Hamas assault on Israel sparks new war

On Saturday 7 October, 50 years to the day after the Yom Kippur War, the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas carried out a terrorist attack of unprecedented scale and rare violence against Israel. Thousands of fighters forced their way into the Gaza enclave to wreak havoc in the surrounding area and perpetrate a pogrom-like massacre against civilian and military targets, accompanied by a hail of 4,000 rockets fired in 3 days. Hundreds of Israeli hostages are currently being held. The Israeli army, initially taken by surprise and partly dispersed in the West Bank, quickly retaliated by bombing Gaza, causing hundreds of victims, some of them civilians, and declaring a siege of the Gaza Strip. The provisional death toll from this new war is 1,500. But the worst is yet to come for these people, who seem condemned to an endless war.

Find all the archives of our weekly editorials here!