Today marks one year since Hamas attacked Israel and killed 1,100 people in one day. It was the start of the deadliest war on the Gaza Strip ever. Over 41,000 Palestinians have been killed, and the humanitarian situation is completely precarious. The civilian suffering is enormous. In Israel, people are fighting to bring home the hostages who are still in the Gaza Strip, who today have been in captivity for 365 days. At the same time, there are thousands of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons without trial, for whom Hamas wants to exchange the hostages. But Israel has not yet agreed to an agreement. In Tel Aviv, people are out in the streets to remember the dead today. Photo: Jack Guez / AFP Public buildings in Israel fly flags at half mast today. At the minute at 6.29 today early, the flag was raised and a siren went off. This is the time when Hamas launched the attack on 7 October last year. Regardless of what one thinks about the war that has unfolded afterwards, Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide believes that it is important to internalize the trauma that Israelis are asking for. – It is important to understand the depth of the trauma that was created. – The attack went on for hours in one of the world’s most security-oriented countries, he says. Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide believes it is important to internalize the trauma that the Israelis are asking for. Photo: Tom Balgaard / news Israel should be a safe haven Due to the persecution of Jews in Europe and the idea that everyone should have a national state, it was decided that the world’s Jews should have their own country. Israel was established in 1948. The goal was to be a safe haven for the Jewish people. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) was established shortly after, and is seen as crucial for the country’s security, but also as a nation-building institution. Historical Palestine was pointed out as a suitable area because of religious ties to the area. The Palestinians and neighboring countries rebelled, and a war broke out between the newly established state and its Arab neighbours. The Temple Mount in Jerusalem is a holy place for both Muslims and Jews. Photo: Ammar Awad / Reuters The Palestinians call the war al-Nakba, the catastrophe. Israel calls them the war of liberation. The war ensured Israel’s existence, but 750,000 Palestinians lost their homes. Hundreds of thousands of Jews quickly came to the newly established state through so-called aaliyah, i.e. Jewish immigration to Israel. Here they were to be protected against all possible external threats. – And then you get this breakdown where the security services neither pick up the attack, nor manage to respond for hours, says Eide. Israel failed to react quickly enough The attack on 7 October is the deadliest attack against Jews since the Holocaust. Most Israelis know someone who was hit by the attack. 251 were taken as hostages to the Gaza Strip. 101 of them will still be there, and Israeli authorities believe that around 60 of them may still be alive. In a published document called “Our narrative”, Hamas gives several reasons why they attacked. At least a thousand civilian and military Palestinians broke out of Israel and Egypt’s fence around the Gaza Strip on 7 October. Photo: Hatem Ali / AP They base the attack on, among other things, that “Israel has crushed our ability to create a Palestinian state”, the oppression of Palestinians, and the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory, which is illegal under international law. In the same document, they claimed that they would not hit civilians. Nevertheless, they attacked a music festival and at least 20 Israeli villages. It was not until the following day that Israel had managed to regain control of the Israeli villages. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have themselves admitted that they were unable to react quickly enough and well enough to the attack, in the first part of a report they are working on. Eide believes that the lack of response is an important part of the trauma that Israelis are praying for today, in addition to the attack itself. He refers to the purpose of establishing Israel as a state, namely that Jews should feel safe. Women hold hands around a memorial site for Israelis who were killed during the terrorist attack on 7 October. Photo: Jack Guez / AFP – Back to the Stone Age Hamas is said to have planned the attack for months, and managed to bypass Israel’s intelligence, among other things, by not communicating digitally. – In terms of communication, they went back to the Stone Age, says Middle Eastern researcher and Hamas expert Eirik Skare at the University of Oslo. Skare calls it one of the worst intelligence failures in modern history, precisely because the planning took place in the Gaza Strip, in “Israel’s own backyard”. Every week tens of thousands demonstrate in the streets of Israel against their own government, and their lack of ability to rescue the hostages from the Gaza Strip. Photo: Jack Guez / AFP He believes that Israel did not catch the planning for two reasons. – It came partly as a result of arrogance, and that someone misjudged Hamas’s ambitions, says Skare. IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari says that the report, in which Israel examines its own response to the attack, is the start of a long process in which they will try to build trust in the country. Published 07.10.2024, at 11.41 Updated 07.10.2024, at 12.07
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One year since the Hamas attack – news Urix – Foreign news and documentaries
