gatherings and villages, firing rockets on multiple cities and taking scores of hostages. The Israeli government declared war on Hamas and began a massive counteroffensive in Gaza, launching a barrage of air strikes.

The US-brokered talks were making progress; that’s probably why Iran gave Hamas the green light.

This column was supposed to be about the momentum and promise of the US-brokered Saudi-Israel peace initiative, including how the kingdom went big by making Israeli-Palestinian peace part of the deal.

The likelihood of a fresh Turkish ground offensive in northern Syria appears to weaken after the unprecedented shooting down of a Turkish drone by the United States.

A suicide attack outside of Turkey’s national security directorate headquarters has become the latest justification for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s plan to create a 30-kilometer-deep (18 miles) “safe zone” along the country’s borders with Syria and Iraq to keep armed Kurdish groups away.

What happened?

In the early hours of 7 October, Hamas launched what it called Operation al-Aqsa Deluge, a multi-pronged attack on Israel, including Israeli border towns ringing the Gaza Strip. Thousands of rockets rained down on areas in Israel in the first few hours. These gave cover to Hamas militants, who sent armed drones to hit parts of Israel’s electronic border alarm system, broke through Israeli military posts and the security fence around Gaza, or flew over the barrier in motorised hang gliders, penetrating urban areas and killing or kidnapping Israelis, many of them civilians, including children and elderly people. Some militants tried to infiltrate Israel by sea.

With contacts aimed at promoting possible normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia in
the background, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi
attacked Israel and warned against the normalization process. The Supreme Leader of Iran
once again referred to Israel as a “cancer” and declared that normalizing relations with it would
be a gamble on a losing horse. The Iranian president stated that the liberation of Jerusalem
was a top priority for the Muslim nation and that normalizing relations with Israel would be a
setback for any government in the Muslim world.

The following is the full text of the speech by Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the Hamas Political Bureau, on the first day of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, 7 October, 2023, as reported by Al-Jazeera:

In the Name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.