An escalating crisis

Israel’s audacity to kill Palestinians, rupture prospects for cessation of hostilities are being tolerated

Israel’s audacity to kill Palestinians and rupture prospects for cessation of hostilities are being tolerated. This is blatant appeasement and is premised over the simple fact that the United States stands with its Jewish states. Perhaps, this is why Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin vowed, during his recent visit to the Mideast, to keep arming its ally. This denies a political solution but also an armistice for times to come. It is, thus, no surprise that the efforts to broker a new ceasefire at the UN Security Council have fallen on deaf ears, and the plight of more than two million Gazans is at the mercy of daily bombardment. They continue to face food and water shortages, and are denied health rescue, if any, at all.

Diplomacy at the world body certainly is compromised, and this can be gauged from the fact the UAE and Qatar are stressing for a behind a curtain way out. The plea from Abu Dhabi to delay the Security Council moot speaks volumes of the apathy of the Muslim bloc, and the adamant attitude of some Western powers who are not bothered even after the death of around 20,000 Palestinians since the October 7 blitz that has opened a floodgate of aggression from the Zionist state.

It is, nonetheless, commendable that there are rational voices that are calling a spade a spade. The EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell has rightly accused Israel of displaying an “appalling lack of distinction” in its campaign in Gaza, and the Human Rights Watch accounting that Israel is “using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare”. But the point is that there are no listeners, and the mechanism to tame the aggressor is dovetailed in realpolitik.

The question, however, remains unanswered: what will be the fate of this escalating crisis? With Houthis from Yemen flexing their muscles to target pro-Israeli vessels in the Red Sea, the warfare would not be limited to the conclave of Gaza. Isn’t this a serious equation? And, of course, those abetting Israel are responsible for this spillover.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 20^th, 2023.

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