Welcome to Current Affairs. My name is Nathan Robinson. I'm the editor-in-chief of Current Affairs Magazine. I am joined today by Gideon Levy. He is a journalist for Hart's magazine, for newspaper in Israel. He is one of Israel's leading dissident journalists and critics of the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

He is also the author of the new book, The Killing of Gaza, reports on a catastrophe available from Verso Press.

Gideon Levy.

Thank you so much for joining us on current affairs today.

Thank you for having me.

I want to start with the situation of Gaza before October 7th,

because your book collects a number of your reports about Gaza, things you have written going back

a decade, and in fact the first half of the book is set before the October 7th attacks and the

resulting war. Part two is about the war, but part one is reports that go

back as far as 2014. Because a lot of the memory of the pre-October 7th situation has been

sort of erased in the aftermath, perhaps you could tell us a bit more about what the

situation in Gaza was like in the years leading up to October 7th. You reported from Gaza yourself

for many years. So tell us a little bit more about that context. Gaza went through many phases, and I chose to start the story of the King of Gaza much before

the 7th of October, because like anything else, the attack on the 7th of October had a context, had a background.

By saying this, it doesn't mean that you justify or don't justify it, but there is a context.

And the context is that if you look at Gaza, you have to start with 48, because Gaza is the biggest center of refugees,

but I see refugees from 48 who live in the most miserable conditions

ever since then in refugee camps.

And then came 2006, 18 years ago, when Israel made Gaza the biggest cage in the world,

the biggest open prison in the world, namely withdrawing from Gaza and making it a prison,

a cage. And Gaza is under siege for the last 18 years. This is the context.

It's the most abnormal reality that you can imagine. You said 2.3 million people just closed in a cage.

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