Op-Ed by Mei W.
The monopoly media has expressed the October 7 Palestinian counteroffensive Operation Al-Aqsa Flood as either a horrific act of barbarians or an unfortunate product of desperate people facing a desperate situation. Against these apparently opposed claims, which in reality unite in defense of imperialism, we should study the facts. The following are objectives outlined by one of its leaders’ statement (Haniyeh, 2023) that was released on the day of the operation and a contextualization of each point. These objectives make clear the significance of the operation as a strategic counteroffensive of the oppressed against imperialist aggression.
Stated first is the necessity to “liberate” Al-Aqsa Mosque, the mosque located in occupied East Jerusalem that is considered the third holiest site in Islam. Palestinian worshipers have frequently been assaulted, arrested, and banned from the mosque by Israeli forces for decades, and these attacks have increased in brutality over the past few years—with 170 worshipers injured in a single attack in 2021, and Israeli police raiding the mosque, beating worshipers with batons, using tear gas, and arresting over 400 worshipers during Ramadan last April.
Second, the statement indicates the necessity to resist the intensified colonization of the West Bank and Israeli aggression against the Palestinians there. According to Reuters, “Since January [2023], Israel has advanced 12,855 settler housing units across the West Bank,” which is the highest number of new settlements per year since these numbers began to be tracked. Settler violence surged in early 2023 in the West Bank, occurring on average three times per day before October, and September marked the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank in over two decades.
Third, the statement calls for the release of the over 6,000 Palestinians who have been detained without charge in Israeli prisons. According to Amnesty International, the number of Palestinian detainees had reached a 14-year high in 2023 before October 7th, and these prisoners have faced increased restrictions and aggression in February this year, including the closure of canteens, mandatory handcuffs outside of one’s room, prohibiting exercise, and shutting off hot water in bathrooms. Another military commander of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood stated in a speech that Israel has repeatedly rejected prisoner exchange deals with them in early 2023 (Times of Israel, 2023). In an interview with Al Jazeera on the same day, another leader of the Operation stated that they have captured enough Israeli soldiers to free all Palestinian prisoners, highlighting the centrality of this goal in motivating this particular counteroffensive.
Fourth, the statement asserts the necessity to resist the ever-increasing Israeli aggression and humanitarian crisis in Gaza caused by the Israeli blockade and exacerbated by the multiple wars that it has waged in Gaza. In the Operation leader’s words: “Gaza […] has been under this blockade for almost 20 years, made worse by four or five wars that have seen tens of thousands martyred and wounded, and destroyed homes [amidst] this humanitarian crisis in a giant prison that locks up more than 2.2 million of our people and our families.” Israel has imposed a blockade on the movement of goods and people in and out of Gaza since 2007, which has led to a humanitarian and economic crisis in Gaza, including a constant shortage of essential medicines and equipment where hospitals are unable to meet the need of patients and in many cases have to “sterilize and re-use single-use equipment due to the lack of critical items,” according to the WHO. Amidst this devastation, Israel has continued to wage wars of aggression in Gaza, killing 1,400 Palestinians in 2008 and 2,100 Palestinians in 2014 while displacing and injuring hundreds of thousands, including the displacement of over 1,200 Palestinians in May 2023 alone from Israeli airstrikes.
Fifth, the statement highlights the 75-year-long violence that has been inflicted on Palestinians in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1948 (today called Israel), and the necessity to liberate this land. The settler-colonial entity known as Israel and its violence on Palestinians are US imperialist oppression in essence, as summarized in a quote by the Peking Review in 1965: “Israel is a tool of aggression created by U.S. imperialism and a dagger pointed at the heart of the Arab world.” Millions of Palestinians have been displaced and tens of thousands killed since 1948 by the hands of Israel, while US imperialism funds this 75-year-long ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people by sending $3.8 billion in military funding annually on top of additional funding on request (Al Jazeera, 2023).
Finally, the statement denounces the normalization of relations with Israel and highlights the necessity of militancy in liberating Palestine. The speaker states: “All the normalization and recognition processes, all the agreements that have been signed [with Israel] can never put an end to this battle. It is the terrain that will put an end to this battle; it is these heroic fighters who will put an end to it; it is the blood of the pure martyrs and the heroic deeds of this people, its wounded and its prisoners that will put an end to it.” Since the late 1970s, in exchange for US funding and foreign investment, reactionary Arab governments have normalized relations with the Zionist entity and recognized its right to exist on Palestinian land, while countries such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain expressed an interest in establishing ties with Israel last September. The Operation leader states, “our beloved Arab countries must know that [Israel] is incapable of providing [them] with security or protection” and describes the Palestinian Resistance as “the battle of the entire Arab-Muslim community” and calls on everyone in “this community, wherever they may be in the world, to join in this battle, each in his own way, without delay or turning away.”
The main takeaway from this statement is that Operation Al-Aqsa Flood was launched with the objective to liberate Palestinian prisoners, the holy sites, and land of Palestine that has been occupied by the Zionist entity since 1948, in the context of the escalation of imperialist violence against Palestinians in scale and brutality over the past few years. In addition, the operation aimed to unite the Arab masses through an armed struggle for the liberation of Palestine, as more Arab and Third World regimes had been joining the list of reactionaries that normalize violence against Palestinians in exchange for US imperialist funding.
Since the 2021 popular uprising and upsurge in the Palestinian armed struggle, Palestinian resistance groups have increasingly united together in joint operation. This joint operation includes Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Islamic Jihad, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Lion’s Den, and the Jenin Brigade, among others, all who waged united armed struggle in Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7th. This unity is in contrast with the recent disunity of the Israeli forces that was at an all-time-high before the counteroffensive was launched. Israeli senior officials warned in August 2023 that “the readiness of the IDF for war had begun to weaken” due to “unprecedented strikes and protests by many Israelis.” This was also due to the resistance of thousands of Israeli youth against mandatory army service in the IDF. These protests were following Netanyahu’s “reforms to Israel’s basic laws that would bring the judiciary under legislative oversight,” which also deepened divisions within the Zionist ruling class itself. The operation was launched at the time of this increasing unity of the Palestinian Resistance forces, disunity of the Israeli ruling class, and contradictions between the Israeli ruling class and its masses. Lenin says that revolutionaries must utilize the contradictions and conflicts among imperialists and their lackeys and unite with the proletariat and oppressed people to weaken the enemy and strengthen the reserves of the revolutionary movement. Palestinians have taken matters into their own hands to push for the liberation of their land and people from their enemies–the Zionist ruling class and the US imperialists–at this strategic time.
The moral, military, and political victory of the Operation is clear. Palestinian resistance forces have proven that imperialists and their lackeys are not invincible. The Operation has shown that the oppressed can wage armed struggle even in the most highly surveilled and deprived conditions, and the armed resistance forces have consistently bloodied the IDF in guerrilla warfare since the ground invasion of Gaza began. Furthermore, resistance forces have pushed Israel to concede to their political objective of freeing Palestinian prisoners. The Zionist ruling class, on the other hand, has failed to fortify ‘national unity,’ as the historically exhibited unity of the Israeli people cannot be seen now. Finally, the operation has led to the mobilization and unity of the world’s masses in support of the Palestinian people. Palestinian resistance forces have once again demonstrated to the world that all the schemes engineered by imperialists and their lackeys will certainly be crushed when the oppressed peoples take up the gun and when the heroic combatants are firmly rooted in the people, relying on them to secure victory.
photo: A bulldozer destroys a section of the Zionist fence surrounding Gaza on Oct 7, social media retrieved from BBC
