It has been widely reported that at the end of a Jewish holiday on October 7, hundreds of Hamas fighters, and other militants, broke through Gaza's militarised border, crossed into Israel by land, air and sea and reportedly (with some amount of documentation), killed civilians in the streets, in their homes and at an outdoor rave party.[16]
Israel's latest official estimated death toll of soldiers and civilians during the Oct. 7 Hamas invasion is 1,200.[17]
UN Secretary General Guterres stated on October 25.
"It was important to acknowledge that the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing," The grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify those appalling attacks, and those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people." [18]
Hamas issued on Jan. 21, an 18-page document explaining its official explanation for why it launched its attack on Israel October 7, saying that it was aimed at stopping the expansion of West Bank settlements and bringing an end to the blockade of the Gaza Strip.
In its report titled "Our Narrative" Hamas, which is also the elected government of Gaza, said it wanted to "clarify" the background and dynamics of its surprise attack. The group said that avoiding harming civilians "is a religious and moral commitment" by fighters of Hamas's armed wing, the Qassam Brigades. "If there was any case of targeting civilians; it happened accidentally and in the course of the confrontation with the occupation forces." Hamas said in the report. "Many Israelis were killed by the Israeli army and police due to their confusion." [19] Hamas' describes its October 7th goal was to launch a commando-style assault on four military bases surrounding Gaza to kill or take hostage as many Israeli soldiers as possible, and a similar assault on local Israeli communities to seize civilian hostages in order to trade the hostages for Palestinian prisoners, thousands of whom are in Israeli jails, including women and children, often held without a military trial or even charges. To the Palestinian public, these prisoners are no less hostages than the Israelis held in Gaza.
Western media journalists keep citing the hostages Palestinian Hamas is holding as one of the reasons for war. But the thousands of Palestinians are currently in Israeli prisons are never mentioned. And how many of them are children? First the figure mentioned was 7,000, a month later 9,000. (Since 1967, when Israel occupied East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, it has arrested an estimated one million Palestinians, the United Nations reported last summer. One in every five Palestinians has been arrested and charged under the 1,600 military orders that control every aspect of the lives of Palestinians living under the Israeli military occupation. That incarceration rate doubles for Palestinian men -- two in every five have been arrested.)
[20]
Forces of five other militant groups, Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, Al-Azsa Martyrs' Brigades, Omar Al-Qasim Forces, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Mujahideen Brigades also invaded on Oct. 7, and three groups - PIJ, the Mujahideen Brigades and Al-Nasser Salah al-Deen Brigades - claim to have seized Israeli hostages, alongside Hamas, on that day.[21] Hamas says its October 7 attacks in southern Israel were a "necessary step" against Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. But the Islamist group admitted in its 16-page report justifying the attack that "some faults happened" due to the rapid collapse of the Israeli security and military system, and the chaos caused along the border areas with Gaza." [22] The Palestinian source said through the memorandum, Hamas was sending a message to the International Court of Justice in The Hague that Hamas should not be judged solely by the events of October 7 without examining Israel's conduct in the West Bank and Gaza over the past decades.[16]
Hamas pointed to the historical origins of the conflict, saying "the battle of the Palestinian people against occupation and colonialism did not start on October 7, but started 105 years ago, including 30 years of British colonialism and 75 years of Zionist occupation." [16]
The group said it wanted to "hold the Israeli occupation legally accountable" for the suffering it had inflicted on the Palestinian people. Hamas said the attack was "to confront all Israeli conspiracies against the Palestinian people." The militant group urged "the immediate halt of the Israeli aggression on Gaza, the crimes and ethnic cleansing committed against the entire Gaza population."
The group blames Israeli helicopters for killing "many" of the 364 civilians massacred at the Nova music festival, saying that Hamas "had no prior knowledge of it." [23] The document alleges hypocrisy on the part of those who would accept civilian casualties as collateral damage in Gaza while condemning Hamas's actions during its massacres on October 7.
The document calls for an investigation by the International Criminal Court to look at "the broader context" of the October 7 attack as part of the "struggle against colonialism, as a "national liberation and resistance movement." The document refers to several clauses in Hamas's updated charter from 2017, alleging that the conflict is not with the Jews, but rather with Zionism. The section condemns "what the Jews were exposed to by Nazi Germany and praises Muslim nations for having provided Jews a "safe haven" for centuries.
The document says that Hamas receives their legitimacy from the "Palestinian right to self-defence, liberation and self-determination," claiming that according to "all norms, divine religions and international laws," as well as the Geneva convention, parties are granted the right to resist when facing "the longest and brutalist colonial occupation," as well as "massacres" and "oppression."
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