It took three days to draw up an assessment of the Hamas attack on Israeli soil at the gates of Gaza on Saturday, October 7. Three days before it was possible to access the scenes of a tragedy unparalleled in Israeli history and take its full measure. In this harsh light, the conclusion was stark: Unprecedented massacres were perpetrated by Hamas militiamen in Israeli towns.
Unprecedented in terms of the number of victims. Unprecedented in the level of violence deployed. And civilians paid the highest price. On the site of the rave music festival organized near Gaza, and in the Be'eri kibbutz as well as in the Kfar Aza kibbutz, where Le Monde was able to visit with other media witnesses on October 10, the testimonies of rescue workers and survivors described an indiscriminate rampage that befell children, adults and the elderly.
Added to this was an unprecedented number of hostages transferred to Gaza to serve both as bargaining chips and human shields against Israeli army operations. In the space of three days, these operations had already claimed the lives of over 1,200 people, again mainly civilians.
Given the passion that the Israeli-Palestinian tragedy has always aroused, it was to be expected that this horror would fuel controversy over the characterization of these massacres. But the facts speak for themselves. Mass crimes of unprecedented violence were committed on October 7. Recognizing this is the most important lesson for the Palestinians.
The legitimacy of the Palestinian cause, the freedom to live in security within their own state, cannot be disputed by anyone who respects law and history, and it's not a question of telling the Palestinians who should represent them. But, after this appalling bloodbath, the worst thing for them would be for Hamas to become the exclusive figure and voice of their demands.
The inhabitants of Gaza have already experienced its merciless rule. Hamas's irrevocable rejection of Israel's existence, its use of terrorism and the violence it has unleashed around Gaza guarantee conflict that will never end. This violence also feeds another kind of radicalism, improperly based on the Jewish religion, which, at a strictly ideological level, proceeds from a symmetrical refusal to share the land or to recognize another population.
Hamas thrives on wreckage. The wreckage left by the Israeli army as it strives to eradicate it regularly in Gaza, using a force that also proves indiscriminate. The wreckage of a Palestinian Authority based on a moribund Palestine Liberation Organization and a rotting Fatah party, now reduced to the role of Israel's security auxiliary. The wreckage of peace dialogues, which disappeared with Benjamin Netanyahu's return to power in 2009, after missed opportunities in which the Palestinians played their full part.
International diplomacy too has turned its back on the Palestinian issue, subscribing to the risky theory of its inevitable extinction. But Hamas was not content to thrive on these ruins. To these, it has now added the October 7 massacres and, by crossing the threshold of barbarity, it has demonstrated exactly what it really stands for.
Translation of an original article published in French on lemonde.fr; the publisher may only be liable for the French version.