This suggests that the Palestinian side is responsible for everything that has happened, as if an unprovoked attack by Hamas disrupted a safe and stable regional situation.
The truth is that, throughout the preceding years, Israel had been launching periodic attacks on Gaza, killing hundreds each time and displacing thousands. Furthermore, the claim that Hamas’ attack was an assault on Israel’s official territory rather than occupied land is also incorrect. The area known as the Gaza Envelope consists of the ruins of 11 Palestinian villages that were located outside the borders of the Jewish state. Israeli military forces seized these villages, and orders were issued destroy homes, burn lands and expel the inhabitants to the Gaza Strip.
The population centres that were attacked on 7 October were established on the ruins of these villages while the owners of the land, their children and grandchildren spent more than 70 years watching their homeland being transformed while holding onto the keys of their homes. Yet this is what the Western media ignores as it attempts to promote the false Israeli narrative that the story began with the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation, in response to which Israel launched the present war by way of self-defence.
As is well known, this series of fibs also included the fabrication of some of the atrocities that were said to have been committed by Palestinians during the attack, such as the fabricated stories of sexual assaults and children who were allegedly slaughtered or burned in ovens – claims that have also proved to be untrue.
The problem, in other words, did not begin on 7 October.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 11 June, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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