The world after 7 October

There is no point in comparing 7 October with any other event in history. Neither the Six-Day War, which took place in 1973 and left the Arabs the solace of a victory and on the basis of which a kind of Israel-centred status quo was established, nor 9/11, nor any other event. Within the history of the resistance that Hamas has waged for 75 years against an occupation that has been sustained with the unconditional and privileged support of the civilised world behind Israel, too, 7 October is a unique event. Both in terms of the activist resistance the Palestinians displayed, and in terms of the historical-political context in which this action was displayed, and of course in terms of the effects it has caused and will cause.

The Palestinians until now kept their resistance at the level of reaction, as is known. On 7 October, perhaps for the first time, they took action at this level and launched an attack against the genocidal occupation forces. Even though until now they had displayed purely defensive reactions to constant attacks, they could not escape being labelled terrorists anyway. And now, as the side that has truly for the first time taken action, the words of those who label them terrorists will have no weight whatsoever. Or rather, nothing will change. This time Israel, which continues by raising the bar of its savagery and crimes against humanity each time, will play the cheap and tawdry role of terror victim more, and will try to make the world pity it with half-baked dramas. The more it makes itself pitied, the more it will think it produces pretexts to attack, and it will continue its massacres where it left off.

At first glance it seems that nothing will change. Israel formerly too attacked using Hamas's stovepipe rockets as a pretext, Gazans died, and the world watched. But this time something is going differently. What the increase in Israel's capacity for aggression points to is that it has lost control over its reason, strategy, power and the use of this power. As is well known, uncontrolled power is not power. The uncontrolled power Israel is applying shows exactly how far Hamas, with this timing and this initiative that everyone has difficulty understanding and interpreting, has hit its target.

Frankly, looking at the international relations context of 7 October as a whole, we can say that Hamas, which has taken on the leadership of the cause of Jerusalem, Gaza, Al-Aqsa Mosque and Palestine, has from this hour on made gains that are hard to deny.

First of all, we were in a situation in which most of the Arab countries had submitted to an international order centred on Israel. The "normalisation" process, which meant a kind of allegiance to an Israel-centred Middle Eastern order, had begun to be taken as a paradigm. This meant that the total annexation of occupied Jerusalem would be accepted as "normal." It meant that Israel's violations of Muslim sanctities over time, by digging beneath Al-Aqsa Mosque, would be accepted as Israel's "normal" right, and that it would no longer be objected to. Besides, where did this mosque's sanctity come from anyway? The Surah al-Isra, did you say? How do we know that what is mentioned there is this Mosque? What are our theologians for, if not to prove that it is not so

for?

Israel's siege of Gaza, maintained for 17 years, would also no longer be objected to, would not be voiced on any ground, and abandoning the 2.5 million people of Gaza to Israel's mercy until they gave up would be considered normal. After all, wasn't the Gaza people pursuing this helpless and going-nowhere resistance in vain? When it should have abandoned resistance, surrendered and given everyone peace, what it did now seemed merely empty stubbornness.

Frankly, winds were blowing in which the Palestinian cause had virtually bored the whole world and everyone was increasingly inclined to regard Israel as right. Of course these were the winds that Israel and its patrons the US and Europe had been trying for years to blow with their media, their politics, their intrigues.

With the 7 October operation, Hamas showed first of all that the Palestinian cause could not be finished by turning it into a fait accompli. It showed that there still exists there a terrible violation enough to last a century, a step-by-step genocide, the violation of Muslim sanctities, a bigoted religionist administration without the slightest tolerance for other religions, and, more importantly, an enmity whose Zionist occupation plans will never end with Palestine and will spread in time to the countries of the region. Thus it showed that the Palestinian cause is a warning against a fascist mentality that threatens the security not only of Palestine but of the whole Middle East and in fact of all world peace. Not only did it find the chance to show the whole world Israel's true face again; it also brought to light in their most disgusting forms the intentions, the machinations and the truths of those who until now had glossed it over and embellished it.

Today the tolerance, even the encouragement, that Israel's genocide practice receives from the civilised world demolishes, razes to the ground, the narrative of a humanist, progressive, democratic, libertarian Western civilisation told to us in the modern world.

For Westerners, human rights are only the rights of people of their own typology. The rest are not even counted as human. The Israeli Defence Minister's description of the Palestinians and the Western silence displayed in the face of it are like an avowal and confession of this thought.

From 7 October, Palestine, Al-Aqsa Mosque and Jerusalem, which had been on the verge of being forgotten, have once again become the most important issue of the whole world. In the face of this aggression and being ignored, the pressure for solidarity, mutual aid and rapprochement across the whole Islamic world, even at the level of states, is now a harbinger of serious formations. The peoples already feel, in the face of this aggression, the reality of being one heart, one ummah, but the West's uniting in solidarity with Israel has also revived a desire for solidarity and unity in the Islamic world. It is impossible for all Islamic countries not to feel humiliated and excluded by the US's Israel-favouritism that ignores all Muslim peoples and countries. This exclusion and humiliation inevitably sets in motion searches for new alignments.

Moreover, 7 October has another sociological consequence that no one had reckoned with: it reverses the wind flowing inevitably towards secularisation in the world. Despite all their claims of secularity, the US and Europe, in solidarity with Israel, are seen to be living without any concession, if in their own deviant interpretations, in the world of the Holy Bible, plain and simple.

They impose on the world we live in their books without allowing the slightest historicist intervention. Inevitably a religious reaction against it is forming in the Muslim world. Against an Israel united in religion and Book, Muslims too are returning to the time and history of their own Book.

Of course, in the Muslims' Book, in spite of everything, with the difference of a policy of friendship that will suffice for all people and observe the rights and law of all people.