How many years will the Al-Aqsa Flood last?

A year has passed since the Al-Aqsa Flood. A whole year that felt the most intense and the longest in history, in which minutes were no different from months, in which humanity hit rock bottom in every moment lived, and perhaps in which, in the scenes reflected from the resistance front, all hopes for humanity were likewise revived. Of course it felt far longer for the Gazans subjected to the savage oppression of genocide in Gaza. Now it is a year for which a balance sheet must be drawn up, on behalf of humanity, of who has learned what from it and what has been gained and lost.

First of all, it must be recalled again that the event did not begin on October 7, neither with regard to Zionist occupation and aggression nor with regard to the resistance shown against it. But what makes October 7 a beginning is that for the first time in 75 years the resistance took the initiative with a highly effective, surprising, even shocking counter-move. Throughout this year Israel kept using Hamas's Al-Aqsa Flood attack on October 7 as an excuse for its genocidal savagery. The US and European countries, which were already giving it unconditional support, took its excuses seriously as usual and continued their support. But the whole world knew and saw that October 7 was not a cause but a result.

In the face of the occupying savagery and aggression that has continued for 75 years, no benefit has come to the Palestinians from the Arab-Islamic world, from the UN, or from the neutral mediation that the US, Israel's unlimited supporter, shamelessly claims from time to time. Israel was continuing its occupation, seizing the Palestinians' lands and continuing to make them homeless and stateless.

This manner of acting by Israel, which does not recognize UN resolutions and continues its reckless acts of occupation and violation by ignoring them, had created a habit throughout the world. Habits led to habituation, and habituation led to these rights violations being accepted as Israel's normal, as an acquired right of its own. As if that were not enough, all the acts of resistance of the Palestinians had turned into an event that broke this routine, even disturbed the peace, and, the more it disturbed, created weariness.

The Palestinian cause had thus turned into a hopeless and needless subject that almost destabilized the world and created weariness. Unfortunately, such a perception had begun to form not only among Western countries and peoples but even among Islamic peoples. After all, Israel was the only democratic, modern and institutional country and society in the Middle East. And the settlers who had come to Israel were an utterly routine human situation with the Holocaust drama and its justification in the background. Here the dispossession of Palestinians from their homes and homelands because of this settlement program might be a problem, but this too could be ignored.

Zionist Israel had made its friends and enemies accept the savage, rule-defying and blatant occupation it had carried out for 75 years as, in effect, an utterly unique effort of "survival" and "continuing to exist." Whether by argument, by wearing them out and exhausting them, or, failing that, by threats.

The Al-Aqsa Flood operation and the Zionist killing apparatus that was set in motion afterward suddenly made Israel's true face visible to the eyes of the whole world. The racist, arrogant, cruel, unjust, murderous, genocidal, criminal face behind the mask it wore became a face with which everyone is acquainted.

The number of people it has killed in a year has exceeded 41,788, and 75% of them are children, women and the elderly. (+16,891 children and 11,458 women). More than 10,000 Palestinians, more than 5,000 of them children, are still under the rubble of demolished homes. According to the Ministry of Health, the number of wounded has exceeded 96,794, and most of them are children and women. In Gaza, more than 17,000 children have lost their parents or at least one of the two. In the Gaza Strip, especially in the northern areas, many children have died of malnutrition and thirst amid the growing famine. At least 54 Palestinian detainees have died since October 7 in Israeli prisons as a result of systematic torture and deliberate medical neglect.

According to the Euro-Med rights group, 130 mass graves had been discovered in the Gaza Strip by May 1. According to the Ministry of Health, 7 mass graves containing more than 520 martyrs' bodies, including children and women, were found at three hospitals in Gaza. For example, on October 17, 471 people were killed in the bombing of the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital. More than 85 members of the civil defense rescue teams and at least 885 medical personnel were killed in the line of duty. 212 UNRWA staff were likewise killed on duty by the Israeli occupation army.

This is, at the simplest, the numerical picture of the systematic genocide Israel has committed against the people of Gaza in a year. It is very clear that a state that can lay out this picture in this way is a threat to all humanity. As a person's criminal record in a society grows, his walking free is a great threat to the whole society. Yet with all these crimes it has committed, Israel has shown that it can commit more, and repeat them. Despite this, it continued to be supported by the US throughout this year and despite all the crimes it committed in this year.

A year passed like this in terms of the crimes Israel committed and the US's continued unlimited support, but the continuation of this accumulation of crimes for a year is, from whatever angle you look, a great fiasco both for Israel and for the powers that continue to support it without limit.

When Israel embarked on its aggression that turned into genocide, it had two declared goals: one to destroy Hamas's fighting capacity and leadership, the other to rescue the hostages held by Hamas. Despite its utterly disproportionate power and aggression, which it possessed and put into play, at the end of the year that has passed it has nothing but zero in hand with respect to both goals. From whatever angle you look, this is a great fiasco both for itself and for the US, which has put all its prestige on the table with its unlimited support for it. The aggression that Israel is displaying today, perhaps raised yet another level, is a new madness it shows in the course of making up for this loss. It is trying to regain the prestige it lost against Hamas with its scores against Hezbollah, an easier target, but from the swamp in which it is stuck in Gaza it continues to relive the defeats of October 7 every day.

There are of course many more aspects and consequences of the point we have reached at the end of a year. We will continue to talk.