It has been a year since Hamas fighters invaded Israel on October 7. Hamas launched a surprise attack, dubbed Operation Flood of Al-Aqsa, that killed 1,200 Israelis, including 311 soldiers, and took more than 250 hostages into the besieged Gaza Strip, according to the official Israeli occupation authorities.

In turn, according to all sources, Israel took the initiative to implement the "Hannibal Directive", which stipulates killing everyone present, Palestinian and Israeli, so that the captured Israelis would not become a burden on the occupation army that day, so it killed dozens of civilians to prevent their transfer to Gaza.

In the wake of the attack, Western experts and political analysts pondered the reasons that prompted Hamas to launch its unprecedented attack. From Hamas’s perspective, October 7 was a justified response to 75 years of Israeli oppression, injustice and killing of the Palestinian people. This logic did not convince (or experts were unable to) fully explain October 7, and they resorted to explanations that all stemmed from a racist position that did not consider the catastrophe that befell the Palestinians due to the establishment of Israel, or the brutal occupation that has continued for more than 57 years in the West Bank and Gaza - US President Joe Biden said that day that the motive behind the attack was “to kill Jews and nothing else”, without paying even a moment’s attention to the Palestinian Nakba that has been ongoing since 1948.

But looking back, other factors may have driven Hamas's strategic calculations to launch the October 7 attacks.

Some skeptics of Hamas’s nationalist motives (as do many American think tanks) believe that one of the motivating factors behind Hamas’s attack was the movement’s unpopularity among Palestinians in Gaza. (According to the Arab American Institute in Washington, about 20 percent of Palestinians in Gaza supported Hamas before October 7. One of the most notable instances of public disobedience came in July 2023, when thousands of Palestinians took to the streets against the Islamist group over the economic and living conditions in Gaza caused by Israel’s brutal blockade. The demonstrations were violently dispersed in what was seen as a rare but powerful display of frustration with Hamas rule.)

With these elements in mind, Hamas sought to use October 7 as an attempt to rebrand itself as a militant group protecting Palestinians against Israeli aggression. Hamas believed that by framing October 7 as a revolutionary act of resistance against Israel, Palestinians would see them as protectors of their struggle and see Hamas in a positive light.

Geopolitical considerations in the Middle East also contributed to the October 7 attack. Hamas ultimately felt the need to debunk the narrative that the Middle East could completely ignore the Palestinian struggle. For example, Jordan and Egypt relinquished their political influence when they made peace with Israel without requiring the creation of a Palestinian state.

In the months leading up to the Hamas attack, Saudi Arabia was poised to repeat the pattern by normalizing relations with Israel. Washington and Riyadh were engaged in high-level discussions in which the Saudis sought a U.S. defense pact. The White House pushed the kingdom to drop its demand that normalization with Tel Aviv be contingent on the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Had such an agreement been implemented, the Palestinian cause would have suffered significant damage. Saudi Arabia’s flirtation with Israeli normalization was also part of a general trend set by the Abraham Accords (between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan), which were designed to bypass the Palestinian cause in the region.

Thus, some interpret Hamas’s attack as designed to upend the impending Israeli-Saudi normalization while seeking to overcome the regional obstacles posed by the Abraham Accords configurations. And so far, Hamas has succeeded in this regard. Their attack has delegitimized the Abraham Accords and thwarted potential Israeli-Saudi normalization. As a result, Saudi Arabia has publicly declared that it will not normalize with Israel unless it ends its occupation and establishes a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders recognized by the United Nations.

In fact, Israel has not yet succeeded in achieving its stated goals: freeing the detainees by force; uprooting the Palestinian resistance movement; and changing the regime in Gaza. Israel has succeeded in pacifying Hamas as an armed group and confining it to Gaza while simultaneously destroying the possibility of a Palestinian state.

But one thing is certain: the genocide that Israel has been committing in Gaza for a year (and now in Lebanon) exceeds all the moral high ground that the West is so proud of. Forty-one thousand Palestinians (perhaps 120 thousand), most of them women and children, have been killed, and most of Gaza’s 2.2 million people have been displaced and left homeless. The brutal Israeli response is a flagrant violation not only of the agreements signed between the United States and the European Union, but also of the relevant Security Council resolutions.

But despite the bleakness and pain of the scene - according to many observers - what the resistance has accomplished during this year has exceeded the expectations of its supporters and enemies alike.

The Washington Post reported that the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) is still firmly in its positions a year after the Israeli war, which declared that eliminating Hamas was its most important goal.

The Israeli obsession with what the resistance might do on the anniversary of the Flood and October 7 cannot be ignored in any way. The Israeli army has increased the fortification of its positions inside the Strip, especially the Philadelphi (south) and Netzarim (center) axes. For days now, the occupation forces have been working to expand the axes to confront any emergency that might occur on the anniversary of October 7 or after it.

The war is still at its peak and is far from being decided at the moment. The longer it lasts, the more likely it is to expand, which is what is happening now. However, there are many indicators in favor of the resistance, especially in light of the method of attrition it is following with the occupation.

Hamas has thwarted Israel's plan and made a decision to launch a lightning and destructive war on the besieged Strip. The resistance's attack came to shuffle all the cards and drag Israel into a square of reaction and accumulated and rolling human, military and economic attrition.

The Israeli plan can be traced through statements made by Israeli officials in April 2023, when the settler security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, said that “the time has come for heads to roll in the Gaza Strip.” Ben-Gvir stated that “the government of which I am a member must respond forcefully to the rocket fire from Gaza. Hamas’s rockets require a response that goes beyond bombing sand dunes and uninhabited sites. The time has come for heads to roll.” Finance Minister Smotrich threatened “the possibility of reoccupying the Gaza Strip as a radical solution to the repeated clashes with Palestinian factions in the Strip.”

Months after the Palestinian flood, many heads of leadership positions in Israel were shaken, as many of them submitted their resignations due to the failure that the occupation suffered that day. The head of the Military Intelligence Division, Aharon Haliva, resigned, as did Major General Yossi Shariel, commander of the 8200 Israeli Intelligence Unit, and a large number of officials in the Israeli army spokesman’s office. Others are expected to resign once the war ends.

Finally, it must be noted that America is primarily behind the continuation of the genocide of the Palestinians, with a deafening global and Arab silence.