The Middle East mosaic stood torpedoed on Saturday as Hamas surprised the Zionist state with a salvo of rocket attacks, and intruded deep into its territory. This is one of the major upsets in the last many years, and the first escalation since the Palestinian militia fought a 10-day war in 2021. The armed wing from Gaza made Israelis bite the dust as they were, perhaps, caught off-guard, and air raid sirens sounded across the southern and central territories of the Jewish entity. The shock and awe is still being measured in Tel Aviv and Washington, as many of the Israeli villages have been reportedly taken over by the resistance forces by marching on from one of the biggest open-air concentration camps in the world.
Hamas, while calling upon other comrades in the West Bank and other enclaves across the region to buckle up its initiative, has literally signed on for a war of nerves. The Jewish response too is heavy as Tel Aviv flew sorties across the Occupied West Bank and Gaza, giving no time for the Palestinians to dig in their heels. The casualties in occupied territories will surely be on an upscale, but the jittery point is that Israel too has taken scores of victims from the Hamas fireworks. The unpredicted and surprising assault from Hamas has simply underscored the fact that Israel and the Arab states were in a feel-good diplomatic exercise of their own, undermining the volatility of the issue by overlooking a permanent territorial settlement of Palestinian imbroglio.
This ongoing conflict will surely have its impact on the diplomatic canvas, as Saudi Arabia and other Muslim states contemplating recognition of Israel will have to pause and think anew. It comes as an opportunity for Riyadh to prevail over Tel Aviv and make it realise that militancy can only be dumped if a political outcome is attained on the basis of a ‘Two-State Solution’. But as far as Palestinians are concerned, the rift and division in their political rank and file will continue to act as an impediment, singling out Hamas for its adventurism and once again putting it on the receiving end.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 8th, 2023.
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