By Ramzy Baroud 
Like each sacred piece of land in Gaza and all through Palestine, the historical past of Beit Hanoun predates the very existence of Israel by millennia.
As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu equipped for what was supposed as a triumphant go to to Washington, commencing on Monday, July 7, 2025, Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades in Beit Hanoun have been meticulously making ready their very own stark counter-narrative. On the very inaugural day of the Israeli chief’s high-stakes diplomatic journey, the battalion launched a devastating strike, inflicting important casualties on Israeli troopers. The Israeli military, infamous for obfuscating its navy losses, begrudgingly acknowledged 5 troopers killed and 14 wounded, some critically.
This audacious operation, coupled with quite a few others throughout each northern and southern Gaza, provided an plain fact: Israel’s utter incapacity to safe any section of the Strip. This failure undermines its proclaimed intent to determine management over the genocide-stricken territory, seemingly as a prelude to forcibly displacing the complete inhabitants, first to Rafah within the south, and in the end, in direction of Egypt.
Netanyahu might possess a pointy political crafty, but his acumen primarily serves his private survival as a politician. It demonstrably fails to harness politics for the real good of his nation, not to mention for international stability. He would possibly challenge a picture of eloquence, however this perceived mastery of phrases typically prospers solely as a result of he stays largely unchallenged inside his customary political circles.
Contemplate, as an illustration, this pronouncement he uttered on July 6, 2025, simply hours earlier than his flight to Washington:
“Our joint involvement introduced an awesome victory over our mutual enemy – Iran. Iran has devoted itself, for years, to our destruction, and for years, we had apprehensions: What ought to we do about Iran? Would we be capable to tackle Iran? And now, our heroic pilots flew within the skies of Iran, and the IDF did wonders, together with the Mossad and all different safety branches…”
Stripped of essential context, this self-congratulatory declaration implies an earth-shattering occasion poised to essentially alter “the face of the Center East,” a well-liked chorus of Netanyahu’s. But, past the relentless and baseless claims of getting decisively defeated Iran – a story totally devoid of credibility amongst sober political analysts – mere hours later, Palestinians in Gaza, enduring over 639 days of a relentless and internationally acknowledged genocide, delivered an plain message: Israel can not even subjugate Beit Hanoun.
What, then, is Beit Hanoun?
In essence, this small city, encompassing an approximate space of 12.5 sq. kilometers (4.8 sq. miles), persists merely as a geographic marker and a reputation. It has been virtually completely obliterated, its total pre-war inhabitants, estimated at round 60,000 residents, wholly displaced.
Owing to its perilous proximity to the Israeli border, typically as shut as 1.5 kilometers (roughly 1 mile), Beit Hanoun has been a major goal in practically all of Israel’s prior aggressions in opposition to Gaza. It bore a disproportionately heavier burden of destruction in comparison with different Palestinian areas, relationship again as early as 2004, 2006, and 2014.
Nonetheless, the most recent battle and genocide have left nearly no constructing intact; some constructions have been bombed repeatedly, rendering the complete space a haunting tableau of charred devastation. Certainly, quite a few charred stays of victims nonetheless lie within the streets of Beit Hanoun or entombed beneath its huge rubble to at the present time.
Including profound insult to grievous damage, the town was actually branded with the Star of David. In January 2025, chilling satellite tv for pc imagery starkly revealed a large Star of David carved into what was as soon as fertile farmland in Beit Hanoun. Traditionally, alongside Beit Lahia and different japanese areas, the city constituted an important section of Gaza’s meals basket – a job that grew to become acutely essential through the 20 years of suffocating Israeli siege.
Although a lot of this significant agricultural land had already been appropriated by the Israeli military as ‘navy zones,’ it nonetheless managed to considerably stave off outright famine. Thus, the deliberate destruction of Beit Hanoun essentially equates to a deliberate assault on Gaza’s very capability for survival.
But, Beit Hanoun merely refuses to die. Quite the opposite, it persists as one of the vital energetic and formidable fronts for the Palestinian Resistance, posing one of the vital perplexing navy quandaries for the Israeli military. This defiance happens regardless of Israel’s state-of-the-art killing know-how, overwhelming troop numbers, and a seemingly countless provide chain, courtesy of Uncle Sam’s boundless generosity.
When Israel initiated its full-scale floor offensive on Gaza on October 27, 2023, it commenced exactly in Beit Hanoun. Astonishingly, it took the Resistance merely three days – between October 27 and November 1 – to discern the ways of the invading Israeli military and adapt accordingly.
On November 1, Al-Qassam declared it had decimated 4 Israeli Merkava tanks and armored autos utilizing Yasin 105 anti-tank rocket-propelled grenades, adopted by the precision concentrating on of an Israeli soldier gathering with a quadcopter drone. On November 11, the Israeli military itself reluctantly admitted to the killing of 4 troopers and the wounding of others in a booby-trapped tunnel in Beit Hanoun. The Resistance additional asserted it had detonated an anti-personnel improvised explosive gadget (IED) concentrating on Israeli forces occupying a civilian residence within the space.
Quite a few different operations adopted, every as deadly and complicated as its predecessors. It grew to become terrifyingly evident that the extra destruction the Israeli military wrought upon Beit Hanoun, the extra fiercely and resiliently its resistance emerged. Determined for a conclusive victory, the Israeli military openly declared on December 18, 2023, that it had “dismantled” the Al-Qassam battalions within the city. Consequently, its battle ways within the space supposedly shifted from a full-scale invasion to “holding operations,” predicated on the false premise that the Israeli military was now in “full management.”
That, too, proved to be one other pipedream. The Israeli military was repeatedly compelled to withdraw from Beit Hanoun as Palestinian fighters, expertly using beforehand excavated tunnels – and presumably newly dug ones – infiltrated again into their ravaged city. They ingeniously leveraged the very mass destruction inflicted by the Israeli military to their strategic benefit, turning the city wasteland into a fancy battlefield.
The lethal July 7 assault on Israeli forces marked the 639th day for the reason that battle’s inception on October 7, 2023. This operation unequivocally signaled Israel’s failure, not solely to occupy the city definitively, but additionally to actually conquer any a part of Gaza. Beit Hanoun is, in essence, a microcosm of Gaza’s undefeated, and arguably undefeatable, nature.
And like each sacred piece of land in Gaza and all through Palestine, the historical past of Beit Hanoun predates the very existence of Israel by millennia. Beit Hanoun, an historical settlement, is believed to have been based by a pagan king named Hanoun. Archaeological findings within the space testify to each historical constructions and uninterrupted habitation throughout numerous epochs.
It was there, simply west of Beit Hanoun, that the Ayyubids famously vanquished the Crusaders on the Battle of Umm al-Nasser hill in 1239. To commemorate that pivotal victory, a mosque was consecrated bearing the battle’s identify. Tragically, this very mosque, the revered Umm al-Naser Mosque, was obliterated by Israel in November 2023, with information of its destruction confirmed in January the next 12 months.
If the human spirit have been merely quantifiable by stones and concrete, Beit Hanoun would have been meticulously erased from each existence and reminiscence way back. The human spirit, nonetheless, can solely be actually measured by the unyielding steadfastness of a individuals’s collective will. As intelligent as he might understand himself to be, neither Netanyahu nor his formidable, US-backed military will ever handle to defeat this historical Palestinian city, nor Gaza, nor the indomitable Palestinian individuals themselves. If historical past has bequeathed us any sure lesson, it’s exactly this.
– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He’s the writer of six books. His newest e-book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is “Our Imaginative and prescient for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Converse out”. Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Analysis Fellow on the Heart for Islam and International Affairs (CIGA). His web site is www.ramzybaroud.net