Israel-Palestine conflict and the complex web of recent actions…Shazia Anwer Cheema

Hamas’s recent action against Israel has demolished the façade of its cutting-edge intelligence and security, though it has made Palestinians even more vulnerable by providing the Western world a 9/11-type excuse to settle the final level of the purge. Palestinians are on their own, with no internal or external support. Hamas itself does not represent most of the Palestinian population. Thus their actions cannot determine the will of Palestinians. Moreover, the West has declared Hamas a terrorist outfit and continuously compared the Israel-Palestine conflict with the rhetoric of an attack on democracy and sovereignty of a country. Within a day, the western world announced its full support for Israel for a counterattack on innocent Palestinians.

Palestine lacks a holistic representation of Western standards. Their representation is in fractions, and they don’t have much say in that. PLO’s systematic dismantling could be a key reason for that. Palestinians’ last and only hope is powerful Arab states. But when the Abraham Accord was signed back in 2020 and a wave of normalisation process started between Arab states and Israel, it was a serious blow to the Palestinian hope. One after another Arab states decided to normalise diplomatic relations with Israel, and Palestine automatically got pushed further into the realm of being a rogue state.

The G20 summit proved to be the tipping point, with an unexpected display of love and warmth followed by the announcement of India-Middle East-Europe Corridor (IMEC). Although just an announcement, it provided Netanyahu another opportunity of showing a new map at the UNGA, pointing with a red marker that there will be no Palestine in future. Both East and West have agreed, and a huge economic corridor has been designed to replace Palestinian enclave which will be a “deserted island” by then.

Thirty years after the Oslo Accord, Gaza Strip still stands isolated in what many call an “open-air prison” with two million people. Oslo Accord provided the two-nation solution which was not acceptable even then for ultra-rightwing Israelis which later resulted in the murder of then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the rise of extreme fundamentalist politicians such as Netanyahu.

It is being said that Hamas’s recent attack was meant to send the message to the Arab States normalising relations with Israel that “normalisation will not bring any security to Israel if Israel cannot protect itself”. Even if the betrayal hypothesis is considered true, the timing and scale of the attack prompt various questions by keeping one element common whether Hamas has done it for Palestinians. The declining popularity of Netanyahu in Israel and the upcoming elections required reiteration of the relevance of the far-right party and this attack has provided a solid justification for Netanyahu for being still very much relevant with his venomous rhetoric and measures. The idea of Iran-Saudi Arabia normalisation could also be the scenario as Western media is writing about Iran’s alleged support of these attacks which again put Saudi Arabia in a hot seat for revisiting its relationship not only with Israel but also with Iran.

The UN top officials have said they are “in close contact with all concerned parties to urge maximum restraint, following the horrific scenes of violence”. The statement itself is a self-determinator that whatever in the past and in the present is being done with Palestinians does not qualify as horrific violence; but the attack on Israel is violence and horrific. So the preamble has already been set, and it is just a matter of time when innocent Palestinian violators will receive the exemplary punishment. And the world will see it as a just act of vengeance.

Who will then support Hamas is a question one would like to get an answer to, because Israel has the support of the most powerful countries of the world. What role can the Muslim world play to stop the upcoming purge night for Palestinians? Is there any framework of de-escalation that can be made, and the two-nation resolution will ever be implemented? It is a complex web of strategic maneuvering having multiple strands internally and externally just to destroy helpless Palestinians one way or another.

Courtesy The Express Tribune, October 14th, 2023.