TEHRAN – What you are reading is an excerptfrom Kurosh Alyani's unpublished book about Israel’s war on the people of Gaza. In this book, which is scheduled to be published in Persian inthe coming months, the author presents a theoretical account of this deeply unequal—and yet in many ways unprecedented—war.

Not a novel: A timeline

Part of this book is a timeline that spans approximately 81 weeks, collecting and briefly describing events focused on Gaza and all matters related to Gaza and resistance.

A timeline of this kind is a carefully selected slice of life. Life itself is neither fair nor logical, and no fragment of it can claim to be either. Still, it’s important to note: a timeline is not a novel. Of course, it is fragmented like a novel, it is unfair like a novel, and it is selective like a novel—but there are differences too.

A novel has a single author who is its absolute and sovereign force. This author does whatever is necessary to carry out the plan in their mind. They narrate and create everything needed to advance that plan. A timeline, on the other hand, has billions of human authors, and perhaps natural events could also be considered authors in another sense.

These authors, limited by the presence of others and by what we call “reality” or “the real world,” cannot do whatever they please. Their plans are incomplete and constantly changing. In a novel, the author directs your gaze. They determine exactly where you look.

The person who selects and compiles the events in a timeline cannot direct your gaze the way a novelist can. You are not just following a clear, linear storyline; you also have the ability to fact-check and explore beyond the timeline’s frame.

That is also why a timeline quickly becomes boring. It lacks innovation. No matter how astonishing the events it contains may be, it soon falls into repetition and normalcy, dulling the reader’s mind. A timeline is not a highly efficient, guided narrative with near-total impact.

It neither guides nor entertains—just like life itself, which offers no direction or amusement, but merely becomes the ground for awareness. It neither guides nor entertains—just like life itself, which offers no direction or amusement, but merely becomes the ground for awareness. To put it more simply—and in the spirit of clarity—the timeline is like a field in which you must labor to reap a harvest.

No one sows anything for you. If you pay attention like a seed, you will harvest. Surely, the text will regularly and eventually offer outcomes—but none of them will mean anything unless you’ve made the effort yourself.

A breach in time and space

Another part of this book presents an emerging theory called mortopolitics. In simple terms, this theory explores a system of domination that targets the body, health, life, and death of both individuals and society, aiming to bring all under its control.

October 7, 2023, Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, and the Gaza Strip are significant because they caused an irreparable rupture in this system of domination. The wall around Gaza was a physical barrier that was broken. But along with it, metaphorical walls—those of time, structure, and capital—were also torn apart that day, in ways that cannot be ignored or repaired.

October 7 demonstrated that a temporal shift—from a besieged, disappearing Gaza to a liberated, agentive Gaza—is not impossible.

Operation Al-Aqsa Flood proved that all stolen capital—land, lives, faith, even intelligence—can be taken back or rebuilt. Nothing is locked away in vaults forever.

On that day, we, the Palestinians and the Israelis, all came to see that this system of domination does not have an impenetrable structure. Its militarism did not make it invincible, nor did its security systems or its various technologies, especially those related to information.

Inevitable pluralism

The morning of October 7 is the clearest moment in the sequence of events to understand the essence of disagreement. That morning, a fighter cutting through the fence or gliding over it on a paraglider might have seen, above all, the fulfillment of a divine promise—a victory close at hand.

An Israeli resident of Nahal Oz might have been listening to birds and thinking about the day’s tasks, while another Israeli stationed at the military-security base in Nahal Oz was waiting for their shift to end, eager to escape the heavy quiet of their surroundings.

An Israeli wearing light, floral-print pants, deciding how many bracelets or necklaces to wear—perhaps even stashing away the last bit of their cannabis in a ziplock bag to hide it from freeloading friends in their water flask—was probably thinking about how much fun they’d have at the Supernova music festival.

Years from now, a Bible scholar—neither tied to a synagogue nor a church—might say that Hamas’s action on the morning of October 7 was an example of the Hebrew concept of Exodus ("Yetziyah"), severed from its linguistic connection to Egypt and reimagined as a modern, militant spirituality free from ethnic identity.

It becomes clear that this is not merely about different levels or types of awareness. It is about identity itself. A Palestinian whose brother was shot—two months or two years earlier—at a checkpoint, without cause and for amusement, could never feel what an Israeli parent waiting for their child to return from military service and begin a tech job in an IT firm would feel.

Endless in human history

Human history appears to be a continuous story of the rise, reinforcement, and dominance of power systems on one side—and resistance, defiance, and breakthrough on the other.

From myths and legends—like Kaveh the Blacksmith or Hou Yi the Archer—to ancient national histories and modern times, this pattern has never ceased. Gandhi in Asia, Lumumba in Africa, Fred Hampton in America, Bobby Sands in Ireland, and the anarchists who fought Franco in Spain are just drops in the vast, endless ocean of this struggle.

It is important to understand that this is not a tale or a piece of emotional propaganda. It is rooted in the neurological and biological structure of human beings, and this struggle never truly stops. It is also important to see that the story of Gaza, however it winds up, does not truly end, just as the story of Husayn did not end and never will, and the story of Arash did not end and never will.

Kurosh Alyani is an Iranian cultural critic, and he is the author of the book Israel: A Narrative of Continuing Discrimination, Assassination, and Aggression (2021).