7th October: The earthquake that put Palestine back at the centre of the world

A few days before 7 October, the US National Security Adviser said “the Middle East was quieter than it had been for two decades”. That sentence now sounds like a full summary of the American illusion.

Washington was looking at the region from above. Normalisation was moving forward. Israel felt secure. Gaza was besieged but “under control”. The West Bank was being swallowed slowly by settlements. Palestine was no longer treated as the center of the conflict, but as a disturbing file that could be managed with aid, work permits and economic promises.

Then 7th October happened.

It was not only a military operation. It was a political, intelligence and psychological earthquake. It surprised Israel, the United States, Arab governments and much of the international community. Almost everyone believed Gaza had accepted the rules of siege, that Hamas had become used to power, and that Palestinians were tired of resistance.

Under that calm surface, something very different was happening.

Hamas carried out a major strategic deception. Israel, which always boasts that its intelligence services see everything, failed to see what was happening inside a small, besieged strip of land.

This tells us something important: arrogance blinds power.

Israel slept on the illusion of total superiority. Before 1973, it trusted the Bar Lev Line. Before 2023, it trusted the wall around Gaza, early-warning systems, the Gaza Division, the Shabak and Mossad. It believed Palestinians were deterred. It believed Gaza was contained. It believed Arab states were busy elsewhere. It believed the normalisation train could run over the Palestinian question without a price.

Netanyahu carried this illusion more than anyone else.

Shortly before 7th October, he stood at the United Nations and presented his map of a “new Middle East”. It was a region built around normalisation, trade corridors and Arab-Israeli integration. But with Palestine pushed to the margins. His message was clear: Israel could normalize with Arab states, bypass the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, manage Gaza, divide Palestinians between Gaza and the West Bank, and continue without paying a political price.

This was not only a personal illusion. Because Netanyahu remained in power for so long, his thinking shaped the Israeli system itself: the media, academia, security institutions, intelligence agencies and military culture. The failure of 7 October was therefore not only an intelligence failure. It was a political and ideological failure. It was the failure of an Israeli worldview that believed the Palestinian question could be weakened, fragmented and then ignored.

This is why Netanyahu now tries to avoid serious accountability. He wants to blame the army, military intelligence, the Shabak, the opposition, Oslo, and even to blame Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin who passed away many years ago. He wants everyone to be responsible except himself. But the truth is simple: the political strategy that helped create this moment was his strategy.

7th October did not come from nowhere. It came after years of siege on Gaza, repeated wars, a dead political horizon, settlement expansion in the West Bank, attacks on Al-Aqsa Mosque, thousands of Palestinian prisoners, and Palestinian division that blocked any serious national stability. It came after Palestinians were told that “economic improvement” should replace freedom.

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One may disagree with the decision, the calculations, or the cost. But 7 October cannot be removed from a century of colonialism, expulsion, occupation and siege.

It also struck the myth of the invincible Israeli army. The image that Palestinians and Israelis will carry for years is not only military. It is psychological: a Palestinian fighter climbing on an Israeli tank, and an Israeli soldier being pulled from it. That image broke something in Israeli consciousness and opened something in Palestinian consciousness. It said that power is not eternal, that walls are not destiny, and that Israel can be hit inside its own depth.

This is why the Israeli response was so brutal.

Israel was not only responding to a military attack. It was responding to the collapse of its security myth. It tried to rebuild its deterrence through mass destruction. It wanted to tell every Palestinian, every Arab, and every people thinking of resistance: the price will be unbearable.

This is how the war on Gaza unfolded: a war on people, stones, trees, homes, hospitals and memory. It was not only a war against Hamas’s military structure. It was a war against the social environment of resistance.

But this response also exposed Israel.

The real crisis inside Israeli society today is not only political. It is moral. There has been no serious Ethical questioning. Large parts of Israeli society moved after 7 October toward revenge, toward justifying mass killing, hunger and destruction in Gaza. Many demanded more force, more bombing, more punishment. Yet when the world calls this what it is — collective punishment, ethnic cleansing, or genocide — the same Israeli society reacts with outrage and insists it remains the most moral in the world.

This is the contradiction. Israel wants to justify mass violence and still keep its moral image. It wants to destroy Gaza and still be seen only as a victim. It wants to speak the language of revenge at home and the language of democracy abroad.

But Gaza has made that harder.

For decades, Israel presented itself as a democratic island in the Middle East. Gaza showed another face: a colonial power practicing collective punishment, mass killing and destruction. This change in global perception is not small.

Before 7 October, Palestine was low on the international agenda. After it, Palestine returned to the center of world politics. No international summit, election campaign, university debate or major protest can now ignore Gaza.

It is true that global sympathy has not yet become strong enough to change policy. Arms still flow. Political cover still exists. The siege imposed on Gaza still continues. But something has changed in global consciousness. A generation that protested for Gaza in Western universities today may tomorrow sit in parliaments, newsrooms, courts, governments and institutions. Israel received huge military support. But it lost something deeper: its monopoly over the narrative.

7th October also pushed Israel’s security doctrine into a deep crisis. Before this war, Israel already saw security everywhere. After 7th October, the idea of security became almost limitless.

Where do the borders of Israeli security stop now?

Syria must not rebuild its army because that is seen as a danger. Lebanon must remain weak because Hezbollah is seen as a danger. Iran must be broken because it is seen as a danger. And after Netanyahu’s speeches, even the so-called “Sunni axis” — Turkey, Saudi Arabia and others — is increasingly discussed through the same language: what if they become a future danger to Israel?

This is not a normal security doctrine. It is a doctrine of permanent suspicion.

Even student protests in American universities are treated by some as a threat to Israel. Laws, pressure campaigns and disciplinary measures are pushed because young people chanting for Palestine are seen not only as critics of Israeli policy, but as a danger to Israel’s image, legitimacy and future support.

This shows how far the meaning of “Israeli security” has expanded. It no longer means only protecting Israeli citizens inside, somehow, recognised borders. It has become a claim over the whole region, and even over public debate in the West. Syria’s army, Lebanon’s politics, Iran’s sovereignty, Turkey’s rise, Saudi Arabia’s choices, and American students’ voices can all be placed under the same label: a threat to Israel.

But when security becomes this wide, it stops being security. It becomes a political tool to control others.

To be fair, many Israelis would argue that this fear did not come from nowhere. After 7 October, Israeli society experienced a real shock. Civilians were killed, soldiers were captured, and the state’s promise of protection collapsed in front of its own people. From that angle, it is understandable that many Israelis now see threats everywhere and demand stronger security guarantees. No society can experience such a rupture and simply return to normal.

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But understanding fear is not the same as accepting what is done in its name. Fear can explain why a society becomes more defensive, but it cannot justify turning every neighbor, every Palestinian, every Arab capital, every student protest, and every future political possibility into a security threat. When trauma becomes a doctrine, it does not produce safety. It produces endless war.

Israel has a right to protect its people. But Palestinians also have a right to live free from occupation, siege, bombing, displacement and humiliation. Security cannot belong to one people only. If Israeli security requires permanent Palestinian insecurity, then it is not a path to peace. It is a formula for the next explosion.

The region has understood this. Israel is no longer seen only by some Arab states as a possible partner against Iran. It is increasingly seen as a dangerous force that may drag the whole region into wars nobody can control. Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran have shown that Israel is not a project of stability. It is a project that keeps producing explosions.

Still, we must be honest about the price Palestinians paid.

Gaza has been destroyed. Its people have paid with their blood, homes, children and future. This tragedy cannot be turned into easy victory language.

The greater tragedy is that Arabs and Muslims failed to build the kind of political and humanitarian shield that could have reduced this price. Emergency summits of dozens of states could not even guarantee enough medicine and food for Gaza. While Western air bridges carried weapons to Israel, Gaza faced death almost alone.

This is the bitter truth: when Palestinians remain quiet, they are accused of surrendering their cause. When they resist, they are accused of bringing disaster upon themselves. If they accept negotiations, they are blamed for weakness. If they take up arms, they are blamed for recklessness.

What, then, is the Palestinian expected to do?

7th October did not solve the Palestinian question. But it ended a major illusion: the illusion that Palestine can be bypassed.

It told the world that normalization without justice cannot create peace. It showed that comfortable occupation cannot last forever. It proved that a people denied freedom for more than a century will not disappear from history.

The earthquake began in Gaza, but it did not end there. Its aftershocks reached Israel, Arab capitals, Western universities, elections and the international system itself. We are still living inside those aftershocks.

The real question now is not only what 7 October did. The question is what Palestinians, Arabs and the world will do with its consequences.

Can Palestinian pain be turned into political strength? Can there be real Palestinian unity? Can the Arab world use the global shift instead of only watching? Can the international movement for Palestine become more than sympathy?

7th October put Palestine back at the centre of the world.

But keeping it there requires politics, unity, vision and support.

People do not win through courage alone, or blood alone. They win when sacrifice becomes a political project that knows what it wants — and how to reach it.

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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.