It's been almost three weeks since the 7ththe October and it seems that this date will be something similar to the 11ththe September. In the early days I hoped that the parallel could be reduced to the ratio of the size and imaginativeness of the strikes, let alone the apparent inability of intelligence agencies and high-tech surveillance systems to detect the preparations for strikes on such a scale. Unfortunately, however, as the days pass I feel with more and more certainty that we will have a proportional repetition of history, which will probably complicate even more the relations on this side of the planet, where in addition to the Eurasian, African and Arab tectonic plate, two worlds collide.
Two worlds with deep historical differences both in terms of their values and their pursuits. On the one hand, the liberal, democratic, western world with clear separations of secular state and religious faith and on the other, the Muslim world, where god and state are tightly embraced, suffocating individual freedom and ideals that for westerners to a greater or lesser extent resemble data. In the region of Palestine today, behind the issue of Israel-Palestine relations, two conceptions of world order collide. Israel is a Western-type state with a view of international relations under the prism shaped by the Westphalian Treaties and after. The custodian and main defender of the "Westphalian" order of things after World War II is Israel's main ally over time, the United States. But the main actors of the Middle East see the international order, to a lesser or greater extent, through another prism, that of Islam.
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I picture the situation in the Gaza Strip and see the quantitative data of this conflict again and again, and I fatally wonder which of the two worlds is the Western, "civilized" world? This conflict, which seems to be eternal, seems to finally be fed by the rot of Western values, it is draining the Western world of its ideals, it is making it inferior. About 7,000 dead in the Gaza Strip, almost half of them children. Although I have some reservations about the accuracy of these numbers, as they are based on statements from the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, controlled by Hamas and therefore a potential propaganda tool, which can hardly be confirmed by independent sources, the statements come and the UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinians in the Middle East) press releases that reproduce these numbers and clearly demonstrate that even if these are inaccurate figures, they are nonetheless chilling. We are talking about a huge concentration camp with living conditions bordering on poverty and the humiliation of human dignity. 41 kilometers long, 12 kilometers wide, surrounded by sea and walls, bordering hostile neighbors lies the Gaza Strip. It is inhabited by approximately 2.1 million inhabitants. Again according to UNRWA (Situation Report #15, 25her October) nearly 630,000 Palestinians have been displaced from the north to the south and are housed in about 150 organization structures. Food is running low, after all, there was never enough. So are medications. Hospitals, one after the other, shut down as there is no power and generators run out of fuel. Complete siege. "The imposition of blockades that endanger the lives of civilians by depriving them of basic goods for their survival is prohibited by international humanitarian law," said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk. So what; Who's listening?
A few kilometers to the north, behind closed doors, Israeli families are anxious for their own people. Those that Hamas has kidnapped to use as a bargaining chip with the Israelis. This all seems surreal to me. It reminds me of the cards we used to collect as kids with our favorite footballers. "I give you Zidan, you give me Figo and Bergkamp"? I don't even want to try to feel their anguish. In the house next door, their neighbors are anxious for their children, their siblings, their parents who, with guns by their side, have been waiting for days now for the order to invade Gaza. Yes, the climate is warmer in Gaza than in Stalingrad, but does it matter if it's cold or hot when you're killed? I'm not a military analyst, I've never been in a war, but the prospect of having to invade such a space terrifies me. I have read about the battle of Stalingrad, and I am very afraid of something similar in Gaza.
As the days passed, many of us believed that the operation would not take place. How would the logic that considers such an involvement analogous to that of the Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq after the 11the September, where they literally "ate their faces". But we ignore two factors: the accumulated anger caused by the "flooding of Al Aqsa" of 7her October and the extremist regime in Tel Aviv that tries at all costs, behind the argument of exercising the right of self-defense, to hide its inability to perceive the preparations of Hamas. The terrorist attack brought together a people who in the last three years have been more divided than ever, as the political instability inside the country gave room for the development of an extremely conservative, on the verge of authoritarianism coalition government of deeply conservatives on the one hand and religious parties on the other. And while over the summer, Israelis were on the streets protesting justice reform, today they are overwhelmingly in favor of an intervention in the Gaza Strip aimed at wiping out Hamas from the face of the earth.
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Your death my life. In the Palestinian territories and in particular in the Gaza Strip, Lebanon and Syria, significant political and especially military power is now in the hands of extreme Islamists: Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, who consider holy war (Jihad) as a religious duty in order to end what they usually denounce as the "Zionist occupation". The regime of ayatollahs and revolutionary guards in Iran systematically questions even Israel's right to exist. Remember former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Wasn't he calling for the annihilation of Israel? Isn't that the purpose of Hamas, based on its founding act? Two generations of Arabs – these days nurtured with the responsibility of both Israel and Tuesday – have grown up with the belief that Israel is an illegal usurper of the ancestral heritage of Muslims. Also, don't forget that in 1947 it was the Arab countries who rejected the UN plan to partition the British Mandate of Palestine in order to form two separate states in the region: one Arab and one Jewish. The arrogance of the Arabs at the time led them to the mistaken, as it quickly proved, belief that they were able to triumph militarily, wipe the fledgling state of Israel off the map, and secure the entire region for themselves. And don't naively assume that they were going to give the lands of Palestine to the Palestinians. It would be divided between Egypt, Syria and Jordan. When did the rest of the Arabs really care about the Palestinians? Could it be that when the Egyptians occupied the Gaza Strip and the Jordanians the West Bank, they offered them for the establishment of the Palestinian state?
The failure of the attempt to eliminate Israel did not lead to political compromise and the initiation of interstate contacts and talks, as happened in most cases of post-colonial conflicts in Asia and Africa. Everything else in fact. It led to three more conventional and numerous non-conventional conflicts and military engagements. Every Islamist and jihadist organization invokes the conflict and calls Muslims to arms. Israel's presence and military power are viewed by the entire Arab world as a source of humiliation for Islam and the dogmatic commitment to never accept Israel's existence in lands considered Muslim ("from the river to the sea") , has turned for some the coexistence with Israel from a matter of realistic acceptance of reality to a matter of denial of faith.
During these decades, in addition to intolerant fanatics and reactionary hegemons, there were also bright examples of important leaders who attempted to transcend ideologies and ideological-religious anchorages, negotiating a peace agreement based on a realistic view of national interests and capabilities, between peoples organized in sovereign states, far from religious dogma. Anwar El Sadat, made peace with Israel in 1979 on the basis of his country's national interests and became the first Arab country to recognize Israel. He was assassinated two years later by Islamic fanatics. Yitzhak Rabin, the first Israeli prime minister to sign an agreement with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1993. He was assassinated two years later during a mass peace march by a fanatical Israeli student.
The land of Palestine, the land of Promise. The land of hatred and bigotry.
Before the latest events triggered by the suicide attack by Hamas, in the Arab world the Palestinian Question had largely lost much of its urgency. The main participants in the peace process (UN, US and Arab League) have focused their attention and diplomatic energy on Iran and its regional allies, as well as the prospect of it becoming the first nuclear power. The rise of Iran affects the Palestinian issue and the eventual peace process in two ways according to Kissinger: "in terms of the diplomatic role that important countries in the region, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, can play in shaping the peace process , and, even more importantly, as to their ability to act as guarantors of the agreement that might emerge." After all, confirming the old fox of diplomacy, most analysts and the data so far point to the Iranian government as the moral perpetrator and real accomplice of the Hamas strike, in the context of derailing a potential rapprochement and peace agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
This development, the freezing of the convergence processes of Israel and Saudi Arabia, once again made clear the existence of significant differences between the main contributors to the solution, regarding three fundamental issues: the developments inside them, the future of the Palestinians and the future of Iran as a potential nuclear power. Some of the parties who agree on the objectives are no longer able to support them publicly. For example, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Egypt share a common overarching goal with regard to Iran, wishing to prevent its emergence as a military nuclear power and to act as a deterrent should such an eventuality become inevitable. But their perception of legitimacy and the sensitivity of Saudi Arabia in particular as the head of the Arab League, but also the protector of Sunni Islam, prevents such a political stance from being publicly announced or even formulated.
Many Westerners approach the Palestinian Question as a conflict between state entities belonging to the so-called "Westphalian system of states" based on political realism. But they tend to ignore that Arab and other Muslim countries, especially those controlled by theocratic regimes, do not belong to this system. For Iran, Hezbollah's Lebanon, Hamas's Palestine and Palestinian Holy Jihad, the concept of political realism does not exist, rather than its perpetual state of war. dar al-Islam (Islamic territory) and the dar al harb (territory of war). And in this situation the only certainty is the blood toll... Ah, there is one more: Palestinian blood will always be more because this time, David is impossible to defeat Goliath (historical irony? Jews vs. Philistines, only Goliath is now the Jew and David the Philistine).
*Cover Photo: Palestinians evacuate the area after an Israeli air strike on the Susi Mosque in Gaza City on October 9, 2023 / MAHMUD HAMS/AFP via Getty Images