Al-Aqsa attacks fuelled Hamas's slaughter

 Patrick Cockburn yesterday confirmed my impression that the violation of one of Islam's holy sites was a major factor in rousing the Muslim population of Gaza to violence. The oldest surviving work of Islamic architecture in the world, the seventh-century al-Aqsa mosque has been subject to increasing desecration by the Israeli authorities and by un-policed religious zealots. The regular harassment of worshippers has escalated into acts of violence such as this one last April. The Hamas incursion of October 7th may have been well-planned, but it would not have been so ferocious without the resentment which has built up over the last few years.

Cockburn writes: 

A survey of Palestinian opinion in Gaza and the West Bank conducted in the first week of November by the Arab World Research and Development group shows that some 60 per cent of the Palestinians polled backed the Hamas attack on 7 October and 16 per cent give it moderate support.

Before that date some 44 per cent of Gazans polled expressed total and 23 per cent partial distrust of Hamas, but today 76 per cent say that it is playing a positive role. The survey sample is small – 277 respondents in Gaza and 391 on the West Bank – but the largest number (35 per cent) say that the main reason for the Hamas attack was the perceived Israeli threat to Al-Aqsa in Jerusalem, the third holiest shrine in Islam, with freeing Palestine and breaking the siege of Gaza next most important.

Israelis and foreigners alike tend to underestimate the importance of Al-Aqsa as the ultimate symbol of Palestinian national and religious identity. A danger here is that Israeli ethno-religious fundamentalists and settlers on the West Bank are welcoming the present crisis as an ideal moment for them to move against the three million Palestinians there. Villages and towns are cut off by settler checkpoints and some 191 Palestinians were killed before and 201 killed after 7 October, according to the UN.

One recalls that the Second Intifada was sparked mainly by then Israeli leader Ariel Sharon dancing on the Temple Mount. Over this century, both the Israeli and Palestinian populations, Jews, Christians, Muslim and others alike, have been steadily brutalised.  Just over forty years ago, the massacres in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps brought a tenth of the Israeli population out on the streets to protest. That would be unlikely to happen today. A recent opinion survey in Israel reports 85% support for the actions of the IDF in Gaza. Cockburn is surely correct when he signs off his article: "The day is a long way off when Israelis and Palestinians recognise that, unless both enjoy security, neither will be safe."