The fire this time

It’s always been a hibernating tinderbox environment waiting for the slightest spark to flare. The latest spark occurred early at dawn on 7th October when Israelis at an overnight party in southern Israel were barnstormed by a horde of fighters from the Palestinian militant group, Hamas, who had breached the heavily fortified border with Gaza Strip to infiltrate the Jewish state. That assault was facilitated by a barrage of rockets fired from Gaza, which blew out homes in Israel. The hailstorm of rockets triggered the Israeli system of siren alarm blaring to alert sleepy citizens, but belatedly so. At the party, the Hamas militants fired indiscriminately at frolickers, leaving no fewer than 260 dead. Militants also fanned out into the communities where they attacked Jewish habitants and abducted about 150, mostly civilian hostages, across the border back into Gaza. 

The Israeli government rallied to respond to the ambush attack. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu went on air to declare that the country was at war. “Not an operation, not a round (of fighting), but at war,” he said. Israel has since replied with thousands of rockets fired into the Palestinian enclave, besides a rain of airstrikes – many hitting civilian homes. The Jewish state reinforced her blockade on Gaza and called up an unprecedented 300,000 reservists, amid indications it may soon or late stage a ground assault. Israeli media said Hamas fighters killed some 900 people in the weekend attack, including the 260 at the music festival. Gaza authorities put the death toll in Israel’s retaliatory strikes at 770, but Israel said bodies of some 1,500 Hamas fighters were found in her territory. Other countries that reported their citizens dead in the Hamas attack include Thailand, Argentina, the United States and Britain. Tel-Aviv said it had ordered a “complete siege” on Gaza, cutting off supplies of food, water and electricity to its roughly two million residents.

Founded in 1987, Hamas is both a political party and militant group that holds sway within limited autonomy allowed under Israeli control in Gaza – a small strip of roughly 140 square mile that is considered one of the most densely populated spaces on earth. The group is backed by Iran and is deemed a terrorist organisation by many nations. Its defining ideology is its refusal to accept the statehood of Israel, and a radical militancy in pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish nation – an approach differing from the more sober quest for Palestinian statehood by Fatah party in West Bank. The 7th October attack coincided with the 50th anniversary of the 1973 Yom Kippur War – a grim reminder of the deep roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that anyone who would make sense of the vicious cycle of violence must consider.

We can only accommodate a summary here. The Zionist movement of the early 20th Century had mobilised Diaspora Jews to what is deemed their historic homeland in Palestine. That initiative climaxed with the 14th May, 1948 creation of the State of Israel, which was preceded in 1947 by the United Nations (UN) approval of the partitioning of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states and a proposal that Jerusalem, the birthplace of three Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, be placed under special international administration. On the heels of Israel's declaration of Independence, Arab nations joined with Palestinians in an offensive that was the first Arab-Israeli War. That war ended the following year with Israel emerging victorious, and with the territory carved into three regions namely State of Israel, which after the war occupied 60 percent of the area proposed as a Palestinian state under the UN plan; West Bank along the Jordan River, controlled by Jordan; and Gaza Strip under Egypt’s control. It was in this war, which made thousands of Palestinians stateless, that Israel annexed the western half of Jerusalem. After the war, the Jewish state refused to grant Palestinians the right to return, thereby seed-bedding a nationality driven by passionate aspiration for self-determination.

“Israel must find a way of responding to Hamas without so severely hazarding the civilian Palestinian populace.” 

In 1967, Israel waged a preemptive six-day war against Egypt, Syria and Jordan, resulting in her annexing West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, and Golan Heights from Syria. The Jewish state emerged from this conflict with territory four times its original size, and more than a million Palestinians coming under Israeli rule in occupied lands. Egypt and Syria staged a surprise reprisal attack in 1973, leading to a 19-day war that again ended in Israel’s victory. This conflict known as the ‘Yom Kippur War’ because fighting started on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in Judaism, brought humiliation to the Arab world, weakened Arab unity, and by extension united Arab backing for the Palestinian cause, and eventually led to the Camp David Accords of 1978 – Israel’s first ever peace treaty with an Arab nation by which she agreed to restore Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in return for Cairo’s formal recognition of, and normalisation of ties with Tel-Aviv. Although the treaty had a framework for Palestinian self-rule in Gaza and West Bank, implementation was elusive.

The years 1987 to 1993  witnessed the First Intifada (Arab for ‘shaking off’), a Palestinian uprising characterised by stone-throwing mass protests and acts of civil resistance against Israeli occupation in West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the start of the Oslo peace process. The historic Oslo Accords of 1993 established the Palestinian Authority in West Bank and Gaza, thereby providing Palestinians some degree of political autonomy towards fulfilling the right of the people to self-rule. There was, however, disagreement among the Palestinians, with those who believed only armed resistance could free their land from Israeli occupation considering the treaty a betrayal. The Second Intifada erupted in 2000 in response to then far-right Israeli Opposition leader Ariel Sharon’s provocative visit to the contested Temple Mount, the third-holiest site in Islam. In 2005, Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza Strip, dismantling Jewish settlements and ending its military presence in the enclave in a bid to burnish its image. But this also marked a complex turning point in the conflict, as it raised questions about the feasibility of unilateral actions in resolving the broader territorial and political disputes between the two sides.

Palestinians held elections in 2006 in which Hamas won majority seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council, defeating the secular Fatah party, and was set to administer the occupied territories of Gaza, West Bank and East Jerusalem. But having been designated a terrorist group, much of the international community refused to recognize Hamas rule. A civil war soon after broke out between Hamas and Fatah, with Hamas gaining control of Gaza while Fatah held onto West Bank. Citing security concerns, Israel and Egypt in 2007 both imposed a blockade on Gaza, restricting movement of people and goods in and out of the strip in what has created severe economic and humanitarian challenges for the population. Human rights groups likened conditions in the enclave to that of an “open-air prison.”

That is the general situation of Gaza over which flare-ups have recurrently erupted between Israel and Hamas, often resulting in significant casualties amid quest by the global community for a lasting ceasefire. Only that the quest falters at every turn owing to perennial aggression mode of parties concerned. Israel is fundamentally a ‘war state’ because not only was her birth secured by aggression in the first Arab-Israeli War, she has had to hold up amidst enveloping enmity of Arab neighbours. Some of these have signed peace treaties with the Jewish state, though, the latest being the 2020 Abraham Accords by which Tel-Aviv normalised relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco. Moves by the U.S. are currently underway to forge ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia. But implacable enemies remain: besides Hamas in Gaza, there is Hezbollah in Lebanon that is also sponsored by Iran. The two-state solution proposed by the UN hasn’t flown with Israel because it involves giving up annexed East Jerusalem to Palestinians. The Jewish state says the ‘City of David’ is its historical territory that can’t be divided.

Hamas was beyond bestial in its latest attack on Israel. In the raging conflict, however, even where Israel is the aggressed and not the aggressor as in the latest case, she comes off as a monster in her reprisal that puts Palestinian civilians in way of aggravated harm. Humanitarian agencies say the present siege has created acute shortages of food, water and medicaments for hundreds of thousands of Gaza residents. Israel must find a way of responding to Hamas without so severely hazarding the civilian Palestinian populace. But let’s be clear: the conflict is all about territory and has nothing to do with religion. Nothing.