A year ago today, Israel experienced the deadliest attack in its history. And the start of a new war in the Gaza Strip, a conflagration in the occupied West Bank and an unprecedented escalation of the conflict in the region.
At dawn this Saturday October 7, 2023On Shabbat, thousands of rockets are launched from the Gaza Strip towards Israel. This is the start of operation “Al-Aqsa Flood”, launched from the Palestinian enclave, putting an end to a truce generally respected since the end of a five-day war in May of the same year. Commandos from the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas – but also other factions of Islamic Jihad, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Al-Martyrs Brigades Aqsa-, exit, using explosives and bulldozers, from the Gaza Strip.
More than 3,000 of them infiltrate southern Israel, some of them on motorized paragliders. The attack is thus carried out on three fronts: on land, from the sea where these fighters landed on Israeli beaches, and from the air. “ We have decided to put an end to all the crimes of the occupation » [israélienne, NDLR]And “ more than 5,000 rockets » have been fired since this morning, declared Mohammad Deif, commander of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, in an audio recording broadcast by Al-Aqsa TV, Hamas’ television channel.
Dead, injured and hostages
Kibbutzim, Kfar Aza, Be’eri and Nir Oz, and many surrounding communities were attacked and their inhabitants coldly killed during a massive and coordinated operation. But also military bases – Zikim, Nahal Oz, Erez and ReÏm – where soldiers are surprised in the middle of their sleep, shot down in their barracks. Worse: more than 360 people died during the attack on the Tribe of Nova techno music festival which brought together several hundred people, trapped just a few kilometers from the Gaza Strip.
“ It’s absolutely crazy. Absolutely crazy, says a resident of Tel Aviv a few hours later on RFI. Nobody thought it was possible. This time, they didn’t need tunnels. They just cut the fence of the separation barrier and they got through. Quite simply. With Toyotas full of fighters. It looks so easy, it’s incredible. It looks like a video game. »
One thousand two hundred and five people were murdered, including 815 civilians and 36 children, Israelis but also foreigners. Thousands more people are injured. Hospitals are calling for blood donations. Hamas’ bloody attack does not stop there. On October 7, 2023, 251 hostages were taken to the Gaza Strip. Testimonies speak of unimaginable atrocities, dead soldiers bathed in their blood. Innocent civilians shot dead in the street, women sexually assaulted.
Panic grips everyone, to the point that some media spread rumors that babies were put in ovens or were decapitated, that a pregnant woman was disembowelled, information which later turned out to be false. , according to the daily Haaretz.
Still according to the Israeli daily dated July 7, 2024, the authorities would have, on October 7, reactivated the Hannibal directive, a military doctrine put in place in the 1980s and initially revoked in 2016 which consists of preventing the risk of hostage taking, even at the cost of the death of the captives. The doctrine was reportedly implemented in the military bases of Erez, Réim and Nahal Oz, and in the kibbutz of Be’eri.
However, the simultaneous attacks by Hamas, often filmed by the attackers, are of incredible, unprecedented violence, ” the worst day for the Jewish people since World War II “, remember today former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Sirens ring out throughout the country, as far as Jerusalem, followed by explosions of rockets intercepted in the sky by the Iron Dome, the Israeli anti-missile device. It will take Israel almost two days to end the carnage.
Israel “at war” against “human animals”
On the same day, shortly after this unprecedented attack and while Hamas called all Palestinians in the occupied territories to a general uprising, the Israeli Prime Minister declared that Israel was “at war” and subsequently asserted that its objective was to destroy Hamas, in power since 2007 in the Gaza Strip. Operation “Iron Sword” then begins. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declares a state of emergency within a radius of 80 kilometers from the border of the Palestinian enclave. Thousands of reservists are mobilized for deployment in Gaza but also in the occupied West Bank and along the border with Lebanon and Syria.
“ We impose a total siege on Gaza City. There is no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We fight human animals and we act accordingly “, then affirms Yoav Gallant. On October 7, 232 Palestinians were killed in Gaza and hundreds of others injured. The Gaza Strip begins to be bombed. Three towers of more than ten floors collapsed the same day, AFP reported.
The Palestinian Authority is also on alert. Its hospitals launch a special operation to receive wounded people from Gaza. Many expect a heavy Israeli response against the Palestinian coastal enclave, where more than two million people live.
A flaw in the Israeli security services
This October 7, 2023, Israelis are wondering how this attack could have happened when Israel has the most powerful army in the Middle East, an army that only takes action around 10 a.m., four hours after it began. drama. In Israel, October 7 is described as a “security disaster”. For months, the country has been vulnerable, crossed by a wave of demonstrations against justice reform which also results in a refusal of military mobilization as a sign of protest. Army reservists have been walking off the job and refusing to train in recent months.
In June 2024, Kan public television will reveal the existence of a report from unit 8 200 – unit responsible for decoding and analyzing information obtained by the intelligence service – dating from September 19, 2023 which details unit training elite of the Palestinian Islamist movement with a view to raids against military positions and kibbutzim in southern Israel, less than three weeks before Hamas launched its bloody attack. Israeli services had obtained the plans for the attack, a 40-page Hamas document codenamed “Wall of Jericho”, a year before it was launched, according to the New York Times.
Also, long before October 7, 2023, Israeli soldiers warned their superiors that the Palestinian group was preparing its operation, before their eyes. “We really saw them training like an army, one of them told a year later Sami Boukhelifaour correspondent in Jerusalem. They have like models of our barrier [de sécurité]. They disguised people as soldiers, learned to kidnap them by neutralizing them. They also had models of tanks with Hebrew writing. They learned to destroy houses, walls, windows. They had everything. »
We saw Hamas about once a week, passing by in a van and looking at us through binoculars…
Listen to our interview with an Israeli soldier
Egypt, through its Minister of Foreign Affairs, then President Sissi himself, also alerted Israel to the risks of possible violence “three days” before the Hamas assault, indicates October 11, 2023. American elected representative Michael McCaul, head of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives.
The attack of this Saturday, October 7, 2023 constitutes the largest and bloodiest incursion into Israel since the surprise assault launched by Syrian and Egyptian forces at the start of the Israeli-Arab war of October 1973. One year later, October 7 2024, 97 hostages are still held captive, including 33 declared dead. The Gaza Strip has been 70% destroyed, nearly 42,000 Palestinians, the majority of whom are women and children, have been killed and the humanitarian situation is catastrophic. The conflict has taken a regional turn and the international community seems powerless to put an end to it, raising fears of a new escalation every day.