THREE years since the Oct 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, the people of Gaza continue to face a nightmarish existence. Israel has tightened its siege of the occupied Strip, while a supposed ceasefire has failed to stop the bloodshed. Moreover, the aftereffects of the event continue to reverberate across the Middle East, as Israel has gone on the rampage against several regional states, with the US joining some of these misadventures. The people of Gaza were living in abject misery before the Hamas attacks; the Palestinian resistance group’s actions — effectively an attempt to break the Israeli siege — only gave Tel Aviv an alibi to attack the occupied territory with greater ferocity. Over 74,000 people have been murdered in Gaza since Oct 2023, the vast majority of them civilians. Even a ceasefire in effect since Oct 2025 has failed to stop the violence, with over 1,400 killings during the ‘truce’. Whole families have been wiped out, and experts say Gaza’s people will live with these scars for generations. Aid group Doctors Without Borders says Israel is “asphyxiating Gaza … and continuing its genocide”. While this is the situation on the ground, the supposed peace process is stalled because Israel refuses to end its occupation, even though Hamas has agreed to hand over its weapons. Meanwhile in the West Bank, radical Jewish settlers have unleashed a reign of terror on the Palestinians. Beyond the occupied Palestinian territories, Israel has grabbed more Lebanese and Syrian land, while attacking Iran and Yemen.

The lessons from Oct 7 tell us that when a people are denied their basic human rights, are deprived of their ancestral land, and face obscene violence on a daily basis, they will fight back with any means necessary. Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians living under its occupation was criminal; its reaction to the Oct 7 attacks has been genocidal. Peace in the Middle East will be meaningless unless all occupied Palestinian territory is liberated, and Israel is made to pay for its murder of innocents. The two-state solution remains an unattainable dream thanks to Zionist intransigence, while other fanciful ‘solutions’ trumpeted by the Board of Peace are a cruel joke on the Palestinian people. There will be no peace unless there is justice for Palestine.

Published in Dawn, October 8th, 2026