Millions of people in the Middle East dream of lives that are safe, peaceful and free of drama, violence and death.
The last year of war, as devastating as any in the region in modern times, has demonstrated once again that dreams of peace cannot be realized while deep unresolved political, strategic and religious divisions remain.
One more time, The war is reshaping Middle East politics.
The Hamas offensive came after more than a century of unresolved conflict. Their fighters crossed the thinly defended border and gave the Israelis the worst day of their lives.
They killed about 1,200 people, mostly Israeli civilians.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told President Joe Biden that “not since the Holocaust” had he seen “such savagery in the history of the State” of Israel, which considered Hamas attacks a threat to its existence.
Since then, Israel has inflicted terrible days on the Palestinians in Gaza. Almost 42,000 peoplemostly civilians, have been killed, according to the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health. Much of the strip is in ruins and Palestinians accuse Israel of genocide.
The conflict has spread: 12 months after Hamas launched its offensive, the Middle East is on the brink of an even worse war; wider, deeper and even more destructive.
The end of illusions
A year of massacres has ended many assumptions and illusions.
One of them is Benjamin Netanyahu’s belief that he could handle the Palestinian problem without making concessions to his demands for self-determination.
With that, the illusory thinking that until recently reassured Israel’s Western allies disappeared.
Leaders in the United States, the United Kingdom and other countries believed that Netanyahudespite opposing a Palestinian state alongside Israel all his life, could somehow be persuaded to accept it to end the war.
Netanyahu’s refusal reflected a near-universal distrust of Palestinians within Israel, as well as his own ideology; and also torpedoed an ambitious American peace plan.
President Biden’s “grand bargain” proposed that Israel would receive full diplomatic recognition from Saudi Arabia, the most influential Islamic country, in exchange for allowing Palestinian independence. The Saudis would be rewarded with a security pact with the US.
Biden’s plan failed at the first hurdle. Netanyahu declared in February that statehood would be a “great reward” for Hamas. Bezalel Smotrich, one of the ultranationalist extremists in his cabinet, considered this option an “existential threat” to Israel.
Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who is reportedly alive somewhere in Gaza, harbored his own delusions. A year ago I probably expected the rest of Iran’s so-called “axis of resistance” to join, with all its might, in a war to neutralize Israel. He was wrong.
Sinwar kept his plans to attack Israel on October 7 so secret that he took his enemy by surprise.
He also surprised some on his own side: Diplomatic sources told the BBC that Sinwar may not have shared his plans even with the political leaders of his own organization, exiled in Qatar. According to one source, they had notoriously lax security protocols and used open lines of communication that could be easily listened to.
Far from going on the offensive, Iran made it clear it did not want a broader warjust as Israel invaded Gaza and President Biden moved US aircraft carriers closer to the region to protect Israel.
The then leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, and his friend and ally, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, limited themselves to launching rockets at Israel’s northern border and ensuring that the attacks would continue until there was a ceasefire. in Gaza.
The targets were largely military, but Israel evacuated more than 60,000 people away from the border. In Lebanon, perhaps twice that number of citizens have had to flee over the months due to the Israeli response.
Israel made it clear that it would not tolerate an indefinite war of attrition with Hezbollah.
Still, it was believed that Israel would be deterred by Hezbollah’s formidable combat record in previous wars and its Iranian-provided missile arsenal.
But in September, Israel launched an offensive. No one outside the upper ranks of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Mossad spy agency believed that so much damage could be inflicted so quickly on Iran’s most powerful ally.
Israel remotely detonated “beepers” or booby-trapped pagers and radios, destroying Hezbollah’s communications and killing its leaders.
It also launched one of the most intense bombing campaigns in modern warfare, which On the first day alone it killed about 600 people in Lebanon, including many civilians.
The offensive has destroyed Iran’s belief that its network of allies underpinned its strategy to deter and intimidate Israel.
The key moment came on September 27, with the massive airstrike on Beirut’s southern suburbs that killed Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, and many of his top lieutenants. Nasrallah was a vital part of Iran’s “resistance axis,” its informal alliance and defense network of allies and proxies.
Israel emerged from the border war by escalating into a larger conflict. If the strategic intention was to force Hezbollah to cease fire and withdraw from the border, it failed. The offensive and invasion of southern Lebanon have not destroyed Iran.
The ayatollah regime appears to have concluded that its open reluctance to risk a broader war has encouraged Israel to press harder.
Counterattacking was risky and guaranteed an Israeli response, but for Iran’s supreme leader and the Revolutionary Guards, it had become the least bad option.
On Tuesday, October 1, Iran attacked Israel with ballistic missiles.
The trauma
Kibbutz Kfar Aza is very close to the fence that was supposed to protect Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip. It was a small community with modest homes on a campus of manicured lawns and gardens.
Kfar Aza was one of Hamas’ first targets on October 7. A total of 62 people from the kibbutz were killed. Of the 19 hostages taken from there to Gaza, two were killed by Israeli troops after escaping captivity. Five remain in Gaza.
The Israeli army brought journalists to Kfar Aza on October 10 last year, when it was still a combat zone. We saw Israeli troops entrenched in fields around the kibbutz and heard gunshots as they cleared buildings where they suspected Hamas fighters might be hiding.
Israeli civilians killed by Hamas were carried from the rubble of their homes in body bags. The Hamas fighters killed by Israeli soldiers lay in the manicured gardens, darkening as they decomposed under the harsh Mediterranean sun.
A year later the dead are buried, but very little has changed. The living have not returned to their homes. The ruined houses have been preserved as I saw them on October 10 last year, except for the names and photos of the people who lived and died insidedisplayed on large posters and memorials.
Zohar Shpak, a resident who survived the attack with his family, showed us the houses of neighbors who were not as lucky as him. One of them displayed a large photo on the wall of the young couple who lived there, both murdered by Hamas on October 7.
The ground around it was excavated. Zohar explained that the young man’s father had spent weeks searching for his son’s head. He was buried without her.
The stories of the dead on October 7 and the hostages are well known in Israel, and local media continue to talk about the losses.
Zohar said it was too early to think about how to rebuild their lives.
“We continue with the trauma. We are not in the post-trauma. We are still here. We continue in the war. We wanted the war to end and we want it to end with a victory, but not a victory for the army. Not a war victory. My victory is that I can live herewith my son and my daughter, with my grandchildren and live in peace. “I believe in peace,” he stated.
Zohar and many other residents of Kfar Aza identified with the left of Israeli politics, believing that Israel’s only chance for peace was to allow Palestinian independence.
Israelis like Zohar and their neighbors They are convinced that Netanyahu is a disastrous prime minister who bears great responsibility for leaving them vulnerable and exposed to the attack of October 7.
But Zohar doesn’t trust Palestinians, people he used to take to hospitals in Israel in better times, when they were allowed to leave Gaza for medical treatment.
“I don’t trust those people who live there, but I want peace. I want to go to Gaza beach, but I don’t trust them. No, I don’t trust any of them.”
The Gaza catastrophe
Hamas leaders They do not accept that the attacks on Israel were a mistake which brought the wrath of Israel, armed and supported by the United States, on the heads of its people.
The blame lies with the occupation, they argue, and its desire for destruction and death.
In Qatar, an hour before Iran attacked Israel on October 1, I interviewed Khalil al-Hayya, the most senior Hamas leader outside Gaza.second in his organization only to Yahya Sinwar.
He denied that his men had attacked civilians, despite overwhelming evidence, and justified the killings by saying they were necessary to put the plight of the Palestinians on the world political agenda.
“It was necessary to sound the alarm to the world to tell them that there are people here who have a cause and demands that must be addressed. It was a blow to Israel, the Zionist enemy”, argument.
Israel felt the pinch, and on October 7, as the IDF rushed troops to the Gaza border, Benjamin Netanyahu gave a speech promising “powerful revenge.”
He laid out the war’s goals of eliminating Hamas as a military and political force and bringing the hostages home. The prime minister continues to insist that a “total victory” is possible and that his forces will finally free the Israelis that Hamas has been holding for a year.
His political opponents, including the hostages’ relatives, accuse him of blocking a ceasefire and hostage agreement. s to appease the ultranationalists in his government. He is accused of putting his own political survival before the lives of Israelis.
Although Netanyahu has many political enemies in Israel, the offensive in Lebanon has helped improve his popularity in the polls.
And while he remains controversial, for most Israelis the war in Gaza is not. Since October 7, most Israelis have become desensitized to the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza.
Two days after the war began, Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced that had ordered a “total siege” of the Gaza Strip.
“There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed… We are fighting against human animals and acting accordingly.”
Since then, under international pressure, Israel has been forced to loosen its blockade. Netanyahu assured at the end of September at the United Nations that the inhabitants of Gaza have all the food they need.
But the evidence clearly shows that this is not true. Days before his speech, UN humanitarian agencies signed a declaration demanding an end to the “atrocious human suffering and humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.”
“More than two million Palestinians They lack protection, food, water, sanitation, shelter, healthcare, education, electricity and fuel, the basic needs to survive. Families have been forcibly displaced, time and time again, from one unsafe place to another, with no way out,” they stated.
BBC Verify has analyzed the situation in Gaza after a year of war.
The Hamas-run Health Ministry claims that nearly 42,000 Palestinians have died until now. On the other hand, analysis of satellite images by American academics Corey Scher and Jamon Van Den Hoek suggests that 58.7% of all buildings have been damaged or destroyed.
But there is another human cost: displacement, as the IDF has repeatedly ordered civilians to move.
The effects of the movement of people can be seen from space.
Satellite images show how tents have accumulated and dispersed in central Rafah. It is a pattern that has been repeated throughout the strip.
These waves of displacement began on October 13, when the IDF ordered residents of the northern half of Gaza to move south for their own “safety.”
BBC Verify has identified more than 130 social media posts detailing which areas were designated as combat zones, routes to be eliminated and where temporary pauses in offensives would occur.
In total, these publications contained about 60 evacuation orders covering more than 80% of the Gaza Strip.
In many of the notices, BBC Verify has found that key details were illegible and drawn boundaries did not match the text.
The IDF has designated a coastal area (al-Mawasi) in southern Gaza as a humanitarian zone. Still, it continues to be bombed. BBC Verify has analyzed images of 18 airstrikes within its confines.
From having a good life to losing everything
Satellite images show a huge traffic jam on Saladin Street, after Israel ordered the effective depopulation of northern Gaza.
Somewhere among the crowds advancing along Saladin, Gaza’s main north-south route, was Insaf Hassan Ali, her husband and their two childrenan 11-year-old boy and a 7-year-old girl. So far they have all survived, unlike other members of their extended family.
Israel does not allow journalists to enter Gaza to report freely. We assume he doesn’t want us to see what he did there. We commissioned a trusted independent Palestinian journalist inside Gaza to interview Insaf Ali and his son.
He spoke of the terrible fear they felt as they walked south, along with maybe a million other peopleby order of the Israeli army. Death was everywhere, he said.
“We were walking down Saladino Street. A car in front of us was hit. We saw it and it was on fire. To the left there were dead people and to the right, even animals: donkeys scattered everywhere, bombed.
“We said: ‘That’s it, it’s the end of us. The next rocket is for us’”.
Insaf and his family had a comfortable middle-class life before the war. Since then, They have been displaced 15 times by order of Israel.
Like them, many Palestinians are destitute, often hungry, living in tents in al-Mawasi, a desolate area of sand dunes.
Snakes, scorpions and other vermin invade stores. In addition to the risk of dying in an air raid, they face hunger, disease and fecal waste generated when millions of people do not have access to adequate sanitation.
Insaf cries for their old life and for the people they have lost.
“Our lives were beautiful and, Suddenly, we had nothing: no clothes, no food, no essentials for life.. Being constantly on the move is incredibly hard on my children’s health. They have suffered malnutrition and have been infected with diseases such as amoebic dysentery and hepatitis.”
Insaf described the beginning of months of Israeli bombing as the “horrors of doomsday.”
“Any mother would feel the same; Anyone who owns something valuable and is afraid that it will slip out of their hands at any moment. Every time we moved into a house, it was bombed and someone in our family died.”.
The only possibility to slightly improve the lives of Insaf, his family and the more than two million people in Gaza would be to agree to a ceasefire. If the killing stops, diplomats might have a chance to avert a much wider catastrophe.
More disasters await in the future if the war drags on and a new generation of Israelis and Palestinians fails to shake off the hatred and horror of the other side’s actions.
Insaf’s 11-year-old son, Anas Awad, was deeply affected by everything he saw.
“There is no future for the children of Gaza. The friends I used to play with have been martyred (dead). We used to run together. May God have mercy on them. The mosque where I memorized the Koran has been bombed. My school has been bombed. Also the playground. Everything has disappeared. I want peace. I wish I could go back with my friends and play again. I wish we had a house, not a tent,” he lamented.
To which he added: “I no longer have friends. Our whole life has turned into sand. When I go out to the prayer area, I feel anxious and doubtful. I don’t feel well”.
His mother was listening.
“It has been the hardest year of my life. We saw scenes we shouldn’t have seen: bodies scattered, the desperation of a grown man holding a bottle of water for his children… Of course, our houses are no longer homes, just piles of sandbut we wait for the day when we can return,” he explained.
The law
UN humanitarian agencies have condemned both Israel and Hamas: “The conduct of the parties over the past year is a mockery of their claim to adhere to international humanitarian law and to the minimum standards of humanity that it demands.”
Both sides deny accusations of violating the rules of war. Hamas claims it ordered its men not to kill Israeli civilians, and Israel claims it warns Palestinian civilians to stay away from danger, but Hamas uses them as human shields.
Israel has been accused by South Africa of genocide at the International Court of Justice.
The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court requested arrest warrants on war crimes charges for Yahya Sinwar of Hamas and Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant of Israel.
Immersed in uncertainty
For Israelis, the Hamas attacks of October 7 were a painful reminder of centuries of pogroms against Jews in Europe that culminated in Nazi Germany’s genocide.
In the first month of the war, Israeli writer and former politician Avraham Burg explained the profound psychological impact on his country.
“We Jews,” he told me, “believe that the State of Israel is the first and best system of immunity and protection from Jewish history. No more pogroms, no more Holocaust, no more mass murderers. And suddenly it’s all back”.
The ghosts of the past also haunted the Palestinians. Raja Shehadeh, the famous Palestinian writer and human rights activist, believes that Israel wanted to cause another Nakba, another catastrophe.
In his latest book “What Does Israel Fear about Palestine?” he writes: “As the war progressed, I could see that they were serious and did not care about civilians, including children. In his eyes, as well as those of most Israelis, all Gazans were guilty”.
No one can doubt Israel’s determination to defend its people, aided enormously by the power of the United States.
However, it is clear that the war has shown that no one can fool themselves into thinking that the Palestinians will accept to live forever under an Israeli military occupation, without adequate civil rights, freedom of movement and independence.
After generations of conflict, Israelis and Palestinians are used to confronting each other, but also living together, no matter how uncomfortable it may be. When a ceasefire comes and a new generation of leaders exists, there will be opportunities to push for peace again.
But that is a more distant future. The rest of the year and until 2025, when a new president will occupy the White House, are presented as uncertain times full of danger.
For months after Hamas attacked Israel, the fear was that the war would spread and get worse. Slowly, and then very quickly, This happened after Israel’s devastating attacks on Hezbollah and Lebanon.
It is too late to say that the Middle East is on the brink. Israel is confronting Iran, the parties to the conflict have become involved, and countries that are not yet directly involved are struggling not to be dragged into it.
As I write this, Israel has yet to retaliate for Iran’s ballistic missile attack on October 1, to which it responded with a promise to inflict severe punishment.
President Biden and his administration, a constant supplier of weapons and diplomatic support to Israel, they try to gauge an answer that can offer to Iran a way to stop the accelerated rise of escalation.
The proximity of the US elections, along with Joe Biden’s strong support for Israel, does not generate much optimism about the possibility of the United States finding a way out.
Signs from Israel indicate that Netanyahu, Gallant, Israel Defense Forces generals and intelligence agencies believe they have the upper hand.
October 7 was a disaster for them. All top security and military chiefs except the prime minister apologized and some resigned.
They had not planned a war with Hamas. But planning for war with Hezbollah began after the previous open conflict ended in 2006 in a humiliating stalemate for Israel. Hezbollah has suffered blows from which it may never recover.
So far Israel’s victories are tactical. To achieve a strategic victory he would need to force his enemies to change their approach.
Hezbollah, even in its reduced version, is showing that it wants to continue fighting. Facing Israeli infantry and tanks now that southern Lebanon has once again been invaded could neutralize some of Israel’s advantages in air power and intelligence.
If Iran responds to Israel’s retaliation with another wave of ballistic missiles, other countries could become involved. In Iraq, Iran’s client militias could attack American interests. Two Israeli soldiers were killed by a drone launched from Iraq.
Saudi Arabia is also watching nervously. Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman has made his vision for the future clear: would consider recognizing Israel, but only if the Palestinians obtain a state in exchange and his kingdom obtains a security pact with the United States.
Joe Biden’s role in simultaneously trying to contain Israel and support it with weapons, diplomacy and aircraft carrier strike groups exposes Americans to involvement in a broader war with Iran. He doesn’t want that to happen, but has promised to support Israel if necessary.
Israel’s assassination of Hassan Nasrallah and the damage caused to Iran’s strategy and its “axis of resistance” are exciting some in Israel and the United States.
The dangerous idea is that it is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to restructure the Middle East by force, imposing order and neutralizing Israel’s enemies. Joe Biden and his successor should be careful about that.
The last time restructuring the Middle East by force was seriously contemplated was after Al Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks on the United States, when US President George W. Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair They were preparing to invade Iraq in 2003.
The invasion of Iraq did not purge the Middle East of violent extremism. On the contrary, made things worse.
The priority for those who want to stop this war should be a ceasefire in Gaza.
It is the only possibility to calm things down and create space for diplomacy. This year of war began in Gaza; maybe I can end up there too.
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