Blanket labels of multi-faceted realities are seldom helpful. (Photo credit: BBC)

The fighting between Israel and Palestine has been going on since 1948.

Arguably, Palestinians have been facing and living under the threat of “7/10” ever since 1948.

The 7/10 when Palestinians walked through Israel’s borders unchecked – has widely been reported by the western media and politicians as a “terrorist attack” – but blanket labelling it a terrorist attack is in contravention to international law.

International law says, as per UN resolution 45/130: “2. Reaffirms the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial domination, apartheid and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle”.

The Palestinians are an occupied peoples – they are occupied by Israel. By blanket labelling 7/10 a terrorist attack it is rejecting this principle of international law – which is that the occupied peoples have a right to fight back “by all available means”. It is not just a point of international law, but this is a basic human principle too. People who are occupied have always fought back, even before international law was a thing.

By blanket labelling 7/10 a terrorist attack – we are holding the Palestinians to a higher standard than every other group.

Hamas also released a detailed 18 page document in January, outlining their reasons behind doing 7/10.

Now, one could reasonably argue that not everything in this document will be the truth – but the basic message of it is, it is saying they did not attack Israel just because they wanted to attack Jews – which is what the Israeli / Zionist narrative has been. And I think we can believe Hamas on this – because if they just fought Jews for the sake of them being Jews – then why would they fight their own fellow Palestinians who presumably are largely Muslims too, for territorial control?

It is convenient for Israel / Zionists to label 7/10 a terrorist attack, because that way it avoids any questions about their occupation – if the root cause of the the 7/10 attacks is rightly identified as being the illegal occupation, then it’d have to be dealt with. Israel and the Zionist movement doesn’t want that, they never wanted that – it has become abundantly clear now, Israel does not believe in a two-state solution, it never did – it wants to control all of what was known as historic Palestine and possibly even beyond, according to some of its politicians and people.

Instead of incorrectly blanket labelling 7/10 a terrorist attack – we should acknowledge and respect international law – and if we do that, then it becomes impossible to blanket label 7/10 a terrorist attack – the accurate way to describe 7/10 would be that in principle, it was an inevitable reaction from the occupied peoples, and in that reaction, some acts of terrorism have / may have been committed.

And let us not forget – in terms of people killed, Israel has already done thirty five 7/10s against the Palestinians – and so in the cold light of day, no matter what we call 7/10, the balance is very one sided. If we sympathise with Israel for 7/10, then how much sympathy are we owed to the Palestinians – at what point does the victimhood of one side become relatively negligible because the reaction has been so over the top and indiscriminate.