Two years later, October 7 is no longer just a date etched in the calendar of pain: it is a fault line in the world's consciousness. That day shook the foundations of international law, politics, and even the moral perception that humanity has of itself. To reread that tragedy today means looking not only at the 1,194 lives shattered in Israel but also at the tens of thousands of Palestinians killed, injured, or displaced in the response that followed. It means recognizing that the chain of violence did not begin or end then, but that since that day, justice has begun to demand its space more forcefully.
For two years, the memory of October 7 has been contested and manipulated. On one side, the memory of the deep and legitimate Israeli trauma; on the other, the Palestinian catastrophe that ensued, often reduced to a "collateral effect." But memory is not a court, and justice cannot be selective. International humanitarian law – which regulates conflicts and protects the lives of civilians – does not allow exceptions: it prohibits attacks against non-combatants, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, and the use of hunger as a weapon of war. All of this has happened repeatedly in these two years and in plain sight.
The work of international courts continues with patience and perseverance: the arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant (the three Hamas leaders, Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif, and Ismail Haniyeh were killed in extrajudicial killings by Israel) remind us that the principle of the universality of law is concrete. The law is equal for all. It is not about equating guilt, but reaffirming a principle: criminal responsibility knows no flags or ideologies. In this, the ICC has restored dignity not only to the victims but also to the law itself, which is too often subordinated to the reason of state. In the last two years, the distance between governments and public opinion has grown. While governments remained mired in geopolitical calculations, the streets filled with students, jurists, academics, religious leaders, and ordinary citizens who asked for the same thing: truth, justice, and respect for international law. This is perhaps the deepest change: the collective awareness that justice is no longer an elite affair, but a universal claim.
International politics has failed where it should have prevented. For decades, it has ignored the root of the conflict, relying on negotiations that exchanged rights for temporary truces, promises for occupations, silence for weapons. Law, however, despite its slowness and imperfections, is returning to being the only credible language. The decisions of the International Court of Justice, the investigations of the United Nations, the rulings on war crimes mark a return to civilization. It is not enough yet, but it is a start.
Today, remembering October 7 cannot mean choosing a side. It means recognizing that no people can build their own security on the annihilation of another. It also means accepting that justice is not an obstacle to peace, but its necessary condition. Israel will have to confront its own internal illness – that of a state that has defended itself to the point of losing the measure of defense.
Palestine will have to overcome fragmentation and the burden of representations that have often betrayed it. But both peoples can only be reborn in a context where the law protects the living and honors the dead, without distinction.
Perhaps the greatest lesson of these two years is that the very concept of a sovereign state, if used as a shield to violate human rights, no longer has legitimacy. The future belongs to a legal order capable of placing the person above national interest, justice above force.
Two years later, October 7 compels us to remember a simple but revolutionary truth: there is no peace without justice, and there is no justice that is not universal.