As the months go by, the picture becomes clearer. The overall view of the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023 is coming into sharper focus. The attack killed 815 civilians and 380 soldiers, and 251 hostages were taken, according to a count by the news agency Agence France-Presse. It sowed chaos in southern Israel. On July 12, the Israeli army unveiled the findings of its first internal investigation into its failure to defend the residents of the Beeri kibbutz. Dozens more are to follow, after a state investigative commission is set up. On July 17, the human rights organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) published its analysis of the attack.

The main value of this report lies in the precision with which it dismantles the rhetoric of Hamas, which tried to dilute its responsibility from the start. An exiled member of the Palestinian Islamist movement, Saleh Al-Arouri, killed on January 2 in Beirut by an Israeli strike, had already acknowledged on October 7 that Hamas was directing an attack against military targets and seeking to capture soldiers. But he denied that the fighters had deliberately killed or wounded inhabitants of some 20 localities around Gaza. He also claimed, despite the evidence, that these commandos had been instructed to spare women, children and the elderly − but did not mention civilian men.

Since then, Hamas has sought to justify the killings and the capture of civilians by the "chaos" created by the collapse of the Israeli defenses and the arrival on the scene of other armed groups and Gazan civilians. In reality, HRW believes, most of the abuses − including the worst of them − were committed by Hamas commandos, as well as by other Palestinian factions who prepared for and took part in the assault alongside Hamas.

The report looks into their operations, coordination, and the way in which the commandos immediately attacked civilians as soon as they entered these residential areas, right from the beginning of the assault. HRW sees strong evidence that these armed groups are guilty not only of war crimes, but also, by their extensive and visibly planned nature, of crimes against humanity.

"Human Rights Watch has found that the Palestinian armed groups involved in the assault on October 7 committed a widespread attack directed against a civilian population, according to the definition required for crimes against humanity," the organization writes. It further finds "the criminal acts of the killing of civilians and the taking of hostages were all central aims of the planned attack, and not actions that occurred as an afterthought, or as a plan gone awry, or as isolated acts, for example solely by the actions of unaffiliated Palestinians from Gaza, and as such there is strong evidence of an organizational policy to commit multiple acts of crimes against humanity."

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