The October 7, 2023 Operation ‘Al Aqsa Storm’ launched by Palestinians in Israeli-occupied Gaza has broader strategic implications for Israel & the US: Senator Mushahid Hussain

ISLAMABAD, Dec 29 (SABAH): Senator Mushahid Hussain has said that the October 7, 2023 Operation ‘Al Aqsa Storm’ launched by the Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied Gaza has broader strategic implications for Israel and the US.

Senator Mushahid Hussain expressed these views in a column published in an English Daily. He said that to counter the Iran-led ‘Axis of Resistance’, the US cobbled an Axis of Repression to maintain the regional status quo, freezing disputes like Palestine and Kashmir to combat the ‘real enemy’, China.

He further said Washington was endeavouring to connect an Israel-centred Middle East with an India-focused ‘Indo-Pacific’, to supplement and support the American-led New Cold War against China.

The senator further said just a fortnight before the launch of the ‘Al Aqsa Storm’, three separate but related developments corroborated this policy wherein one, on 22 September, Netanyahu proudly unfolded the map of the ‘New Middle East’ at the United Nations General Assembly, where the Palestinians were conspicuously absent, he added. 

He said that two is that on 20 September, following the G-20 Summit in New Delhi, the India-Israel Middle East European Union Corridor (IMEC) was launched with much fanfare, touted as the West’s copycat response to China’s highly successful Belt & Road Initiative (BRI).

He said that three is that in May 2023, President Biden’s National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan personally took his Indian counterpart, Ajit Doval, to meet Saudi Arabia’s Prime Minister and Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman to “advance their shared vision of a more secure and prosperous Middle East region interconnected with India and the world”. And on October 2, Jake Sullivan wrote in the influential Foreign Affairs magazine that “the Middle East has never been so calm before as it is today.”

He said five days later, ‘Al Aqsa Storm’ shattered that calm! In fact, the Biden Administration is the first US Administration in 50 years that even dispensed with the fig-leaf of initiating a ‘peace process’ for the Middle East, being content with the Israeli-propped status quo of a coercive occupation.

Senator Mushahid Hussain maintained that Gaza is also the first televised genocide in history. Despite Israel’s brutal capacity to kill, the Palestinians are unwavering in their determination and willingness to resist and die for the cause of freedom, he said and added the Palestinians are winning by not losing while Israel has also lost the ‘battle of narratives’.

It’s still time for the US and Israel to read the writing on the wall: stop the genocide, end the occupation and take steps to establish an independent Palestinian State, he said. He said Jewish history is itself a living testimony on breaking the Nazi myth of the ‘Final Solution’.

“Washington should learn from its own mistakes and failures in recent history: after ousting the Afghan Taliban in 2001, it took 20 years and wasted $2.2 trillion in Afghanistan before it negotiated with the same Afghan Taliban whom they once labelled ‘terrorists’, to facilitate their return to power,” he remarked. 

He said representing Palestinian aspirations, Gaza’s symbol of defiance, Hamas, also labelled ‘terrorist’ by the West, is, at least, a democratically elected organisation which won a free election in Gaza in 2006, and accepting the legitimate right of Palestinians to determine their future in freedom is a small price for the US to pay for lasting peace, security and stability in the heart of the Muslim World.