By Masar Badil – Ago 3, 2026
Since Al-Aqsa Flood, a large part of the international discussion has focused on condemning the Palestinian resistance, while the Zionist settler-colonial project has largely escaped genuine scrutiny. This article poses a different question: Why is the resistance constantly expected to justify itself, while colonialism is rarely asked to justify its very existence? Through this lens, the article examines asymmetric warfare, calls for the disarmament of the resistance, the Palestinian people’s right to determine their own course, and the political and strategic impact of October 7.
Since Al-Aqsa Flood, much of the international debate on Palestine has revolved around the wrong question: How can the Palestinian resistance be justified? Governments, media outlets, and broad sectors of the political establishment have devoted themselves to condemning October 7, while rarely asking what conditions made resistance by a people living under settler colonialism for more than a century inevitable.
The reality is that the Palestinian resistance did not create colonialism. It did not expel hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes, seize their land, establish settlements, impose an apartheid system, or blockade the Gaza Strip for nearly two decades. All of this long predated October 7.
By the time Gaza entered its 17th year under siege, settlements in the West Bank continued to expand, the occupation authorities persisted in their efforts to Judaize Jerusalem and displace its Palestinian inhabitants, and the normalization agreements reinforced the illusion that the Zionist entity could be integrated into the region without resolving the Palestinian question.
The purpose of this was clear: to marginalize Palestine and remove it from the regional and international agenda while the Zionist settler-colonial project consolidated its gains on the ground. The real question, therefore, is not how resistance can be justified, but how a colonial project that has deprived the Palestinian people of their land and national rights for over a century continues to be justified.
From this perspective, the question is not why Al-Aqsa Flood occurred, but why its occurrence seemed surprising to some. No people will accept indefinitely the theft of their land, the denial of their rights, and the destruction of their political future. Resistance emerges when a people recognizes that ceasing to confront colonialism means accepting its continued expansion.
At this point, another familiar objection arises: “The resistance should have chosen another path.” Yet those who advance this argument rarely provide a clear answer to a simple question: What path?
It is easy to speak abstractly about the right of occupied peoples to resist “by all available means.” It is much harder to understand what those words actually mean when an entire people lives under occupation, siege, permanent military surveillance, and a profound imbalance of power. The methods employed by the resistance are not the product of free choice; they are a direct reflection of the reality imposed by colonialism.
A state possessing one of the world’s most advanced militaries, sophisticated air power, modern intelligence services, and extensive political and military backing from Western powers necessarily fights in a fundamentally different manner than a colonized people whose only resources are those it can organize, protect, and develop under severe constraints.
Asymmetric warfare, therefore, is not a strategy chosen by the resistance—it is the natural consequence of an overwhelming imbalance of power.
The same perspective should guide our understanding of Gaza’s tunnels. They are often presented as evidence of the character of the resistance, when in reality they are the direct result of a prolonged siege that transformed the Strip into a sealed enclave. The history of national liberation movements contains many comparable experiences in which colonized peoples devised methods to confront military forces vastly superior to their own. Vietnam remains perhaps the best-known example, though by no means the only one.
The tunnels are not the exception. The real anomaly is the expectation that a besieged people should fight a colonial army using the same methods employed by that army itself.
The question has never been whether the resistance possesses the same capabilities as the occupation, but whether a colonized people should be expected to surrender its right to resist simply because it lacks those capabilities.
The same logic appears whenever the disarmament of the Palestinian resistance is presented as a precondition for any political solution. This is portrayed as a path toward peace, yet it consistently avoids the central question:
What would the Palestinian people receive in return for relinquishing their weapons?
The experience of past decades offers little reason for optimism. The various political processes associated with the Palestinian question did not bring an end to the colonial project. Instead, they coincided with the continued expansion of settlements, the fragmentation of Palestinian territory, and the deepening of Zionist control. To demand the disarmament of the resistance while leaving the colonial structure intact is to demand that the Palestinian people surrender one of their principal means of resistance without removing the conditions that make resistance a historical and political necessity.
The history of national liberation movements also confirms a difficult truth: colonial powers have never withdrawn from their colonies because the colonized people simply chose to stop resisting. Liberation has never been the product of the colonizer’s goodwill, but rather the result of struggles that made maintaining colonial rule more costly than ending it. Palestine is no exception to this historical pattern.
International discourse also repeatedly portrays Palestinians—particularly those in Gaza—as victims of their own resistance rather than victims of settler colonialism. In this way, colonialism disappears from view while resistance itself becomes the central problem.
This perspective reflects a profound form of political paternalism. In most struggles for national liberation, the right of peoples to determine their own methods of struggle is considered self-evident. Yet when Palestine is concerned, that principle suddenly becomes subject to outside approval. Others presume to decide what forms of resistance are acceptable, when they may be used, and when they must end.
True solidarity with Palestine does not mean dictating to the Palestinian people how they should liberate their homeland. It means recognizing their right to choose the path they consider appropriate to end colonialism and reclaim their freedom.
One of the most frequently repeated criticisms since Al-Aqsa Flood is the claim that the operation achieved nothing positive for the Palestinian people. The question is often posed this way: What did Palestinians gain from October 7 if Gaza has suffered such immense destruction?
At first glance, this appears to be a legitimate question. But the answer depends entirely on the perspective from which it is asked.
We’re Expected To Remember October 7 but Never Ask Questions About It
If the assessment is limited solely to the humanitarian catastrophe endured by Gaza, the picture will inevitably remain incomplete. No one can deny the genocide, the systematic destruction of cities, the tens of thousands of martyrs and wounded, the deliberate starvation policy, and the forced displacement inflicted upon the Palestinian people. These realities cannot be minimized or reduced to mere statistics.
Yet neither can they be understood as having begun on October 7. Gaza had already endured years of blockade that devastated its economy, restricted the movement of its people, and turned everyday life into a permanent form of collective punishment. Settler colonialism and structural violence existed before Al-Aqsa Flood, and they will continue as long as their underlying causes remain. The decision to commit genocide was made by the occupying state; to hold the resistance responsible for that crime is simply to transfer responsibility from the perpetrator to the victim.
For that reason, the real question extends beyond what happened after October 7. It must also include the reality that preceded it.
Before Al-Aqsa Flood, the Palestinian cause was steadily being pushed to the margins. Normalization projects advanced. Gaza’s siege was increasingly treated as ordinary. West Bank settlements expanded with minimal political cost. The world appeared increasingly content to manage the Palestinian question rather than address its colonial roots. Time was working in favor of the colonial project.
Al-Aqsa Flood disrupted many of these assumptions. Palestine returned to the center of international discussion. The image of the Zionist entity as an invincible power was shaken. Normalization no longer appeared to be the inevitable path it had been portrayed to be. The world also witnessed one of the broadest waves of solidarity with Palestine in recent history, as millions began asking questions that had largely disappeared from public debate—questions about the roots of the conflict, settler colonialism, and the rights of the Palestinian people.
None of this compensates for the immense sacrifices made by the Palestinian people, nor should it ever be treated as an acceptable price for such suffering. Yet it also refutes the claim that Al-Aqsa Flood changed nothing.
National liberation movements are not measured by the outcome of a single battle. They are measured by their ability to alter the balance of a struggle, disrupt realities that once appeared permanent, and force back onto the global agenda the very cause that colonialism sought to erase. From this perspective, Al-Aqsa Flood cannot be judged solely by its immediate military or humanitarian consequences. Its political and strategic impact on the trajectory of the Palestinian cause must also be considered.
It is sometimes argued that the resistance should have waited for more favorable conditions. Yet this opinion also avoids a simple question:
What was the alternative?
Was the expectation that Palestinians should wait several more years while the siege continued? Wait for more settlements and further land confiscation? Wait until normalization projects were completed and the Palestinian question had been transformed into a forgotten file?
Under colonial conditions, time does not work in favor of the colonized. Every year that passes without change means more settlements, more land confiscation, more Palestinian displacement, and the deeper entrenchment of the colonial system.
Negotiations are often presented as the only alternative to resistance. Yet the problem is not choosing between resistance and negotiations. The problem lies in assuming that a colonized people can negotiate its national rights with the very power colonizing it while the colonial structure itself remains intact.
The history of national liberation movements demonstrates that freedom is not born from agreements between the colonizer and the colonized. It emerges through the dismantling of the colonial system itself. As long as that system endures, negotiations can do no more than administer colonial reality—they cannot bring it to an end.
Ultimately, the central paradox remains that the world endlessly debates the methods of the Palestinian resistance while treating the Zionist settler-colonial project—which made that resistance a historical necessity—as an unquestioned fact requiring no explanation.
Anyone has the right to debate or disagree politically with particular methods of resistance. What cannot legitimately be denied, however, is the right of a people living under colonial rule to resist the system that deprives them of their land, their freedom, and their national existence. That right is not granted by any particular organization, nor does it depend on any single military operation. Its legitimacy derives from the existence of a people deprived of its homeland, its sovereignty, and its national rights.
As long as that reality persists, resistance will remain a natural part of Palestinian history and of the Palestinian people’s struggle until liberation and return.
It is time to stop demanding that Palestinians justify their resistance and begin asking the question that has been ignored for decades:
How can a settler-colonial project that has denied an entire people their right to freedom, return, and a dignified life in their own homeland for more than a century continue to be justified?
From Orinoco Tribune via This RSS Feed.