One month of the war between Israel and Hamas, which already leaves 11,000 dead: what comes next?

On October 7, exactly one month ago, Israel woke up to the worst tragedy in its 75-year history. when Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip, attacked the Hebrew country by air, sea and land, in an unprecedented incursion in which more than 1,400 people were killed.

A month ago, too, The bloodiest month in the lives of the 2.3 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip began when, in retaliation to the Hamas attack, Benjamin Netanyahu’s government launched an all-out siege against the Palestinian enclave.

31 days later, there is no end in sight to the conflict which has already left more than 11,000 victims – 10,000 of them in Gaza -, 241 hostages and thousands of Israeli soldiers advancing by land into the Strip.

A dark Saturday that marked Israel and Gaza

On Saturday, October 7, The Islamist group Hamas launched a surprise combined attack from Gaza, and in an unprecedented event with the launch of 5,000 rockets and infiltrations into Israeli territory by land, sea and air with paragliders.

In parallel, Hamas elements burst into an electronic music festival near the Strip with gunfire At the same time, they kidnapped dozens of Israeli and foreign soldiers and civilians in Israeli territory with the intention of exchanging them for Palestinian prisoners.

Hamas militants also stormed Kibbutz Beeri, a farming community four kilometers from Gaza, where they killed at least a hundred civilians.

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This bloody offensive shook Israeli society to its foundations. The images of the victims, many charred or mutilated, shocked and continue to shock public opinion today. The attack left a tragic figure of 1,400 people dead and more than 240 kidnapped who today remain in the hands of Hamas.

The rescue of the kidnapped, in fact, continues to raise political tensions and poses a huge challenge to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

But after the attack, Netanyahu vowed to “annihilate” Hamas and launched an offensive against the Gaza Strip, one of the most densely populated territories in the world, with 2.4 million inhabitants.

The incessant Israeli bombing and ground offensive devastated this Palestinian territory, ruled by Hamas since 2007, where destruction left apocalyptic landscapes.

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The Hamas Health Ministry speaks of 10,022 killed in the Israeli attacks, mostly civilians. Among the fatalities, 2,641 are women and 4,104 are children.

In a month of war, furthermore, The figures show almost 25,000 wounded in Gaza, added to more than 5,000 in Israel. In addition, there is talk of one and a half million internally displaced people in the Strip and 200,000 in Israel.

These are unprecedented figures, but they do not express what the mass graves full of corpses in the Strip do convey. and the containers with mutilated civilian bodies that rot while Israeli forensics are still trying to identify them.

(Also: Israeli Prime Minister denies possible truce in Gaza if Hamas does not release hostages)

“This terrorist attack represents a turning point for Israel,” says Miri Eisin, who served more than 20 years in Israeli Military Intelligence and directs Israel’s International Counterterrorism Institute.

“The massacre changed us completely, both in how we see Hamas and in our military actions. “The destruction of Hamas’ capabilities is the only alternative and that means a long and hard campaign,” he added.

“Israel has not experienced a large-scale total war in 50 years,” he says.

But to destroy Hamas and take control of Gaza, Israel has not only fiercely bombed the enclave for 31 days in a row but has also introduced a significant number of troops, that in less than ten days they already managed to surround the strategic city of Gaza and divide the Strip between north and south.

“Israel itself has already admitted that this goes beyond self-defense,” comments Tahani Mustafa, a Palestinian analyst with the International Crisis Group, who also denounces that “Palestinians continue to be treated as a problem to be solved and not as a people with legitimate rights and concerns.”

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Many of these rights, multiple international organizations warn, have been violated over the last month with incessant attacks on civilian infrastructure in Gaza, including schools and hospitals, and the iron siege by Israel, which after the Hamas attack a month ago blocked the entry of water, food, electricity, medical supplies and fuel, among other things.

“After a month it would seem that no one has learned anything and those who have the opportunity to redirect the situation do not seem interested in doing so,” says Mustafa, who also believes that The only thing the war has left so far is “a gigantic humanitarian catastrophe that distances both the Palestinian goal of self-determination and the Israeli ideal of security.”

Fears of regional conflict

Analyst Tahani Mustafa highlights the regional dimension of the current conflict, which she describes as “a turning point in the Middle East.”

It thus refers to the spread of violence in Gaza to other fronts, mainly the border between Israel and Lebanon, where more than 80 people have died in the last month as a result of the most serious exchanges of fire since the war with the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah in 2006. Added to this are a series of attacks towards Israel from Yemen and increased tensions in the West Bank.

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And the conflict is fueling fears of an escalation in the region. Iran, which is an ally of Hamas and the Lebanese movement Hezbollah, warned in October that the situation could get out of control and said the Middle East was a “tinderbox.” Which led Israel to put its troops on alert on the border with Lebanon, in case Hezbollah entered the fray.

After almost a month of silence, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah gave a long-awaited speech last Friday and warned that “a total war” is something “realistic” and he held the United States responsible for the conflict.

For Avi Melamed, an Israeli Middle East expert, It is possible that Hezbollah will “set fire” to the region, since “they have a military capacity ten times greater than that of Hamas.” “They can inflict serious damage on the State of Israel,” he says.

However, Pentagon spokesman Patrick Ryder indicated that he does not believe that Hezbollah will escalate the conflict and told the BBC that it was possible to “prevent a broader regional conflict.”

But the Israeli army stated that they are also prepared for an escalation in the West Bank, a territory occupied since 1967 and that was already experiencing its bloodiest year since the Second Intifada (2000-2005). Since October 7, more than 150 Palestinians and two Israelis have died in the West Bank.

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Chances of a ceasefire?

The truth is that, a month later, The actions of the international community are focused on trying to achieve a ceasefire that will protect the Palestinian population living in the Gaza Strip.

On Sunday, for example, the heads of key UN agencies (including UNICEF, the World Food Program and the World Health Organization) issued a rare joint statement expressing outrage at the civilian death toll in Gaza and calling for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” in the war between Israel and the Islamist movement.

In Gaza, “an entire population is besieged and attacked, denied access to the essentials to survive, Their homes, shelters, hospitals and places of worship are bombed. “This is unacceptable,” they said.

U.N. officials said more food, water, medicine and fuel should be allowed into Gaza to help its besieged population as Israel attacks with the stated goal of destroying Hamas.

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“We need an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. 30 days have passed. Enough is enough. This must stop now,” they urged in the statement.

The joint statement calls on Hamas to release the more than 240 hostages it took in its attack and calls on both sides to respect their obligations under international law as the war continues.

But, when asked about the possibility of a cessation of hostilities in the short term, experts Miri Eisin and Tahani Mustafa dismiss it outright.

“For Israel, the idea of ​​a ceasefire is irrelevant, the only thing we could consider are humanitarian pauses,” explains Eisin, who believes that the war with Hamas could drag on for months due to the Army’s decision to attack on the ground instead of “eliminating” the Gaza Strip from the air.

Mustafa, for his part, mentions that the Israeli Government, made up of right-wing, far-right and ultra-Orthodox parties, does not have the capacity or the interest to de-escalate the conflict and assures that Tel Aviv is taking advantage of this situation to pursue other political objectives.

And Netanyahu rejects any temporary truce, as he claims that this would amount to a “surrender” and He assures that a ceasefire will only be possible if Hamas releases all the hostages it took on October 7.

(More news: Israel announces that it is entering a ‘new phase’ of its war against Hamas)

This Monday, Netanyahu went even further by stating that Tel Aviv will be in charge of Gaza security indefinitely once the war ends.

Claude Klein, former dean of the law school at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, also says that “the possibility of a peaceful agreement is very remote.”

“What happened on October 7 strengthens those who claim in Israel that there are no interlocutors for peace,” he said.

For Ghasan Khatib, a former Palestinian Authority minister who is now an academic at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank, “Radicalization was reinforced on both sides of the conflict and has led to skepticism about a peaceful solution.”

INTERNATIONAL EDITORIAL
*With EFE and AFP