“Palestine does not ask for the world’s pity, but respect for its people’s right to life and freedom.”
In a document titled Our Narrative… Al-Aqsa Flood: Two Years of Steadfastness and the Will for Liberation, Hamas has explained the reasons for undertaking the historic October 7 operation that decimated Israeli defences on the day and has since gone on to reveal the vile nature of the Israeli occupation, which has violently oppressed the Palestinians for over seven decades and is currently committing a live-streamed genocide that has killed hundreds of thousands of civilians.
Divided across eight chapters, the 42-page document was released by Hamas on Wednesday. It lists the “motivations and contexts” of the Al-Aqsa Flood, the achievements of the operation, and concludes with the current priorities of the resistance and the Palestinian people.
In January 2024 (four months into the ongoing genocide), Hamas issued a similar document under the same title, Our Narrative. That document listed seven reasons behind October 7:
- Israeli Judaization plans for the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque
- Israeli attempts to annex the entire West Bank and Jerusalem
- The horrific treatment of Palestinian detainees
- The 17-year blockade of the Gaza Strip
- The unprecedented expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank
- The precarious state of 7 million Palestinians in refugee camps
- The failure of the international community in supporting the Palestinian cause
The latest document essentially recounts the same reasons for the Flood. However, more comprehensive in scope, this version addresses several additional dimensions of the operation and its wider implications, which were previously not explained at the institutional level by the leading Palestinian resistance faction.
“October 7, 2023, was no sudden event; it was another chapter in the ongoing struggle with the Israeli occupation,” the latest Hamas document explains. It adds:
The Al-Aqsa Flood operation is not a passing memory but the foundation of a historic, pivotal stage in the journey of our cause—a stage in which the Zionist narrative was exposed in its own strongholds across the world. The true nature of this enemy was laid bare before the peoples of humanity, it was placed in the dock of international courts, its defeat was proven possible, and Palestine advanced in the global battle for consciousness, heralding a change in the unjust environment that allowed this entity to grow through treachery and aggression.
“The Day of Glorious Crossing”
In the chapter dedicated to the day of the Al-Aqsa Flood operation, the Hamas document explains:
The sons of Palestine undertook it with awareness, planning, faith in God, and confidence in the justice of their cause, believing that sacrifice is the path to salvation, and that defending Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa is a non-compromised right. It was a moment of immense sacrifice where the Palestinians wanted to tell the world: We are not victims forever, but a people fighting for their dignity, refusing to be passive witnesses to the loss of their homeland.
Hamas provides data backing popular support for its move:
A poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (published on December 13, 2023) showed that 72% of Palestinians considered Hamas’s decision to launch the attack correct, and 69% expressed satisfaction with Hamas’s performance, compared to only 11% who expressed satisfaction with the Palestinian Authority’s performance.
These results came despite the violent aggression launched by the Israeli entity and major military coalitions that resulted in over 15,000 martyrs, 36,000 wounded, and the displacement of two-thirds of the Gaza’s population by the time this poll was conducted.
It goes on to recount the unprecedented success of the operation, which was led by Hamas’s armed wing Al-Qassam Brigades, with support from all the resistance factions active in the Gaza Strip, including Al-Quds Brigades of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and the Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades of the Popular Front of the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), among others.
For the first time since the Zionist/Israeli entity was established 75 years ago, the resistance was able to execute a field maneuver, successfully breaching and controlling all lines of the occupation army surrounding the Gaza Strip, neutralizing hundreds of soldiers, and seizing complete positions in just a few hours.
Hamas notes that the operation has managed to seed a “new equation in the global consciousness”:
That day was a Palestinian crossing into a new equation in the global consciousness. It proved that the resistance is capable of breaking the image of the ‘invincible’ army, and that the will for liberation is stronger than any military arsenal.
Investigation into October 7
In the immediate aftermath of the Al-Aqsa Flood, the Israelis channelled all their diplomatic and propaganda efforts into painting the Palestinian resistance as barbaric hordes that exclusively targeted Jewish civilians and went on a rape spree. Despite being repeated ad nauseam since, not just by the Israelis, but also by their loyal Western allies and their entire mainstream media apparatus, the Israeli claims never stood up to the slightest scrutiny.
All their propaganda about beheaded babies and violently raped women collapsed instantly. More than 800 days since October 7, the Israelis have not been able to produce one beheaded baby or one woman who has alleged rape on that fateful day.
Hamas notes that the Israelis were ready with their ruse, as their assault on Gaza was “pre-planned” and the resistance was merely pre-empting the Israeli war plans:
The Israeli entity promoted a series of lies and fallacies about killing children and raping women, paving the way to proceed with an all-out genocide project that was pre-planned and aimed to erase Gaza from existence.
Hamas reiterates that its offers for releasing “non-military Israeli prisoners” were on the table from the very first day of the operation, but the Israelis kept rejecting their offers.
“[F]rom the earliest days of the attack, the resistance offered to release non-military Israeli prisoners,” Hamas says. “However, the Israeli entity rejected this offer and only accepted it during a brief week-long truce in November 2023, during which approximately one hundred prisoners were released.”
Hamas reaffirms several points with regards to the conduct of its fighters in occupied Palestine on October 7:
- Killing civilians is not part of our religion, morality, or education; and we avoid it whenever we can.
- Killing civilians, committing brutal massacres, and ethnic cleansing are original Zionist behaviors since this entity’s establishment.
- Serious Israeli journalistic and media investigations have admitted that the Israeli army bombed areas where Israeli civilians were intermixed with Al-Qassam mujahideen (fighters), as part of what is known as the ‘Hannibal’ procedure aimed at preventing the potential capture of Israeli soldiers. It has also been revealed that a large number of reserve soldiers and conscripts were wearing civilian clothes or were off military duty during the attack.
- During the Al-Aqsa Flood operation on October 7, the resistance did not target any hospital, school, or house of worship; it did not kill a single journalist or any member of ambulance crews. We challenge the entity to prove otherwise.
Moreover, as its final point of affirmation, Hamas challenges the Israelis to allow for an “impartial international investigation” into its October 7 claims:
We challenge the Israelis to allow for an impartial international investigation into the claims of Israeli civilian deaths on October 7, just as we challenge them to agree for an impartial, neutral international investigation into the crimes they have committed against the Palestinian people, particularly during their recent war on Gaza.
The course of the war
Hamas counts the cost of Israeli barbarism in the Gaza Strip — a campaign of annihilation that the top echelons of the Israeli political and military leadership made clear from day one they were embarking on.
“Its true objective was not to release the Israeli prisoners; instead, it aimed to commit the maximum possible number of massacres against civilians, destroying homes, schools, hospitals, places of worship, and infrastructure, as well as imposing starvation and mass displacement on Gaza’s population,” Hamas states.
Despite the unrelenting Israeli barbarism, Hamas says that the “Palestinian people surprised the world with their ability to persevere, challenge, and hold onto their land.” It adds:
No white flag was raised in Gaza despite the intensity of pain and wounds. The Gaza Strip became a global school of faith, patience, and steadfastness, presenting unique models of sacrifice and heroism, inspiring the entire world with the meaning of faith and dignity.
In a genocide that has seen the resistance sacrifice its finest men on the battlefield, including the Hamas and Al-Qassam chief Yahya Sinwar himself, the leading Palestinian resistance faction takes pride in what its men have accomplished on the battlefield:
The Palestinian resistance demonstrated ingenuity on the battlefield, exhausting enemy forces in every inch of the Gaza Strip. It established a new military school in urban and liberation warfare that can be taught in today’s military colleges worldwide. Despite the massive American, British, and German support, the Israeli army failed to achieve a decisive victory over a besieged, resisting people — who were confined to a narrow area and deprived of weapons and supplies — and was ultimately forced to stop the war and agree to a ceasefire.
Further, it lists the unprecedented losses the Israelis have taken during the Gaza genocide. “In February 2025, the new Israeli army chief, Eyal Zamir, admitted to 5,942 soldiers killed, while medical reports indicated approximately 13,000 Israeli fatalities in Gaza, Lebanon, and the West Bank,” Hamas notes.
Apart from its army, Israel’s economy has also taken huge hits during the past two years. “The army lost around 2,850 tanks, bulldozers, and military vehicles by January 2025,” the Hamas document reveals. “Reports also spoke of a reverse migration reaching 470,000 during the first two months after the Al-Aqsa Flood operation, escape of investments, and paralysis in tourism and certain economic sectors.”
Hamas singles out the United States for its unflinching support for the Israelis, not just in supplying them with weapons of mass annihilation but also in shielding them politically and running propaganda on their behalf:
The US administration was a full partner with the Israeli occupation in its war on Gaza. It supplied it with every weapon of destruction it needed (over 90,000 tons of weapons), provided political and media cover for its aggression, obstructed international decisions and actions aimed at stopping the war, and used its veto six times to allow the occupation to continue its massacres, destruction of infrastructure, displacement, and starvation operations.
Efforts to stop the genocide
The document states that Hamas “exerted continuous efforts” to stop the genocide, but the Palestinian efforts always “collided with the policy of Netanyahu and his extremist government, which rejected any initiative to end the war and sought to impose a plan to occupy the Gaza Strip, annex the West Bank, and displace the Palestinian people from their land.”
Hamas notes that even when a ceasefire agreement went into effect in January this year, “Netanyahu reneged on it after only 58 days, confirming his premeditated intention to sabotage any settlement that could end the war.”
More egregiously, the Israeli leadership embarked on an “unprecedented violation of all humanitarian norms by attempting to assassinate a negotiating delegation in the heart of a mediator country.”
Achievements of the Flood
Israeli behaviour since October 7 has revealed in sharp relief the world in which we live. The Israelis have committed the first-ever live-streamed genocide and incinerated all international laws and norms of behaviour in the process. As if to seal the Israeli contempt for international institutions, Israel’s ambassador shredded the UN charterwith a tiny shredder in May 2024.
By ignoring the rulings of the ICC and the ICJ, the Israelis have made international law defunct for all intents and purposes. In a bid to please the genocidaires, the draconian measures that Israel’s Western allies have taken against their own conscientious populations, along with the outrageous suppression of free speech, have further eroded the legitimacy of the Western liberal order that has dominated the world since the Second World War.
The Flood has fundamentally altered the world as we knew it before October 7. There is no going back to the pre-October 7 world order.
In this milieu, Hamas lists 20 achievements as a result of the Flood:
- The steadfastness of the Palestinian people
- The Palestinian cause once again became a global political and media focal point
- It is no longer possible for any regime or state to deal with Israel ‘without a moral cost.’
- The pillars of the myth upon which the occupation built its existence have crumbled one after another, exposing deep divisions in the structure of Israeli society: between the fascist right and the civil current, between the religious and the secular, and indeed between all components of the Zionist society.
- The Flood toppled the Israeli security theory that was based on deterrence, early warning, and transferring the battle to the enemy’s land.
- It transformed the Israeli entity from a ‘fortress of Western civilization’ into a moral and political burden for its allies.
- Revival of global collective awareness
- The Flood shook the idea of the so-called ‘safe haven for Jews’ in occupied Palestine, showing that the Israeli entity is incapable of subduing the Palestinian people.
- Release of approximately 4,000 Palestinian prisoners
- Thwarting of the normalisation path
- Revival of the spirit of the Islamic ummah
- The Al-Aqsa Flood reinforced the moderate civilizational Islamic model adopted by the Hamas Movement, which combines faith, freedom, justice, and human dignity, in contrast to the Zionist extremism and Western racism.
- The Flood toppled the Israeli Zionist narrative, revealing to the world the true, monstrous face of the occupation, forcing it into unprecedented isolation, making it a pariah at all levels.
- It strengthened the Palestinian narrative in the global and humanitarian framework.
- Growing boycott campaigns
- International legal pursuits
- International arrest warrants
- Increasing international recognition of the state of Palestine
- The genocidal war on Gaza witnessed an unprecedented mobilisation by Arab and Islamic peoples.
- The transformation in global public opinion
Counting the Flood as a success, Hamas states:
This victory was not for our people alone; it represented a victory for all of humanity and for every free person who shared our pain and stood in solidarity with Gaza against Zionist aggression.
“Hamas cannot be isolated”
The Israeli extermination campaign in Gaza began with the stated goal of eradicating Hamas from the Gaza Strip, but the Israelis failed spectacularly in their endeavour, as the Palestinian resistance led by Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades made life hell for the Israelis throughout the Gaza Strip over nearly two years of ground battles. Its resilience ultimately forced the Israelis to a ceasefire.
The Israelis have attempted, through the so-called “ceasefire,” to achieve what they could not during the warfare. As part of Trump’s 20-point “peace plan,” Hamas is supposed to disarm.
However, Hamas has underlined in its document that it continues to enjoy popular legitimacy across all of Palestine, not just in Gaza. “Hamas won a decisive majority in the elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council in January 2006, the only elections in which all Palestinian factions participated,” the document notes. “Thus, its rule of the Gaza Strip came by popular will and full constitutional legitimacy. Despite the division, Hamas has retained its majority in the Legislative Council, granting it the constitutional right to form the government in both Gaza and the West Bank.”
Even the ceaseless Israeli barbarism has not managed to dim Hamas’s popularity among its people. “Even at the height of bombardment, massacres, and siege, Hamas continued to lead the popular scene,” the document notes. “An opinion poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in May 2025 showed that 77% of Palestinians reject disarming Hamas in exchange for stopping the war.”
Hamas states that it “represents a moderate, centrist Islamic approach that adheres to Palestinian national principles, directs its resistance exclusively against the occupation, and believes in national partnership and referral to the popular will through free elections or national consensus.”
Describing the attempts to isolate it as a “political illusion,” Hamas says that its “participation in popular representation and political decision-making is an inherent right that does not accept external trusteeship, and no external alternative can be imposed on the will of the Palestinian people.”
Current priorities
Since Trump’s “ceasefire” came into effect on October 10, Israelis have killed more than 400 Palestinians and continue to maintain a crushing siege on the Gaza Strip, as civilians struggle for survival amid a severe lack of basic necessities and the onset of the freezing winter season. Five infants have frozen to death so far, as the ravages of inclement weather, combined with Israeli savagery, threaten many more lives in the coming days and weeks.
The Israelis, who are now carrying out their extermination campaign under the garb of “ceasefire,” are in no mood to let the genocide survivors get on with their lives.
Israel’s military chief declared last month that the so-called “yellow line,” which encroaches upon 58 percent of the territory of Gaza, has now become the de facto border between Israel and Gaza. Echoing the same sentiment, Israeli war minister Katz said this week that Israel will never withdraw from the Gaza territory it occupies.
Meanwhile, the Western and Arab guarantors of the “ceasefire” have yet to raise objection to any of the Israeli excesses in the ten weeks since it came into effect.
Against this lopsided backdrop, Hamas, in its document, underlines the need to present a united Palestinian front to consolidate its gains since October 7. “The future we desire begins with the awareness that what was achieved on the battlefield must be completed in politics, society, and administration, so that the sacrifices of the Palestinian people bear fruit in construction, prosperity, and independence,” the document adds.
“Palestine does not ask for the world’s pity, but respect for its people’s right to life and freedom,” Hamas concludes.
C. Palestine will be Free
