Deluge
Gaza and Israel from Crisis to Cataclysm
Why did Hamas attack? What is Israel trying to achieve? Did this catastrophe have to happen? And is there a way forward? The book’s expert contributors address these and other questions, which have never been more urgent.
In September 2023, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan boasted that the Middle East “is quieter today than it has been in two decades.” One week later, unprecedented violence in Gaza and Israel shattered the status quo and shocked the world.
Hamas’s Operation Al-Aqsa Deluge punctured delusions of stability as hundreds of militants burst forth from the Gaza prison camp. In the ensuing carnage and firefights, 1,200 Israelis were killed and hundreds more taken hostage.
Israel’s retaliation turned the besieged enclave into a howling wasteland. Nearly 30,000 people were killed in four months, including more than 12,000 children, and over 60 percent of homes were damaged or destroyed. Israel targeted the wounded and infirm, newborns and near-dead, as Gaza’s healthcare system—hospitals, clinics, ambulances, medical personnel—came under a systematic attack unprecedented in the annals of modern warfare.
The Hamas massacre and the genocidal Israeli campaign which followed together mark a historic turning point in the Israel-Palestine conflict. The reverberations have also shaken politics far beyond, not least in Europe and the United States, where gigantic, round-the-clock protests for Palestinian rights pitted politicians against the public and exposed a growing statist authoritarianism.
In this groundbreaking book—the first published about the 2023 Gaza war—leading Palestinian, Israeli, and international authorities put these momentous developments in context and provide an initial taking-stock.
Contributors: Musa Abuhashhash, Ahmed Alnaouq, Nathan J. Brown, Yaniv Cogan, Clare Daly MEP, Talal Hangari, Khaled Hroub, R. J., Colter Louwerse, Mitchell Plitnick, Mouin Rabbani, Sara Roy, and Avi Shlaim
Jamie Stern-Weiner is an Associate Editor at OR Books and a doctoral candidate at the University of Oxford. Israeli-born and London-raised, he has written extensively about the history and politics of the Israel-Palestine conflict as well as the contemporary politics of antisemitism. His publications include Moment of Truth: Tackling Israel-Palestine’s Toughest Questions (OR Books, 2018), Antisemitism and the Labour Party (Verso, 2019), and How the EHRC Got It So Wrong (Verso, 2021). His articles have been published in The Nation, Jacobin, Jadaliyya, Middle East Eye, and elsewhere. He co-founded the New Left Project.
Clare Daly MEP is an Irish politician, currently serving as a member of the European Parliament, representing the constituency of Dublin. Elected as an independent socialist, she is affiliated to the Left in the European Parliament, and works across a range of policy areas, including migration and human rights, data protection, home affairs, transport, and defense. She is a vocal advocate for peace and a critic of EU foreign policy.
Khaled Hroub is professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Northwestern University/Qatar and the author of two books on Hamas.
Mouin Rabbani is co-editor of Jadaliyya and host of its Connections podcast.
Sara Roy is an associate of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. Her most recent book is Unsilencing Gaza: Reflections on Resistance (Pluto Press, 2021).
Avi Shlaim is an emeritus professor of International Relations at Oxford University, a fellow of the British Academy, and the author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (2014) and Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations (2009).
