Hamas’s attack on October 7 last year took Israel back to “square zero”, a senior official said on the first anniversary of the group’s storming of southern Israel, AFP reports.

“Al-Aqsa flood returned the occupation to square zero and threatened its existence,” Khaled Meshaal, the former head of Hamas, said on the Al Arabiya TV station, using the group’s name for the attack.

Meshaal said last year’s Oct 7 attack was “a natural response to the occupation and its accelerating plans for settlement, siege and aggression against Al-Aqsa,” referring to the flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem’s Old City.

He also accused Israel of threatening Egypt and Jordan, despite long-standing peace agreements between the countries, saying “the enemy wants everyone in the region to be subject to him and he does this even with countries that do not fight him”.

He said that Israel “attacks Arab and Islamic national security everywhere”.