Hamas attack and its fallout

Palestine is back in the news. After Oslo Accord and for over thirty years the world didn’t talk about the two-state solution. Gave up on the Palestinians. Some of the Arab countries particularly moved on and signed friendship treaties with Israel putting the Palestinian cause on the back burner as if that didn’t matter. What Hamas did was bad but what Israel has been doing over the years has been worst. Israel is calling the Hamas attack as their Pearl Harbor and their 9/11. What does this mean for Israel and for the world?

What followed Pearl Harbor was a disproportionate US response. The perpetrators of the attack were attacked with nuclear weapons and the world is quite familiar with what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The US response to 9/11 was also disproportionate. Al Qaeda as a terrorist organisation was defeated and destroyed, but as a consequence of the unnecessary American wars more radicalism and extremism proliferated and the unipolar moment of the world made the world a less secure and less safe place to live.

Israelis are going mad after losing so many people to Hamas’s attack. They expect the world to sympathise with them. After the holocaust this is the biggest Jewish community loss. Anger is thus likely to influence Israeli policy and its response to the Hamas attack. Israel has already killed more Palestinian people in response through its aerial bombardment of Gaza Strip. If Hamas had unleased an evil the Israeli forces are now unleashing a bigger evil.

Powerless, stateless and defenceless the Palestinians in Gaza Strip are like sitting ducks. Without electricity, food, fuel, water and other basic necessities the 1.2 million people in Gaza are under absolute Israeli siege and this is only the beginning and it is likely to get worst. Morally, the Israelis have the support of not only the US but the Europeans who do more American parroting than having any independent diplomacy or policymaking of their own. The US President is reliving the superiority-complexed Bush moment of ‘Mission Accomplished’ by saying that “any country or any organization thinking of taking advantage of the situation I have one word — ‘don’t.” What the current Middle Eastern crisis so clearly demonstrates is that the world is not united as it was when it supported the US in its fight to contain communism during the cold war or fight terrorism after 9/11.

There is a spiritual dimension to this war. One side thinks it is human and calls the other side animals. This side that considers itself human and which has constructed its societal base on the democratic principles of liberty and equality looks down unfavourably towards the unhealthy side. Not realising that the poor health of the other side is because of their own doing. It is their quest for superiority which ignites the impulses of violence and it is their spiritual dimension of superiority, their naked fascism that gives birth to movements and organisations like Hezbollah and Hamas.

When an idea is born you cannot kill and murder it with cannons and guns. Israel may ride on the shoulders of the US to plan and execute its military response and I am sure it will be as disproportionate as the US response to Pearl Harbor or 9/11 was, but there is one big thing that Israel must consider and this is its geographic location. It is not insulated like the US is with both Pacific and Atlantic Oceans securing it from any external threat. Israel is surrounded by Arab countries which are economically, militarily and morally depleted but are still Arab countries inhabited by millions of people that share and feel the Palestinian pain and suffering. The escalating situation in Gaza is likely to create huge problems for the dormant and under the western influence governments of these countries. If Israel overreacts the war will become broader and spread.

It is very unfortunate that Israeli women and children were killed in the Hamas attack but 47% of the 2.2 million people in Gaza are under 18 years of age and there are over 1 million babies in Gaza. Will the Arab world or the Islamic world stay quiet when these people who had nothing to do with Hamas’s attack are butchered under the conditions of Israeli siege? The Israelis may respond that it is Hamas that has brought this fate on to the people of Gaza but what about years of Israel’s tyrannical policies backed by the US which may have brought this current fate on Israel in the shape of Hamas attack.

The surprise Hamas attack on Israel is similar to the Arab coalition attack led by Egypt and Syria in the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Despite the humiliating defeat of the Arabs, some political consequences resulted for Israel as well. The first was that the people of Israel didn’t forgive their most popular leader Golda Mier under whose leadership Israel was caught off-guard and attacked and she had to resign. The other political consequence was that years after this surprise attack Israel signed the Camp David Peace Agreement with Egypt.

For the last six months, almost the entire population in Israel had been out on streets demonstrating against PM Netanyahu’s introduction of judicial reforms aimed at limiting the powers of judiciary. People in Israel considered this as an attack on democracy and PM Netanyahu was only surviving by cobbling together a far-right coalition government. The result of which was that more Palestinians were killed during this year than any other year and the West Bank settlements were fast expanding. If the far-right Israeli government had not posed as an existential threat to the Palestinians and if Saudis had not shown their readiness to join Abraham Accords, the Hamas attack might not have taken place.

The world now waits for the Israeli ground operation. Israelis must do something to free the hostages that Hamas has taken. In 2011, Israel freed 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit who was captured by Hamas. Some of the Palestinians freed were serving life sentences in Israeli prisons for attacks on Israelis. Fast forward to 2023. Hamas has over 100 Israeli hostages. What would Israel do?

In the fog of war, disinformation spreads like wildfire. What the situation requires is a serious, high level, behind-the-scenes efforts at multilateral diplomacy. After much death and destruction, the only solution for both sides to reach would be the revival of two-state solution. President Joe Biden, instead of strengthening the force posture by moving an aircraft carrier, should rather be strengthening the diplomatic posture, provided the US considers itself as an impartial global leader seeking an end to this conflict.

For both the US and Israel, it is important to understand that man is not just an economic animal, but both political and social too, says Aristotle. All men are born free, the world cannot afford to be a place where some are caged and others are free.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 15^th, 2023.

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