The Aqsa Flood and the Genocide of Gaza: No resistance without solidarity!

Malak Fadda *

The Aqsa Flood was the first ground operation launched by the Palestinian resistance in Gaza against the Zionist entity occupying the territories of Palestine since 1948 and 1967. It occurred at dawn on Saturday, October 7, 2023, and involved a coordinated land, sea, and air assault, with resistance fighters infiltrating several Zionist settlements surrounding Gaza.

Objectives of the Aqsa Flood Operation

The Palestinian resistance launched the Aqsa Flood operation to achieve several goals:

- To halt the process of reshaping the Middle East into a demographic mosaic, differing from the Sykes-Picot Agreement Middle East. Important regional actors were making political reconciliations and significant economic agreements among themselves. Meanwhile, the Zionist entity was also making agreements with some of these powers and was on the verge of signing a historic agreement with Saudi Arabia, which has now been halted.

- The most dangerous point for the Palestinian people was that the false peace processes and prolonged ceasefires, based on the principle of land for peace—meaning land for the Zionists and peace for the Palestinians in their graves—were being imposed with strange international complicity and silence from close allies. Israeli violations against the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the escalating attacks on prisoners, and the settler assaults on Palestinians in the West Bank had become part of the daily routine of Palestinian life. These events, which used to shake the region and the world, now barely make it to the end of the news broadcasts as ordinary occurrences. The Aqsa Flood operation put a stop to this farce, at least temporarily.

- The Palestinian cause was slowly dying over time without anyone moving to take action. The enemy and its Western and local supporters believed that the Palestinian resistance had resigned itself to merely easing the siege on Gaza and increasing its share of Palestinian labour within the Zionist entity. "But the winds brought to the entity what the ships did not desire," as the Palestinian resistance sent warnings via intermediaries to Tel Aviv, demanding an end to the violations against Al-Aqsa Mosque, the West Bank residents, and the prisoners. The response, however, was like the poet Amr ibn Ma'adi Yakrib's verse:

  "I called to the living, but there was no life in those I called, 

  I blew on a flame, but I was only blowing on ashes."

- The Aqsa Flood operation silenced Zionist extremists who publiclyspoke about demolishing Al-Aqsa Mosque, and they have since become more cautious in their public statements.

- This operation revealed the hidden internal divisions within Zionist society between the ultra-Orthodox religious right and the left-wing Zionist Sadducees, bringing these tensions to the surface, with left-wing opposition protests spreading across Zionist cities.

- Acquiring intelligence and military information on Zionist spies and agents operating within Gaza.

- Reviving the project of establishing a Palestinian state in front of the international community after it was nearly forgotten.

- Taking prisoners from the Zionist settlements around Gaza to exchange them for Palestinian prisoners, many of whom have been forgotten by their own people and nation, leaving them to despair of ever being released. For them, rape and horrific torture have become a routine experience, and their greatest wish has become death... These and other points have been extensively analysed by Arab and global research and strategy centres, far beyond what can be covered in this article.

Gaza Pays The Price Alone

Unfortunately, in the absence of aerial defence for Gaza, the region has suffered the largest genocide in modern history since the 1936 Buraq Uprising before the establishment of the Zionist entity. Gaza should have been protected by its kin from this brutal retaliation that has spared neither child nor bird nor animal.

How Similar Today Is to Yesterday!

Regrettably, we live in a time where the concept of allegiance and enmity among Muslims has been lost, just as it was among the rulers of Al-Andalus—the lost paradise—until not even a single pulpit or sword remained for Islam and Muslims there. With the loss of the Muslim nation from Al-Andalus, the chapter of Islamic history there was closed. Then, relations were established with the colonial entities that replaced Al-Andalus, embassies were opened for them, and the matter of reclaiming Al-Andalus was erased from the Muslim memory. Today, the same thing is happening in Palestine. Palestine was lost not by force, but by treachery, divided before the eyes and ears of the Muslims by decisions made by those who had no right to give it to those who had no right to take it. Then came the successive catastrophes, massacres, and tragedies until nothing was left of Palestine except Jerusalem and parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Then came the division between the secular Fatah and the Islamic Hamas, and the transformation of Gaza into a quasi-state seemed almost cemented in minds, until the Aqsa Flood battle brought the Palestinian cause back to the forefront locally and globally. Today, its residents are being exterminated, much like the residents of Granada in 1609, to enter the pages of history as well.

But at What Cost?

Some say that Gaza is paying the price today for the mistakes of a resistant faction. First, it must be clarified that this faction is the elected government there. Any people who want to be free and any nation that wants to win must pay the price of victory with the sacrifices of its sons and people. Egypt sacrificed half a million martyrs to gain its freedom from French Napoleonic colonization in the 12th/18th century. Algeria sacrificed a million martyrs to achieve independence and freedom from France in the 20th century. Similarly, Libya sacrificed a million and a half martyrs to gain freedom from Italy. Yes, the price is high, but freedom is more valuable.

Yes, We Are from Gaza 

The heart is heavy with sadness when someone describes their place of residence as Gaza, a place that experiences the harshest forms of death, torture, and destruction, things that are beyond description. Yes, we are from Gaza!!! The place where the little child wakes up to the sound of destructive bombing that spares neither human nor animal, where the elderly and their families wake up to their house being demolished on their heads by the horrors of the bombing. Where a woman wakes up having lost her children and everything she owns. I wake up and sleep wondering, is it fair for people to die of hunger? Is it fair for people and children to be killed in the streets, roads, alleys, and neighbourhoods without mercy?!!! Is it fair for a roof to collapse on an entire family?!!! A family that has nothing but their innocent, natural dreams! We live a life that no human being on earth can bear. If I say that our life has become less than that of animals, it would still be an understatement. We die by the hundreds, even thousands, every day, and there is no one in the world who pities us, no one who pities a child torn to pieces with nothing to identify him! Alas!!! No one pities a woman killed, her fetus ejected from her womb. No one pities a father who lost all his children, his home, and everything he owned!!! Is there anyone who pities us?

Bloody Displacement

In Gaza, families are displaced more than once a week, fleeing to places that are unfit for life, places that, by God, are not even fit for animals to live in. They flee to places with no food, no water, no essentials for life—this has been the life of two million people for more than 10 months. The situation has reached the point where people are killed while rushing to pick up flour from the ground; yes, they are killed on their way home to gather whatever food and drink is left! Children, the elderly, and women are killed while they are safe inside their tents, which become ovens in the summer and extremely cold in the winter. Muslims are killed in their mosques, and schools that have become shelters for displaced civilians are targeted. Does the world see all these horrors?!!! And yet remain silent? Why this treachery from everyone? Is this the punishment for people who want to live with dignity? Is this the punishment for a people who wanted to reclaim their freedom from the enemies of life and establish justice fairly? But Allah sees our efforts to live a better life.

The Horrors of Hunger

Yes, we have reached the point where we are slaughtering cats and dogs so that we don’t die of hunger!!! The heart is broken. We have reached a stage that makes even the trees and stones weep—tens of children are dying due to a lack of food and water. We have reached a pitiful state, a state that would bring tears to the eyes of stone and wood. Therefore, I and my team have decided to work in the charitable field, providing assistance to those who deserve it in Gaza. We have now decided to create links on digital platforms to help the displaced and families devastated in Gaza. Thus, many families, including us, have come to rely on donations from abroad to help the needy and the poor. And so, the days of this brutal war pass like years of drought, and no one knows when it will end.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I say to my nation, the nation of a billion, as a woman striving alone to help myself and my vulnerable family in Gaza through humanitarian and relief work, I ask you only to apply the words of Allah, the Almighty, with us:

Surah At-Tawbah, 71

“The believers, both men and women, are guardians of one another. They encourage good and forbid evil, establish prayer and pay alms-tax, and obey Allah and His Messenger. It is they who will be shown Allah’s mercy. Surely Allah is Almighty, All-Wise.”

I ask for your support to alleviate the suffering of our people in Gaza, in fulfilment of the practical meaning of the following verse:

Surah Al-Anfal, 72

“Those who believed, emigrated, and strived with their wealth and lives in the cause of Allah, as well as those who gave them shelter and help—they are truly guardians of one another. As for those who believed but did not emigrate, you have no obligations to them until they emigrate. But if they seek your help ˹against persecution˺in faith, it is your obligation to help them, except against people bound with you in a treaty. Allah is All-Seeing of what you do.”

We defend the honour of the nation on the battlefield of honour and pride because we are one nation, as the Prophet (peace be upon him) described in his hadith: "The example of the believers in their mutual love, mercy, and compassion is like that of a body; when any part of it feels pain, the whole body shares the sleeplessness and fever." (Reported by Bukhari, Hadith 6011).

When, O my nation, will the body feel the pain for us with sleeplessness and fever?

*Translated from Arabic by Aershia luai