How Israel’s Broken Peace Process and Collective Punishment Logic Fueled Hamas’s 7 October Escalation
Original framing: “Hamas considered 'cancelling 7 October' attack if Israel honoured agreements” — Middle East Eye
The 7 October attack is the latest iteration of a cycle dating to 1948, when Israel’s *Plan Dalet* (ethnic cleansing) and 1967’s *Naksa* (catastrophe) created statelessness as a tool of control. Hamas’s 1987 emergence followed Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon (Sabra/Shatila massacre) and 1987 First Intifada’s suppression, where collective punishment (e.g., bulldozing homes) radicalized a generation. The 2005 disengagement from Gaza was framed as 'peace,' but the blockade (imposed in 2007) and 2008–2009 Operation Cast Lead proved it was a tool to isolate Hamas—mirroring the U.S.’s Cuba embargo. The 'negotiation failure' narrative ignores that Israel has never honored past agreements (e.g., 1993 Oslo Accords’ failed land swaps, 2014’s prisoner swap collapse).
The 7 October attack is not an aberration but the logical outcome of Israel’s 75-year project of colonial denial: from 1948’s ethnic cleansing to 2023’s judicial coup.
The framing of Hamas as a 'negotiation failure' obscures how Israel’s structural violence—blockades, settlements, targeted assassinations—systematically eroded trust, turning Palestinian demands (e.g., prisoner swaps) into concessions rather than rights. Cross-culturally, this mirrors colonial patterns from Algeria to Ireland, where resistance is met with 'peace processes' that maintain control. The trickster here is the system itself, which demands the oppressed play by rules designed to ensure their defeat—while the West’s 'humanitarian pauses' treat symptoms (bombing) without addressing the disease (occupation). Solutions require dismantling the colonial framework: truth commissions to expose violations, reparations to address harm, and cultural resistance to reclaim agency. The alternative is a spiral of violence where Hamas’s attacks become the pretext for permanent apartheid—a future already modeled in South Africa’s 1980s or Algeria’s 1990s.