Israeli plans and dilemmas for Hamas: context for October 7th

JVL Introduction

Ilan Pappe has written about October 7th, providing context both to Israeli plans and refusal to negotiate before October 7th 2023 and the dilemma facing the Hamas leadership and the people of Gaza to either succumb to permanent oppression or to launch an armed attack.

“This was a breakout from the ghetto by a people who had suffered thousands of deaths, tens of thousands of injuries among children and women, and hundreds of thousands of people losing their homes in the 2014 Israeli assault and remaining displaced in 2023; they were a traumatized population subjected to starvation as a matter of policy during the seventeen-year Israeli blockade and to frequent bombardment from the air, land, and sea.”

Furthermore they could look across to the West Bank where the PA was “co-operating” with Israel and see the ongoing settlement expansion and increasing settler violence.

There is hope here too and Pappe has argued that ‘This is the last phase of Zionism’: there is certainly a shift and more people who have supported Zionism and accepted the “self-defence/self-protection” line are now considering “but if this is what Zionism has become, then anti-Zionism is starting to make sense”.

This article was originally published by Palestine Chronicle on Wed 23 Sep 2026. Read the original here.