In April of 1956, for example, after the killings of 3 Israeli soldiers on the border, Israel shelled the center of Gaza city, arbitrarily killing 58 people. Three weeks later a Palestinian gunman killed Roi Rothberg in the fields of kibbutz Nahal Oz, close to the Gaza fence. 

At Rothberf’s funeral, Moshe Dayan gave a famous eulogy, which to this day is one of the best expositionss of the Israeli attitude towards Gaza and Palestinians in general.

‘…Let us not cast accusations at the murderers today. Why should we blame them for their burning hatred for us? For eight years they have been dwelling in Gaza’s refugee camps, as before their eyes we have transformed the land and the villages in which they and their forefathers had dwelled into our own property.’

[…] We are the generation of settlement; without a steel helmet and the muzzle of the cannon we will not be able to plant a tree and build a home. Our children will not have a life if we do not dig shelters, and without barbed wire and machine guns we will not be able to pave roads and dig water wells. “

Palestinians and Israelis, in Dayan’s narrative, can apparently do nothing to stop this cycle of violence, nor are they the ones who started it. 

‘Millions of Jews who were exterminated because they had no land are looking at us from the ashes of Israeli history and ordering us to settle and resurrect a land for our people.’

Later that year the Israeli army conquered Gaza and committed its first massacre there.  Young men were rounded up in soccer fields, suspected fighters were executed. Hundreds were killed. A new border fence was built around the strip. After several months, the US forced Israel to leave Gaza.

10 years later Israel conquered Gaza again and placed it under direct military government for a generation.  Settlements were built within the strip. In the 80s there was an uprising, and in the 90s a partial agreement, then another uprising. There were shootings and bombings, assassinations and arrests without charges, interrogations and torture. 

In 2005 the Settlements were abandoned, in 2007 the strip was placed under official siege. There were rockets from Gaza and Israeli bombings, big ones in 2008, 2012, 2014. Every time hundreds and thousands were killed, towers toppled, homes, roads, power stations and water wells destroyed. Every time the rebuilding was slow, the cement and steel bought from Israel with UN and western aid money. 

For over a decade, every year the UN and aid agencies reported that Gaza was ‘on the verge’ of humanitarian crisis, on the verge being unlivable. 95% of the wells ‘undrinkable’ (though Gazans still drank, filtering as best they could). Infrastructure was overloaded and collapsing. 

In May 2018, on the 70th anniversary of the nakba, groups of young Gazans started the Marches of Return. Marching, unarmed towards the Israeli fence, they held up placards with the names of the towns and villages their grandparents were driven out of. The problems of Gazans, they said, cannot be solved in Gaza. Every Friday they marched,  for almost two years. Every week dozens were shot, often hundreds. Israeli snipers aimed for the knees turning out a huge cohort of amputees. 

If the protesters thought that the images of unarmed marchers shot by snipers would turn the world’s attention to their plight, force Israel to lift the siege, they were wrong. While they marched and died, the Eurovision contest was held in Tel Aviv, the US embassy was moved to Jerusalem and soon after the marches were stopped by COVID lockdowns, the UAE and Bahrain signed the Abraham Accords. 

Hamas was losing popular support and running out of funds. In 2021 Israel persuaded Qatar to prop up Hamas with 30 million dollars a month. This money, it now seems, was used to build bunkers and tunnels, to boobytrap Gaza and prepare for the attacks of October 2023.  Everything was ready for Gaza to be destroyed. 

Now that the destruction has been halted, who can guarantee that it won’t happen again? Israel is still, again, very much in the same place that Dayan was two generations ago. Just hours after his government approved the deal to halt the bombing, Netanyahu threatened a return to war. 

‘Hamas will be disarmed, and Gaza will be demilitarized. If this is achieved the easy way, great. And if not, it will be achieved the hard way.” 

Again, foreign money will pay to rebuild what Israel destroyed, while Israel continues to sell arms around the world and rebuild its exhausted military . Some Gazans will leave, but the majority will remain in their destroyed cities, wondering when the bombs will come again.

As they find and bury the remains of their loved ones, some may want revenge, many will continue to dream of return to the open country side and rich farmland all around the strip, the places their grandparents were forced out of. In Dayan’s words: 

“Beyond the border’s furrow an ocean of hatred and an urge for vengeance rises.”

The cycle of oppression and rebellion, raids and counter raids has been escalating for decades. Israel is still  doing all it can to deny Palestinians statehood and political rights, and though it may loosen its siege of Gaza, it is only digging its heels deeper in the West Bank. 

It is tragic that this last wave of killing and destruction was needed turn the worlds attention to Palestine and force Israel to stop, and assert Palestinians’ right to freedom. But the war will not truly be over unless we all continue to insist. If consistent pressure on Israel is not maintained, if Israel is not made this time to be accountable for the destruction it has wrought, there will be more forced displacement, more settlement, more military government, more rebellion and more destruction.

Yahav Zohar is a Senior Partner and tour guide with the Green Olive Collective.