# Gaza War

> the large-scale war in and around Gaza following 7 October 2023, producing mass Palestinian civilian death and displacement, destruction, hostage captivity, Israeli military casualties, and contested legal claims

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Stable ID | `node:kiduna:political-change:israel-palestine:gaza-war` |
| Family | Israel / Palestine |
| Domain | Contested History |
| Kind | field |
| Archetypal function | The Unresolved Homeland |
| Epistemic status | synthesis; supported |

## Concrete anchor

Gaza War belongs to the **Israel / Palestine** family. It is treated as a specific political object, role, institution, tactic, event, ideology, or mechanism before any symbolic transfer is made.

## What it does

Israeli military operations against Hamas interact with urban warfare, blockade and aid controls, hostage negotiations, armed-group operations, international diplomacy, and legal proceedings. Casualty figures and classifications require source and method labels.

## Who gains and who loses power

The mechanism can increase the capacity of actors able to use Gaza War, while shifting cost, delay, risk, exclusion, or dependence toward actors with less authority, information, organization, money, or safe access. The distribution is conditional, not an essence of the node.

## Archetypal function

**The Unresolved Homeland.** the large-scale war in and around Gaza following 7 October 2023, producing mass Palestinian civilian death and displacement, destruction, hostage captivity, Israeli military casualties, and contested legal claims

## Gift

No gift is assigned to war's suffering; the analytic function is to expose interdependence among security, civilian protection, accountability, and political settlement.

## Wound / Shadow

Statistics without people, totalizing blame, denial of atrocities, or collapsing legal allegations into final judgments before the relevant tribunal acts.

## Conditions

- scale and jurisdiction are explicit
- affected people and absent stakeholders are named
- time horizon and countermoves are considered

## Strategic meaning

Use Gaza War to identify the operative target, resource, dependency, decision forum, and likely countermove. Ask what would make the mechanism stronger, weaker, more legitimate, or less necessary.

## Divinatory meaning

The Unresolved Homeland enters through Gaza War. Read for the capacity seeking expression, the cost displaced from view, and the relationship that changes if the frame moves.

**Question:** What is the source, date, legal status, affected population, and claimed military or political objective?

## Game function

**role.** Reveal one hidden dependency connected to Gaza War; another player names a countermove. Initiative 5.

## Relationships

- **institutionalizes — Israeli Hostages:** Israeli Hostages institutionalizes Gaza War by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(cultural_historical; supported)_
- **counteracts — Ceasefire and Hostage Deal:** Gaza War counteracts Ceasefire and Hostage Deal by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(cultural_historical; supported)_
- **mobilizes — Malapportionment:** Malapportionment mobilizes Gaza War by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_
- **institutionalizes — Participatory Budgeting:** Gaza War institutionalizes Participatory Budgeting by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_

## Countermaps and polarity prompts

- Read Gaza War from the viewpoint of the actor who bears its cost.
- Reverse cause and symptom: what if Gaza War is an effect of the system it appears to drive?
- Change the clock: what looks different over a day, an election cycle, a generation, and a century?
- Ask when the Gift becomes the Wound through scale, secrecy, intensity, latency, or unequal reciprocity.

## Epistemic and Sentinel note

Claim layers: synthesis, interpretive, symbolic_divinatory. Scope, jurisdiction, period, and source perspective may change the claim.
Sentinel factors: active conflict; mass civilian harm; hostages; war-crime and genocide allegations; contested casualty data. These are descriptive handoff annotations, not a verdict and not a mutation of Engine Output.

## Visual direction

A text-free enamel expression of Gaza War: one dominant mechanism, one counterforce, raised warm-metal linework, midnight field, restrained civic red, teal, ivory, and amber. No party logo, national flag, sacred symbol, or recognizable person.

## Research / provenance

- [History of the Question of Palestine](https://www.un.org/unispal/history/) — United Nations, 2026. UN-framed chronology and diplomatic record.
- [Hamas–Israel Conflict 2023: Key Legal Aspects](https://www.gov.il/en/pages/hamas-israel-conflict2023-key-legal-aspects) — Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2023. Israeli government factual and legal position; explicitly labeled as a party perspective.
- [Advisory Opinion: Occupied Palestinian Territory](https://www.icj-cij.org/case/186) — International Court of Justice, 2024. Court record and advisory opinion; advisory rather than contentious judgment.
- [Occupied Palestinian Territory](https://www.ochaopt.org/) — UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, ongoing. UN humanitarian reporting and datasets; casualty sources and methods should remain visible.
- [Foreign Terrorist Organizations](https://2021-2025.state.gov/foreign-terrorist-organizations/) — U.S. Department of State, 2025. U.S. designation list; legal classification is jurisdiction-specific and does not describe every supporter or Palestinian political actor.

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Engine Output version 1.0.0; generated 2026-08-24T00:00:00Z. Sentinel annotations are stored separately in `sentinel/handoffs.json`.
