Gaza Is Occupied

75 percent of Gaza is under illegal occupation. The capture of Gaza City, where about half of the Palestinians live, would complete the genocide. Despite losses, the militant Palestinian factions remain at the same level as before the ‘Al-Aqsa Flood’—why collective punishment and mass murder can never break national resistance, especially the Palestinian one, and how Israel is revealing itself through its semi-new “basic principles.”

On August 7th of this year, the seven active representatives of the Israeli Security Cabinet, including the two open fascists Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, met to discuss the future of the destruction of Gaza.
After nearly a seven-hour meeting, the “Prime Minister’s Office” reported the decision:

„The IDF will prepare for taking control of Gaza City while distributing humanitarian assistance to the civilian population outside the combat zones.
The Security Cabinet – by majority vote – adopted the five principles for concluding the war:
1. The disarming of Hamas.
2. The return of all the hostages – the living and the deceased.
3. The demilitarization of the Gaza Strip.
4. Israeli security control in the Gaza Strip.
5. The establishment of an alternative civil administration that is neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority.“[1]

According to the official report, the decision was reached by a majority vote over an alternative plan that, in the view of a decisive majority of the ministers in the Security Cabinet, would “achieve neither the defeat of Hamas nor the return of the hostages.”

This is quite remarkable: after the resignation of Gadi Eisenkot and Netanyahu’s rival Benny Gantz in October, Netanyahu had dissolved the war cabinet—apparently to maintain the appearance of unified decision-making in the war. Since then, most decisions have been made unanimously, without alternative plans or dissenting opinions being publicly mentioned.

Current State of Misery

The decision alone seems somewhat perplexing, as none of the “basic principles” provide new insights into the course of the “war”:
The establishment of an “alternative” government for Gaza, independent of all notable Palestinian factions, while simultaneously dismantling Hamas (as well as PFLP and co., of course).

The decision makes more sense in light of the Security Council’s simultaneous announcement to occupy Gaza City.

The occupation of Gaza City is taking place in the context of the ongoing occupation of the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the genocide.
As of now, about 70 percent of the Bremen-sized strip of land is occupied by the Israeli military and has been largely turned into “no-go zones” and “security zones” for Palestinians.
Within the “no-go zones,” which is about 70 percent of the total land, entry is prohibited for any Palestinian:

„Five of these six [interviewed Israeli soldiers] reported anonymously how Israeli soldiers routinely executed Palestinian civilians simply for entering an area that the military defined as a ‘no-go zone.’ The witnesses reported on areas that were littered with civilian bodies, which were decaying or being eaten by stray animals. The army would only hide them from view upon the arrival of international aid convoys so that no images of decomposing bodies could get out to the world.“ (infosperber)[2]

The population of Gaza is now mainly concentrated in the southern cities of Khan Yunis, Rafah, and the northern capital, Gaza City, where over 800,000 people live today. (Zeit)[3]
Gaza City covers 45 square kilometers—about one-twentieth of Berlin; this corresponds to a population density of 17,778 people per km².

The capture of Gaza City would mean that the residents would be taken to refugee camps in the center of the Gaza Strip. These camps, to be built around the remains of the city of Rafah, were commissioned by Defense Minister Katz in July of this year; they are intended to provide space for 600,000 Palestinians.
The cynically titled “humanitarian city” is to be managed by the equally cynically named Israeli-American (private) “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” (GHF), which replaces the United Nations aid system in Gaza. (Zeit)[4]
The GHF is also responsible for food distribution in Gaza City—the food distribution that not only has nothing to do with administration but is also a regular scene of massacres against the starving Palestinian civilian population:

„People are being killed just for trying to get food because of a militarised humanitarian distribution system that meets none of the prerequisites for a functioning, fair, independent and impartial humanitarian system” says UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric. (Aljazeera)[5]

In addition to the obvious concerns about the camp itself, which Israel’s ex-premier Ehud Olmert has called a “concentration camp,” the transfer of the population to the camp is also unclear—the entire population of Gaza is now suffering from acute, Israel-induced starvation.
This starvation (Phase 5 according to the IPC system) means imminent death from hunger; “The effects of acute malnutrition for children under five years of age can—if they survive—be lifelong and irreversible. For hundreds of children who have already starved, any help comes too late.” (IRC)[6]

The claim that this hunger is being addressed, as Springer and co. regularly assert by referencing aid deliveries, is false and contradictory in itself, as the hunger per se was only created by the illegal blockade of Gaza—The 104 days that aid deliveries were flown in are equivalent to “less than 4 days of needed food.” (Guardian)[7]
The polemic that Hamas is responsible for “stealing aid deliveries” (which would be irrelevant even given the tiny amount of aid) has been refuted by USAID, UN special envoys, and Israeli officers. (NYT)[8]

So how the masses of starving people are to be transported to the camp, the “concentration camp” (Olmert), without ending up in a death march, is not explained.

The “hostage issue,” which was recently revived by the recordings of the Israeli prisoner Evyatar David, will probably be solved by Israel with the capture of Gaza City anyway. The majority of the approximately 20 remaining (living) Israeli prisoners are probably in Gaza City. (Tagesschau)[9]
In Gaza, about 15,000 militants from Hamas and co. have been killed—and yet Hamas still has an estimated 40,000 fighters, which is the same as the pre-war level.
The battle for Gaza City would undoubtedly end in the death of all prisoners, likely intentionally; as soon as all prisoners are dead, the genocide can move on to a next, possibly final, form of terror and destruction.

And Hamas?

To state a few things in advance:

The internal characteristics of Hamas—such as its strict hierarchical structure, its religious orientation, and its military focus—are clearly and easily understandable as a direct reaction to the material conditions in which it has operated since its founding.

The ideological reliance on religion—including anti-Semitic elements in certain aspects of Hamas discourse—served not least to mobilize a population whose rejection of the Israeli state historically stems from the colonial experience since the Mandate period and especially the founding of the State of Israel in 1948. The religious rhetoric of Hamas offered many Palestinians a narrative framework in which the daily experience of occupation and disenfranchisement could be translated into a religious-cultural enemy image.

The radicalization of the Palestinian resistance is, against this background, a historically understandable development. The transformation of Hamas from an Islamic-charitable movement into a disciplined military-political organization is directly related to the First Intifada and the resulting strategic difference between secular-nationalist forces like the PLO and Islamist currents.

The religious appeal of Hamas can be understood as an ideological reaction to social and political suffering—especially against the backdrop of the secular-diplomatic strategy of the PLO and its successor institutions, which was perceived as ineffective. In a situation of persistent occupation, political hopelessness, and economic hardship, the religious orientation offered many people a firm point of reference that gave and gives meaning and promised hope.

To understand this, we explicitly recommend our article on Mahmoud Abbas.

The increasing repression by Israel and the failure of the Palestinian Authority, especially under Mahmoud Abbas, to formulate an effective strategy for overcoming the occupation, contributed to the further legitimization of violent forms of resistance among parts of the population. This development is not a singular phenomenon in the history of colonial liberation movements—A resistance that derives its legitimacy from collective historical suffering—about 76 years of displacement, occupation, and structural violence—is fundamentally immune to complete military destruction.

Its dynamic is comparable to the mythical image of the Hydra: for every group defeated, new, often more radical formations emerge.

The analogy to Heracles’ victory over the Hydra, which was not achieved by merely cutting off its heads but by burning its roots, points to the necessity of looking at the causes of the resistance—such as the material living conditions in Gaza and the West Bank.

Whether progressive or reactionary in nature: the Palestinian resistance movements are products of these very structural conditions and cannot be dismissed as irrational or “demonic”—as is often suggested in Western bourgeois discourse. Their emergence is historically, socially, and politically explainable, regardless of whether the actions of those groups are to be approved.

Just imagine it visually:

The Israeli war cabinet occupies Gaza City, while the remaining civilian population is deported to camps where hunger, pain, and hopelessness persist. The armed units of Hamas in Gaza City, Khan Yunis, Rafah, and other areas, which remain unchanged in number, are crushed after massive civilian losses and hundreds, if not thousands, of dead Israeli soldiers; Israel establishes comprehensive control over a “demilitarized Gaza.”

And then? The question of a political perspective for the Palestinian population remains unanswered, as does the fundamental, historically deeply rooted desire for national liberation.

The only difference to Gaza before October 7th would be that every single person in Gaza has now lost a friend, a wife, son or daughter, mother, father or sister—with a clear understanding of who killed them.

And it was precisely this structural vacuum—the absence of any credible progress towards self-determination, sovereignty, or even a viable two-state solution—that brought about the rise of Hamas in the first place. The political implosion of the PLO, its de facto submission to Israeli and Western interests through the takeover by Mahmoud Abbas, and its permanent inability to achieve concrete results in the sense of Palestinian self-determination led to a profound loss of trust among large parts of the population.

The political frustration over this decades-long ineffectiveness of the PLO’s secular-diplomatic line was not only a breeding ground for the turn towards Islamist-connotated forms of resistance—it was constitutive for the social legitimization of Hamas. If this frustration is now, after the military defeat of Hamas and the violent repression of an entire territory, neither heard nor politically answered, it multiplies. The systematic elimination of any form of collective self-representation and resistance—whether secular or Islamist—leaves no room for peaceful transformation but instead produces a new generation of disenfranchised people who emerge radicalized from the experience of powerlessness, destruction, and betrayal. In this scenario, Gaza would not only be militarily controlled and politically disempowered—it would have become a space without a political future and without national subjectivity. Such a state is not a solution but the prerequisite for the next escalation.

I once read a tweet that wrote, “If they wiped out Hamas by murdering my family, I would found Hamas 2″—and that is an argument in itself:

In the Algerian War of Independence, France reacted to the uprising of the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) from 1954 onwards with the deployment of around 400,000 soldiers, systematic torture, and the internment of an estimated 2 million people in so-called “resettlement camps”—about a quarter of the entire Algerian population. Instead of weakening the FLN, this led to a radicalization that secured it a near-monopoly position in Algerian society by the end of the war in 1962.

In Northern Ireland, after “Bloody Sunday” in 1972, the number of active fighters of the Provisional IRA increased from an estimated 500 to about 1,200 within a few months, while the number of armed actions increased by over 60% in the same year.

In Vietnam, despite a troop maximum of over 540,000 soldiers and the dropping of more than 7 million tons of bombs, the US could not defeat the Viet Cong; on the contrary, its recruitment base grew continuously in the 1960s, especially in the bombed provinces.

Finally, in South Africa, despite the imprisonment of over 80% of the known leaders and the murder of several commanders, the apartheid government failed to crush the militant wing of the ANC, Umkhonto we Sizwe; it survived underground and still had several thousand armed fighters in the mid-1980s.

I think the argument is clear.

Upon request, the Communist Party of Palestine writes the following—a response that could hardly be framed better in our argument:

„The Central Committee believes that the occupation’s decision to expand its military operations in the Gaza Strip is not an isolated event but a continuation of the policy of genocide and ethnic cleansing practiced for decades, with the aim of breaking the will of our people and subjugating them politically and economically. The starvation of our population in the Gaza Strip and the prevention of the entry of aid are part of the occupation’s strategy to subdue the resistance and crush the societal base.
The Palestinian Communist Party emphasizes that the only answer to the genocide of our people in the Gaza Strip is the escalation of all forms of resistance and confrontation—political, mass, and armed—at the local, Arab, and international levels, as well as the immediate and unconditional enforcement of the entry of aid into the Gaza Strip as a humanitarian and legally guaranteed right of our besieged people.“

[1] https://www.gov.il/en/pages/spoke-cabinet080825

[2] https://www.infosperber.ch/politik/gaza-schiessen-aus-langeweile/

[3] https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2025-08/krieg-in-gaza-liveblog

[4] https://archive.is/20250709061102/https://www.zeit.de/kultur/2025-07/geplantes-lager-palaestinenser-israel-gazastreifen-600000-nahost#selection-1877.269-1877.303

[5] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/6/24/dozens-palestinians-killed-in-latest-israeli-attacks-on-aid-seekers

[6] https://www.rescue.org/de/pressemitteilung/irc-reagiert-ipc-ergebnisse-hungersnot-gaza

[7] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/31/the-mathematics-of-starvation-how-israel-caused-a-famine-in-gaza

[8] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/26/world/middleeast/hamas-un-aid-theft.html

[9] https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/asien/israel-reaktionen-auf-plan-einnahme-gaza-100.html