The Facts Behind the Israel - Hamas conflict:

A Short History:

Following the 1993 Oslo agreement, the Gaza strip came under the control of the Palestinian Authority (PA). As Israel and the PA could not agree upon how to govern the Gaza strip, Israel unilaterally decided to exit the area in 2005. All the Israeli settlers, soldiers, and workers were withdrawn from the area   .    All greenhouses, agricultural fields and infrastructure were handed to the Palestinian Authority in good condition. Not a single Israeli remained there.

In 2007 Hamas defeated Fatah in the elections held in Gaza. Following the elections, Hamas, (or put more bluntly Hamas Terror Organization, HTO) assassinated some of their Fatah opponents,160 in number, by forcing them to jump from 15 story buildings in order to strengthen their grip of Gaza. Hence, starting in 2007 and until October 7th, 2023, Hamas, HTO,  was the only governing body in Gaza.

And for those who define Gaza as an open-air prison one thing should be crystal clear:

If this is so, the only one responsible for the situation is HTO !

The Hamas administration could have revived Gaza and create a 2nd Singapore. Instead, billions of dollars of international aid pouring in were channeled to buy arms, build tunnels and manufacture rockets. Furthermore, per The Economist, HTO leaders, such as Khaled Mashal and Ismail Haniyeh, accumulated fortunes of 4-5 billion dollars each through corruption. They reside in luxury outside Gaza in countries such as Qatar and others.

As soon as HTO secured its control of the area, it started to attack Israeli settlements nearby with rockets. The harassment and loss of Israeli lives became very severe in 2008, 2009, 2012 and 2014. Fields and forests were burned with fire balloons.  Israel had to intervene militarily to stop these harassments. As the Israeli loss of lives and HTO rockets’ range increased, Israel had to impose certain blockades and limitations to the import of certain raw materials to limit the manufacturing of weaponry.

Despite this severe conflict, Israel continued to supply electricity, water, and fuel for the residents of Gaza, in addition to providing work opportunities to about 20000 Gazan workers daily.

During this period, Israel's goal was to maintain a non-violent co-existence since no peace agreement could be reached.

 October 7th  and  onwards:

However, for the sake of maintaining the ceasefire, Israeli governments chose to ignore a minor (!) point during these 16 years; that is, Hamas’s Charter.

According to HTO’s Charter:

Article 7:  Judgement day will not come unless you fight and kill all Jews.

Article 13: No negotiated treaty is possible. The only solution is jihad.

It is necessary to destroy Israel and establish an Islamic theocracy in Palestine[CH1] .

Obviously Hamas does not recognize the State of Israel and does not accept the Oslo Peace Accords signed by the PA.

On the 7th of October, HTO broke the existing cease fire. Exploiting the fact that it was both a Jewish religious Holiday and Sabbath, Hamas attacked Israel by land, sea, and air, under the cover of a vast rocket attack. The Israeli Intelligence and Army were caught totally by surprise and were unprepared to respond.

The Hamas brutally tortured, massacred and burned around 1200 civilians and soldiers (200 of them being foreign nationals), They raped and mutilated women in such a way that even their DNA could not be extracted from their corpses. (They kidnapped a young woman to Gaza, undressed her, burned her, and dragged her naked, burned body through the streets, chanting). They shot babies in the eyes; they injured more than 3000 people, some of them gravely. They committed all possible war crimes.

HTO took about 250 hostages (aged from a 10-month-old baby to an 86-year-old woman) from their beds in their villages (kibbutzim) into their tunnels inside Gaza. These hostages have been kept there under subhuman conditions for the last 70+ days.

Besides raping women and men hostages, the injured and the sick in need of medical attention were not taken care of. Consequently, many kidnapped hostages lost their lives, the exact number yet unknown.

In the northern border of Israel, Iran’s proxy Hezbollah started its harassment of nearby Israeli villages by rocket and mortar attacks in increasing intensity.

Currently both in the North and the South of Israel, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have left their homes due to the unsafe conditions and are literally homeless.

A "temporary ceasefire" was secured with the help of USA, Qatar, and Egypt on the fiftieth day of the war. The agreement lasted 8 days. During this time, 113 hostages were freed, including some foreign nationals. In return, humanitarian aid such as food, medicine, and fuel were provided to Gaza and for each individual hostage released, three Palestinian security prisoners serving their sentences in Israeli prisons were freed.

It was again Hamas that broke the “temporary ceasefire” on the morning of December 1st. On one hand, two HTO terrorists carried out a terror attack in Jerusalem killing three Israelis, while also on the night of November 30th HTO refused to provide the list of hostages that were supposed to be released the next day.

Consequently, Israel decided to resume the military operation.

(137 hostages, about whose situation we have no information whatsoever, are still being held in Gaza.)

War Rules:

Starting from 2007 and until October 2023 many Israeli civilians lost their lives due to the tens of thousands of indiscriminate HTO rocket attacks to civilian areas.

(There is no other state in the world that would be willing to live under such conditions.)

Following the HTO attack on October 7th, the Israeli government decided to finally intervene in order to:

Return all the hostages to their homes and destroy Hamas military and political capacities so that the rocket attacks would cease once and for all.

During the military operation, the people of Gaza were warned by the IDF before the bombings and were provided with safe havens in protected areas.

While Israel is making maximum efforts to minimize civilian casualties by warning them, HTO is trying to ensure that its own civilian casualties are maximized (including women and children) by using them as human shields and trying to prevent their relocation. HTO tries to win world public opinion by sacrificing its own civilian population.

This article has been written with the purpose of clarifying the facts behind the conflict; facts that part of the world media chooses to ignore or prefers to distort.

UNION OF THE TURKISH IN ISRAEL