Is South Asia next confrontation front? BY IRFAN RAJA

 

Is South Asia next confrontation front?

BY IRFAN RAJA

 DEC 18, 2023 - 3:19 PM GMT+3

Afghan refugees settle in a camp near the Torkham Pakistan-Afghanistan border, in Torkham, Afghanistan, Nov. 3, 2023. (AP Photo)

 

Since World War I and II, regrettably, global peace has remained elusive. Notably, the conclusion of armed conflicts often paves the way for new hostilities elsewhere.

Primarily, the arms industry thrives on war, leading global arms manufacturers and powerful entities to frequently instigate and support conflicts.

Historically, imperialists have employed the strategy of "divide and rule," fostering enmities to strategically fuel regional conflicts and wars.

A glaring example is Britain's deliberate creation of "unresolved conflicts" between India and Pakistan, such as Kashmir. Similarly, the contemporary discord between Pakistan and Afghanistan revolves around the colonial-era demarcation known as the "Durand Line."

Since the 1947 partition, India and Pakistan have been embroiled in the Kashmir conflict – an ongoing flashpoint with the potential to escalate into a full-scale war. British journalist John Pilger once highlighted how former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair simultaneously sold lethal weapons to both India and Pakistan, shedding light on the arms trade as "business as usual" even in the 1990s.

In recent discussions, there has been a notable increase in tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan, alongside the escalating potential for war between India and Pakistan over Gilgit-Baltistan and Kashmir. Interestingly, amid global powers choosing their battles, the Ukraine conflict has taken a backseat, with the focus shifting to America's new engagement in Palestine.

According to many experts, the United States is perceived to have faced significant challenges in the Ukraine war, while both Israel and the U.S. are encountering multifaceted setbacks in Gaza. This perceived need for a new war is attributed to the apparent losses in ongoing conflicts. Notably, the substantial arsenal left by the U.S. in Afghanistan upon withdrawal in August 2021 is seen as a stockpile for potential future conflicts.

The current strains between Afghanistan and Pakistan, stemming from the expulsion of illegal Afghan refugees by Pakistan, are raising concerns among experts who see this as a potential pretext for a new conflict in the region. In light of the heightened tensions, a crucial question emerges: Is South Asia teetering on the brink of a major war?

The Greater India Project

Presently, Pakistan finds itself on the precipice of a major arms conflict, navigating challenges on both its western and eastern borders, largely fueled by the Greater India Project fostering proxies in the South Asian region.

The country is currently engaged in a dual-front struggle against terrorists and the emergence of new insurgencies like Tehreek-e-Jihad Pakistan, a new group affiliated with the Pakistan Taliban, claiming responsibility for the attack on the PAF Airbase in Mianwali. The swift activity of this recently formed group raises questions about external support.

However, these unfolding events go beyond surface appearances. The surge in insurgency in Baluchistan since Narendra Modi's government took office is not coincidental. India's alleged aim to "sabotage the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor" has significantly contributed to the complex landscape.

Back in 2002, Pakistan approached United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, presented him with a “dossier” and requested him to exercise his leverage over India to “desist from its illegal and aggressive activities” and terror campaigns in Baluchistan. Despite India discrediting the dossier, numerous propagandist campaigns against Pakistan have been exposed, including a BBC investigative report revealing India's plans to defame the country.

Turn on any Indian TV channel or listen to any YouTuber, and a consistent theme emerges: Pakistan is portrayed as the "bad guy" that should be eradicated, echoing the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh party (RSS) mantra of achieving a Greater India and Hindu supremacy.

Indian writer and journalist Samanth Subramanian complied a long-read feature, “How Hindu supremacists are tearing India apart,” revealing the RSS mission of making a Greater India. Likewise, Arkotong Longkumer's book “The Greater India Experiment: Hindutva and the Northeast” unearths RSS's hidden objectives, one is to take control of Pakistan’s “Gilgit-Baltistan and Jammu and Kashmir.”

Today, far-right Hindu supremacy ideology has become a global phenomenon that has reached Europe, which is “fuelling rising divisions and the rhetoric in the U.K., U.S., Canada and Australia.”

Recently, the Canadian government presented evidence linking Indian diplomats to the killing of a Sikh activist, earning praise from right-wing Indian major Gaurav Arya. In the context of global powers vying for hegemony in South Asia, the ongoing Israel-Palestine war and growing calls in India to "reach Gilgit-Baltistan," coupled with the Indian Supreme Court's recent decision to end Kashmir’s special status, all contribute to the rising prospect of an all-out war in South Asia.

A recent Le Monde report revealed how India’s Hindu nationalists are leveraging the Israel-Palestine conflict to their advantage. Shockingly, the report noted that Hindus were saying: "What Israel is facing today, India suffered between 2004-14. Never forgive, never forget."

This suggests that India is positioning itself to capitalize on a comparable opportunity to make inroads into Pakistani Kashmir. The developing alliance between India and Israel, which endorses the idea of "State Repression and its Justification," underscores their shared characteristics, a concerning alignment, particularly as Indian officials openly advocate for the "Israel model" in Kashmir.

In the face of these developments on its borders, how far can a nuclear Pakistan ignore all that is unfolding on its borders? With the Taliban on the western front and Hindu fanatics envisioning a "Greater India Project" on the eastern front, the challenges for Pakistan are escalating.

Love-hate dynamic of Pakistan-Afghanistan ties

Ever since the Taliban have taken control of Kabul, Pakistan has become a recipient of terror. Despite Pakistan’s repeated warnings the Taliban in Kabul have failed to halt the Afghanistan-based TTP’s terrorism aimed at Pakistani civilians, and on military installations.

Recently, a series of distasteful events are an indication that the Pakistani establishment's Afghan policy has backfired. It is a documented fact that both military dictators Gen. Zia ul-Haq and Gen. Parviz Musharraf's Afghan policies failed badly.

It is important to note that Afghanistan has historically posed challenges for Pakistan; from its refusal to recognize the newly formed state in 1947 to the assassination of Pakistan's first Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan by an Afghan. In the current refugee crisis, many in Pakistan believe in good faith that now, Afghanistan is independent, so it’s time to rebuild it, hence Afghans need to be resilient and resolute and they should feel the responsibility.

Regrettably, the derogatory language, threats and irresponsible statements from Afghan Gen. Mubeen are viewed by many in Pakistan as mere point-scoring tactics, especially considering Pakistan's historical support for Afghanistan's independence.

Not only Afghans, Arabs and Pakistanis, including Punjabis (whom Mubeen blamed and insulted in the Pashtu language), are martyrs of the battles against Russia and the U.S.

Those fanatics inciting hatred and exporting enmity on both sides are not people’s well-wishers. As global powers are once again active in selling weapons, it’s time to acknowledge the fact that any conflict in South Asia would only bring destruction and never-ending bloody war.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Academic, analyst and activist based in the U.K., Ph.D. holder at the University of Huddersfield

Hell’s architects by Zarrar Khuhro

 

Hell’s architects by Zarrar Khuhro 

GAZA wasn’t always what it is today. Gaza wasn’t always a giant prison that has now been transformed into a death camp; a hellscape of broken bodies and buildings and butchered babies.

 

Before 1948, Gaza was a wealthy territory in Mandatory Palestine. Located on the coast, it benefited from trade and fishing and was also blessed with fertile land, which led to a strong agricultural economy. Then came the Nakba, with Zionist terror militias — which later coalesced into the Israeli army — killing, looting and raping across the territory. The first Arab-Israeli war saw Egypt occupy the territory, which remained in Egyptian control even after Israel prevailed in the conflict as part of the treaty that ended the war.

 

 

For a brief period during the Suez crisis, when Israel, France and the United Kingdom jointly attacked Egypt, and Israel occupied both the Sinai and the Strip, Egyptian military rule continued till the 1967 war, which saw the comprehensive defeat of the Arab armies and the military occupation of the Strip by Israel.

 

The usual formula of apartheid and Jewish settlements — under the guard of the Israeli army — began, and continued until 2005, when Israel’s then prime minister Ariel Sharon withdrew its forces and dismantled the settlements. This is presented by pro-Zionist circles as a magnanimous step towards peace that was ‘typically’ spurned by the Palestinians, but it is instructive to see what the actual architects of that move had in mind.

 

Israeli geo-strategist Arnon Soffer is considered to be the originator of the separation and withdrawal plan, and he is clear that Israel underwent this process not out of a desire for peace — a word he says he despises — but because the alternative would be the end of Israel as a Zionist state with Jewish supremacy as its cornerstone, because — if Gaza were to be integrated into Israel proper — the Jews would eventually be outnumbered.

 

For many Israelis, Gaza is just the start.

 

And so, it was considered better to fence Gaza off from the world, with that fence eventually becoming a wall and with everything going in and out being at the whim of the Israeli authorities. The minimum daily caloric intake for a human being to survive on was calculated so that the average Gazan permanently remained on the brink of starvation.

 

This too was by design, because as Soffer himself says in a 2004 interview with Jerusalem Post titled ‘It’s the demography, stupid’: “It’s a fence that we will be guarding on either side. Instead of entering Gaza, the way we did last week, we will tell the Palestinians that if a single missile is fired over the fence, we will fire 10 in response. And women and children will be killed, and houses will be destroyed. After the fifth such incident, Palestinian mothers won’t allow their husbands to shoot Kassams, because they will know what’s waiting for them.”

 

Soffer knew the consequences, and welcomed them. He continues: “When 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it’s going to be a human catastrophe. Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today, with the aid of … fundamentalist Islam. The pressure at the border will be awful. It’s going to be a terrible war. So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day … If we don’t kill, we will cease to exist. The only thing that concerns me is how to ensure that the boys and men who are going to have to do the killing will be able to return home to their families and be normal human beings.”

 

When asked what the end result of all this killing would be, Soffer says: “The Palestinians will be forced to realise that demography is no lon­ger significant, becau­­se we’re here and they’re there. And then they will begin to ask for ‘conflict management’ talks — not that dirty word ‘peace’. Peace is a word for believers, and I have no tolerance for believers — neither those who wear yarmulkes nor those who pray to the God of peace.”

 

For Soffer and those who agree with him — the majority of Israelis one would presume — Gaza is just the start.

 

He continues to say, a full 19 years before today’s ongoing atrocity: “The population increase of Israeli Arabs is going to present a major problem. But, if we no longer include the Palestinians, and we begin embracing immigrants, foreign workers, Druze, and Christians — who are now on our side, because they see what … radical Islam is — then there won’t be an Israeli Arab problem. While we’re on the subject, you tell me what you need East Jerusalem for. Why do you need 300,000 Arabs as Israeli citizens? What’s holy there? Anything that is holy we should annex.”

 

This has always been the plan and now it is one step closer to fruition.

 

The writer is a journalist.

 

X: @zarrarkhuhro

 

Published in Dawn, December 4th, 2023

Documents expose Israeli conspiracy to facilitate October 7 attack By Andre Damon

 

Documents expose Israeli conspiracy to facilitate October 7 attack By Andre Damon 

 

On Friday, the New York Times published a report establishing conclusively that Israel was fully informed, in detail, of plans by Hamas to attack its border that were executed on October 7. These revelations make clear that Israeli officials, knowing full well where and how Hamas would strike, made a deliberate decision to stand down in order to facilitate the attack.

These revelations mean that the Israeli government allowed and abetted the killing of their own citizens and that the Israeli government is responsible for the deaths that took place that day. This criminal conspiracy was aimed at establishing a pretext for a long-planned genocide against the people of Gaza.

Moreover, it is impossible to believe that the United States was uninformed of Hamas’s plans, under conditions where not only Israeli intelligence but also Egypt, had advanced warnings of the attack. Everything points to a plot that involved Israel, the Biden administration and likely British and European intelligence agencies.

The Times published this report Monday as Israel launched a new wave of attacks on Gaza during a visit by Antony Blinken. The presence of the US Secretary of State was meant not only to express the United States’ support for the renewed onslaught but to manage the response to the exposure of this conspiracy.

The Times reported that                                                

The approximately 40-page document, which the Israeli authorities code-named “Jericho Wall,” outlined, point by point, exactly the kind of devastating invasion that led to the deaths of about 1,200 people.

The document obtained by Israeli intelligence forces “meticulously described the attack method, mirroring the actual events,” the Times reported. “It outlined an intense assault aimed to breach Gaza Strip fortifications, seize Israeli cities, and target key military bases. This plan was implemented with alarming accuracy, involving a coordinated use of rockets, drones, and ground forces.”

The Times reports, 

Hamas followed the blueprint with shocking precision. The document called for a barrage of rockets at the outset of the attack, drones to knock out the security cameras and automated machine guns along the border, and gunmen to pour into Israel en masse in paragliders, on motorcycles and on foot—all of which happened on Oct. 7.

Moreover, the Times reported, Israeli military and intelligence officials knew Hamas carried out an exhaustive, day-long training mission to practice the plan in detail just three months before the attack. The Times states, 

The training included a dry run of shooting down Israeli aircraft and taking over a kibbutz and a military training base, killing all the cadets. During the exercise, Hamas fighters used the same phrase from the Quran that appeared at the top of the Jericho Wall attack plan.

Even while acknowledging that Israel was fully informed of Hamas’s plans, the Times seeks to package the revelations with an alibi, asserting, without any substantiation, that Israeli officials simply made a mistake. The Times writes,

Underpinning all these failures was a single, fatally inaccurate belief that Hamas lacked the capability to attack and would not dare to do so. That belief was so ingrained in the Israeli government, officials said, that they disregarded growing evidence to the contrary...

The failures to connect the dots echoed another analytical failure more than two decades ago, when the American authorities also had multiple indications that the terrorist group Al Qaeda was preparing an assault.

No, Israel’s stand-down on October 7 was not a failure to “connect the dots” because there were no dots to connect. The Israeli intelligence forces had obtained the entire operational plan of the October 7 attack, then witnessed Hamas carry out a major, high-level training exercise for that plan. They knew exactly what was planned and decided to let it go ahead.

The Times writes, “Israeli military and intelligence officials dismissed the plan as aspirational, considering it too difficult for Hamas to carry out.” It adds, “It is unclear whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or other top political leaders saw the document.”

This presentation is absurd. It is impossible to believe that information of this character could come into the possession of the intelligence agencies without provoking the most intense analysis. The idea that, after 9/11, such high-level plans would be kept from the prime minister is unbelievable.

Such a document would have come from a source at the highest levels of Hamas. Once this valuable information was obtained, it would have been vital to take action to protect the source, including countermeasures to make Hamas believe Israel did not possess the information. The stand-down could have been a means to send a signal that Hamas’s plan had not been exposed.

Ultimately, a choice was made to allow Hamas’s operation to go ahead, in order to provide Israel with a pretext for a massive, long-planned military assault on Gaza. Only Netanyahu could make such a decision. The United States, meanwhile, instantly sent a massive military force to the region, announcing the deployment of its largest aircraft carrier and escort ship to the region within 24 hours of the attack.

The Times’ claim that Israel’s stand-down was an “intelligence failure” makes no sense because it is a lie from beginning to end. No, the events of October 7 were not an intelligence failure: Israel was remarkably successful in exactly predicting Hamas’s military operation. Instead of acting on this intelligence, Israel orchestrated a stand-down of troops and intelligence-gathering at the precise moment when the attack took place.

Four days after the October 7 attack, veteran journalist Seymour Hersh reported that in the days ahead of the attack, “local Israeli military authorities, with the approval of Netanyahu, ordered two of the three Army battalions, each with about 800 soldiers, that protected the border with Gaza to shift their focus to the Sukkot festival” taking place near the West Bank.

Hersh quoted a source who told him, “That left only eight hundred soldiers … to be responsible for guarding the 51-kilometer border between the Gaza Strip and southern Israel. That meant the Israeli citizens in the south were left without an Israeli military presence for ten to twelve hours. They were left to fend for themselves.”

The stand-down not only left the border vulnerable to attack, it created the conditions where military forces had to be transferred to intercept Hamas attackers in civilian areas, creating conditions in which Israeli tank and helicopter forces shot indiscriminately into civilian areas, further swelling the Israeli death toll. 

In addition to the military stand-down, Israel made a decision to put its vaunted 8200 signals intelligence unit off duty on weekends, meaning that the signals intelligence unit that detected the training exercise three months ago was not on duty at the time of Saturday’s attack.

The exposure of Israel’s advanced foreknowledge of the attack likewise exposes the US media and political establishment, which have fully embraced Israel’s claims to have been caught by surprise by the attack, and claimed that the events of October 7 justify the genocide now being unleashed in Gaza.

These revelations expose the Gaza genocide to be a criminal conspiracy by the Netanyahu regime and its imperialist backers, whose victims include not only 20,000 slaughtered Palestinians but the Israeli population itself. 

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/12/02/klox-d02.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws

The Middle East may never be the same. OCT 9 2023

 

         

 

The Middle East may never be the same.

JAMES M. DORSEY

OCT 9 2023

 

 

Hamas, the Islamist militia that controls Gaza, will likely emerge a victor regardless of how the latest round of Israeli-Palestinian fighting ends.

 

Hamas’ unprecedented attack on Israel, described by some analysts as the Jewish state’s 9/11, changes the dynamics of Middle Eastern geopolitics.

 

The brutal attack involved prolonged fighting with the Israeli military in Israeli towns and cities, the firing of thousands of rockets at Israeli population centers, the random killing of innocent civilians in Israeli homes, and the kidnapping of scores of Israeli soldiers and civilians.

 

BBC foreign correspondent Secunder Kermani described sirens sounding off and multiple explosions as he disembarked at Tel Aviv airport on Saturday.

 

Like the Turkish assault on Kurdish positions in Syria and Iraq in the wake of the October 1 suicide bombing in Ankara, the Hamas attack and Israel’s retaliatory pounding of Gaza call into question the sustainability of a regional de-escalation that freezes rather than tackles perennial conflicts.

 

Similarly, the attack pours cold water on the notion of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his ultra-nationalist and ultra-conservative coalition partners that Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands can be sustained indefinitely.

 

On Hamas’ tailcoat, Iran, long opposed to Arab normalisation of relations with Israel, sees the Palestinian offensive as vindication of its position.

 

Only days before the hostilities, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei cautioned that normalisation of relations with Israel amounted to "gambling" that was "doomed to failure."

 

He warned that countries establishing relations with the Jewish state would be "in harm's way."

 

Raising the spectre of a wider regional conflict, Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad told the BBC that the group had direct backing for the attack from Iran. Mr. Hamad did not specify what support entailed.

 

Even if suggestions prove correct that Iran helped Hamas plan and prepare for the attack, the group would have launched its assault because it served its purposes rather than serving Iranian interests.

 

Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shiite militia, bolstered the threat of a regional conflagration by firing rockets at the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms in southern Lebanon. Israel retaliated with armed drones.

 

The Hezbollah attack came after Israeli soldiers opened fire on pro-Hamas demonstrators carrying the group’s flag on the Lebanese side of the border. There were no reported casualties.

 

Meanwhile, a Saudi statement suggested that the Hamas attack had complicated US-led efforts to engineer Saudi recognition of Israel.

 

The Saudi foreign ministry recalled the kingdom’s “repeated warning of the dangers of the explosion of the situation as a result of the occupation, the deprivation of the Palestinian people of their legitimate rights, and the repetition of systematic provocations against its sanctities.”

 

The statement indicated that the fighting reinforced Saudi conditioning of diplomatic relations with Israel on viable steps toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

 

Already, the fighting will stop Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman from becoming the third Cabinet-level Israeli official to visit Saudi Arabia in less than two weeks.

 

Ms. Silman was expected to attend this week’s MENACW 2023, the Middle East and North Africa Climate Week conference in the kingdom, one of four Regional Climate Weeks held worldwide ahead of next month’s COP28 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Dubai.

 

In what diplomats described as an indication of the United Arab Emirates’ predicament, Emirati officials insisted that Sunday’s United Nations Security Council discussion of the fighting would be a closed session rather than a private meeting. The UAE called for the meeting alongside Malta.

 

Unlike a private meeting, the closed session excluded Israeli and Palestinian representatives. It ended without a Council statement.

 

The UAE was one of four Arab states to recognize Israel in 2020. At the same time, UAE officials describe Hamas as a terrorist organisation.

 

Had there been a Palestinian representation, the Palestinian voice would have been President Mahmoud Abbas's Palestine Authority, dominated by Al Fatah, Hamas’ archrival, further marginalized by the fighting.

 

This weekend, Mr. Abbas was reduced to issuing a statement insisting that Palestinians had the right to defend themselves against the “terror of settlers and occupation troops.”

 

With the perennial potential collapse of the Palestine Authority, Hamas’ attack strengthens the group in a likely struggle to succeed 87-year-old Mr. Abbas, who has lost public support.

 

While the Israeli-Palestinian fighting was likely to boost popular Arab rejection of relations with Israel, social media responses in Turkey indicated a different sentiment among one segment of Turkish public opinion.

 

“Israel is probably more popular than ever among Turks,” said Turkish Middle East scholar Karabekir Akkoyunlu.

 

Mr. Akkoyunlu attributed Israel's popularity to Israeli support for Azerbaijan against Armenia, rising anti-Arab sentiment in Turkey, and Arab countries normalizing relations with the Jewish state.

 

That did not stop many Turks from marching in Istanbul this weekend to support the Hamas attack.

 

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hosted Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in July and has allowed the group to operate.

 

However, unlike Arab statements that blamed Israel for the violence, Mr. Erdogan offered to mediate between Israel and Hamas.

 

The fighting risks, at least in the short-term, stiffening Israel's refusal to entertain steps that would enable the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel or a viable one-state solution, even if the Netanyahu government, the most ultra-conservative and ultra-nationalist in Israeli history, becomes a victim of renewed violence.

 

Israeli reticence will be further reinforced by likely increased violence on the West Bank, where Palestinian militants resisting Israeli occupation are certain to be emboldened. Militants called this weekend on Palestinians to fight Israelis in their West Bank towns.

 

Some Israeli sources suggested that Israel's focus in the last year on Palestinian resistance in the West Bank had led Israel to pay less attention to Gaza.

 

More than 50 years after initial Egyptian-Syrian advances in the early days of the 1973 Middle East caught Israel by surprise, the Hamas attack has put a dent in Israel’s image of military superiority and prowess.

 

In addition, perceptions of Israeli weakness may be reinforced once the guns fall silent, with the country likely to be wracked by assertions that the Hamas attack was an intelligence and operational failure.

 

Nevertheless, Israel would likely benefit from an international community breathing a sigh of relief should the Netanyahu government, too, pay a high price with its possible demise.

 

No Israeli government has survived longer than six months in the aftermath of a major war like the 1973 war or the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

 

Even so, the Hamas attack is likely to impact Israeli public opinion. On the one hand, it is expected to harden attitudes towards Palestinians, reinforced by Hamas' brutal attacks on innocent civilians and abuse of soldiers.

 

On the other hand, Israelis will probably have less confidence in Israeli security. “I’m worried. I can’t believe what happened. I’ve lost confidence,” said an Israeli woman in a text message.

 

Mr. Netanyahu has sought to capitalize on the hostilities and unprecedented losses suffered by Israel at the hands of Palestinians, -- reportedly 600 dead, including 26 soldiers, and more than 2000 wounded at the time of this writing – by inviting opposition leaders Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz to join an emergency government.

 

Mr. Lapid said in a statement that Mr. Netanyahu would have to ditch his far-right and ultra-conservative coalition partners in forming an emergency government.

 

The prime minister “knows that with the current extreme and dysfunctional security cabinet, he can’t manage a war. Israel needs to be led by a professional, experienced, and responsible government.”

 

Mr. Netanyahu’s invitation came as the fighting temporarily eased the prime minister’s immediate domestic concerns.

 

The rocket attacks and fighting in Israeli towns and settlements close to Gaza ended, at least temporarily, nine months of mass protests against Mr. Netanyahu’s judicial changes.

 

It also halted protests by military reservists, including fighter jet pilots currently striking Gaza,  who had earlier refused to report for duty because of the judicial changes.

 

Israeli ultra-nationalists and military commanders warned that the reservists’ protest would weaken Israeli military readiness.

 

On Saturday, Israel called up reservists for a possible ground invasion of Gaza after Hamas took scores of Israeli soldiers and civilians hostage and transferred them from Israel to Gaza.

 

Israel may take heart from the unconditional US and European support, fuelled by Hamas’ Islamic State-style brutality, in public statements after the Hamas attack.

 

However, reality is very different behind the scenes, according to US and European diplomats.

 

Mr. Netanyahu has not endeared himself to Western leaders by heading a government that has expanded Israeli settlements in the West Bank; tacitly endorsed increased anti-Palestinian violence by Israeli settlers; violated fragile understandings on the Temple Mount or Haram-ash-Sharif, a site in Jerusalem holy to Jews and Muslims; and responded brutally to Palestinian resistance.

 

In addition, Mr. Netanyahu has embraced nationalist and far-right European leaders, who look more favorably at his policies than Western Europeans, the European Union, and US President Joe Biden.

 

Forming an emergency government would ease Western criticism of Israeli policies.

 

Distressing images from Gaza could counter that as Israel continues with its devastating bombing of Gaza, which has killed at least 300 Palestinians and wounded nearly 2,000 others in less than 24 hours.

 

Nevertheless, Hamas may have miscalculated by counting on Mr. Netanyahu's strained relations with his Western partners, leading them to take a more even-handed approach to renewed violence.

 

Selfies of Hamas fighters lynching the corpses of killed Israeli soldiers, reports of killings of Israeli civilians in their homes in towns near Gaza, and the parade of the dead body of a German tattoo artist buried the slim chance of a more nuanced Western attitude.

 

Even so, a Middle Eastern diplomat argued, “The Middle Eastern paradigm has changed. Everyone is forced to recalibrate. Hamas shattered perceptions. The Middle East may never be the same.”.

 

“Shock” is scarcely adequate to describe yesterday’s assault on Israel by Hamas, the militant Palestinian organisation that controls the Gaza Strip. Fifty years and a day after another surprise attack, by Egypt and Syria, began the Yom Kippur war, and on the day of another Jewish festival, it has left at least 600 Israelis dead and hundreds more injured. The Palestinian raiders have also taken dozens of hostages, whom (as we report today) Hamas will want to swap for its own prisoners. “They were hunting for civilians,” Robert Albin, a philosophy professor living in Sderot, just a kilometre from the Gaza border, told our sister publication, 1843 magazine.

Israel’s retaliation has been swift: air strikes on Gaza have killed at least 313 Palestinians and a much larger operation is planned for the coming days. Israel’s troops are still striving to drive militant fighters out of areas seized by Hamas. How or how soon this latest war will end no one can tell. As our leader published today says, Hamas must be made to pay for its atrocities. But it is also clear that Binyamin Netanyahu’s long-pursued policy of ignoring Palestinians’ aspirations to sovereignty is in tatters. The Economist

It comes after nearly two decades of the US and world leaders overlooking the more than 2 million people living in Gaza who endure a humanitarian nightmare, with its airspace and borders and sea under Israeli control. The attack comes amid an ongoing failure to grapple with the dangerous situation for Palestinians in the West Bank where Israel’s extreme-right government over the past year has escalated the already brutal daily pain of occupation. Instances of Israeli security forces and Israeli settlers antagonizing Palestinians through violence are on the rise, from the pogrom on the city of Huwara to a new tempo of lethal raids on Jenin. Israeli government ministers have been pursuing annexationist policies and sharing raging rhetoric; both incite further violent response from Palestinians and appear at a time when new militant groups have emerged that claim the mantle of the Palestinian cause. The now-regular presence of Israeli Jews praying at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, one of Islam’s holiest sites, have further pressurized the situation. A Hamas commander cited many of these factors in his statement.

But the ongoing reality of the occupation has not featured prominently in US or Arab leaders’ engagement with the region in recent years, even as circumstances for Palestinians worsened.

But negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization have been frozen since 2014 under President Barack Obama, and most Palestinian analysts at this point acknowledge that US administrations since President Bill Clinton have engaged in a failed, asymmetrical process that never would have allowed for the conditions of an independent, sovereign state of Palestine.

And so the symbolism of Hamas breaking through Israeli security barriers and wreaking havoc on Israel — including the kidnapping of at least one Israeli soldier as well as civilians — will resonate across Palestine, the Arab world, and beyond.

Israel’s conflicts with Hamas, along with the 2006 Hezbollah-Israel conflict, have largely been rocket and artillery exchanges. Even in decades of large-scale Arab-Israeli wars, the battles were fought outside. “No Arab army has entered the territory of Israel since the 1948 war,” the preeminent Palestinian scholar Rashid Khalidi of Columbia University told me. “This is a huge strategic surprise.”

Israel and the United States have wished away Palestinians. The terrible bloodshed of today’s attacks underscores the cost of doing so.

https://www.vox.com/2023/10/7/23907912/israel-palestine-conflict-history-explained-gaza-hamas