What’s Wrong with the Israel-Hamas Conflict?

On the fiftieth anniversary of the Fourth Arab-Israeli wars, the Palestinian Islamic extremist Hamas in the Gaza Strip launched an unprecedented attack on Israel, targeting both civilians and soldiers, resulting in a tragedy with thousands of casualties. The sudden attack was described by public opinion as a repeat of 9/11. Subsequently, Israel imposed a “total blockade” on the Gaza Strip, implemented a policy of “no electricity, no food, no oil”, and cut off the water supply to launch a full-scale counterattack against the Hamas. As the conflict continued to escalate, the United Nations Security Council held an emergency meeting on the evening of the 16th in response to the Israeli-Hamas conflict, during which the Russian draft resolution calling for a cease-fire was not passed by the Security Council. The whole world was instantly plunged into an even more unprecedented shock and division than the Russian-Ukrainian war.

The Israeli-Palestinian War Continues

After the end of World War II, Britain announced the termination of the British Mandate for Palestine, and the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution confirming its support for the implementation of the partition of the Mandate for Palestine, with the establishment of a Jewish state and an Islamic state of Palestine, and the international administration of Jerusalem and its environs. Palestine was originally a geographical concept, and many people have inhabited the land since ancient times. The earliest inhabitants were the Canaanites, then the Hebrews came into the area to establish the states of Judah and Israel, and after the Babylonian invasion others moved in, but Palestine was never ruled by the Arabs. But the Arabs brought Islam and the Arabic language to the area, and it can be said that the Palestinians are an Arabized mixture of different races.

On May 14, 1948, the Jews formally established the State of Israel. On the following day, the neighboring Arab countries, such as Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, declared war on Israel at the same time, and fought for the former Palestinian trust territories, while the Jews, in order to protect their homeland, started the War of Independence of Israel, and the continuous Middle East War started from then on. During the decades of Israeli-Palestinian wars, the State of Israel continued to grow in strength and almost controlled most of the Palestinian areas.

In 1988, the Palestinians declared their statehood, which included the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as defined by the United Nations, with Jerusalem as its capital, and in 1993, the leaders of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) reached a settlement with Israel, which gradually withdrew its troops from the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip from 1994 onwards. The Gaza Strip is located in the narrow strip of the Palestinian West Bank, bordering the Mediterranean Sea to the west and Egypt to the south, and is the main land and sea route connecting Palestine with the outside world. Currently inhabited by refugees and their descendants who fled Palestine during the First Middle East War in 1948, the Gaza Strip is predominantly Muslim in ethnicity, and is now controlled by the Hamas, a radical force in the Palestinian state.

Founded in the late 1980s by wheelchair-bound Sheikh Yassin, Hamas is a so-called Islamic resistance movement that mixes religion, politics, and the military in its political advocacy of the destruction of Israel by force and the creation of a Palestinian state from the Mediterranean Sea to the West Bank of the Jordan River, with Jerusalem as its capital. on March 22, 2004. On March 22, 2004, Yassin was assassinated by an Israeli helicopter missile. From its inception, Hamas, with the support of Arab organizations such as Iran, and its affiliated militia, the Qassam Brigades, have carried out numerous attacks on Israeli civilian and military targets. In addition to launching rocket attacks on Israeli areas, they have encouraged women and children with bombs strapped to their bodies to infiltrate Israeli crowds and carry out suicide attacks. Israel, the United States, Canada, the European Union, the United Kingdom and Japan have all designated Hamas as a terrorist organization.

Until now, this conflict has not been considered a war between the Palestinians and Israelis, but rather a military conflict between Israelis and Hamas, initiated by Hamas. Palestinian leader Abbas is theoretically the ruling government in the Gaza Strip, but the Gaza Strip is controlled by the Hamas. On the 7th of this month, Hamas launched a large-scale attack on Israel, and while firing rockets, it blew up many parts of the border fence between Gaza and Israel, and entered Israeli territory by land, sea and air. A music festival in the Gaza border community of Reyim was also the target of the massive attack, which eyewitnesses described as a massacre. According to the rescue organization Zaka, at least 260 people were killed at the festival alone. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said Hamas was also holding more than 120 hostages. Israel has described the Hamas terrorist attacks as the Israelis’ version of 9/11. Israel’s full-scale counterattack on the siege and blockade policy, resulting in all medical institutions in Gaza are facing serious difficulties, drugs, medical supplies and fuel will soon be exhausted and can not be replenished, most of the hospitals are already in overloaded state of operation, some patients can only lie on the floor. In addition, about 220,000 Palestinians are taking refuge in 92 United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East facilities in the Gaza Strip. As of October 15, the death toll in the new conflict between Israel and the Palestinians had exceeded 4,000 people.

The Citizens Are Always the Innocents

As the Israeli-Hamas conflict rapidly escalates, there is a great deal of talk on the Internet about destroying Hamas, with many claiming that Hamas deserves what they get. There is certainly no sympathy for a terrorist organization like Hamas that oppresses its people, but destroying a terrorist organization can be much harder than it looks and can raise very troubling moral questions about collateral damage. The casualties in the Gaza Strip today are more likely to be ordinary Palestinians. Gaza is half the size of New York City and has a population of about 2.2 million, almost half of whom are children. How long will previous sympathy for Israel’s surprise attack last if Israel’s ground invasion results in the deaths of tens of thousands of Gaza’s children in house-to-house fighting?

Whether they are Israeli children or Palestinian children, their lives are equally important. If you only care about the lives of people in Israel or Gaza, then you don’t actually care about human life. What this means in practice is difficult to grasp. Israel has a right to respond, and in war, civilians inevitably suffer. There is no optimal solution for Gaza, as there is for Afghanistan and Iraq. Today, we are condemned to live in a world where there are more problems than solutions, and that avoids ambivalence and struggle over what comes next. While Hamas took the lead in this round of conflict, it is Israel that now faces a difficult choice – how to respond to war crimes without committing them.

On August 20, 1993, Israeli Prime Minister Rabin and Palestinian Liberation Organization Chairman Arafat met secretly in Oslo, Norway, and reached a peace agreement, known as the Oslo Accords. On September 13, 1993, a Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements was signed on the U.S. White House lawn, a historic process witnessed by U.S. President Bill Clinton and regarded as a milestone in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. It is only the radicals on both sides who are not happy with this outcome, and once the opportunity to work for some kind of fair solution has been missed, it will be difficult to put that option back on the negotiating table. A simplistic “oppressor/oppressed,” “colonizer/colonized,” and “apartheid Israel” narrative imposed on the conflict does nothing to understand the complex history between the two countries or to work toward a resolution of the current conflict. The Hamas raid, which was clearly planned over a long period of time, reminds us that the extremism of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in recent years has also exacerbated the turmoil between Israel and Palestinian organizations such as Hamas, and that a foreign policy that blatantly disregards the existence and rights of the Palestinians can only add fuel to the fire of the complex Israeli-Palestinian situation. When the centrists lose their position and voice, bloodshed is inevitable. The escalation of violence against violence is likely to trigger another humanitarian crisis.

The New Global Order continues to be reshaped

The fact that a conflict that took place in the Middle East, a “small town”, has attracted the attention of the international community is, to a large extent, due to the “butterfly effect”. On the surface, it appears to be a conflict between Hamas and Israel, but in reality, the conflict directly involves Palestine and Israel, and to a larger extent, it affects the Arab world and Israel, and it even has a direct impact on the internal politics and diplomacy of many major countries.

In this conflict, the attitudes and positions of various countries are obviously different: generally speaking, they can be divided into countries that support Israel, mainly including the United States and its Western allies, such as France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and Japan, etc. These countries strongly condemn the behavior of Hamas and firmly support Israel’s right to self-defense, believing that Hamas is the greatest threat to the peace and stability of the Middle East, and that he should be punished and sanctioned, and at the same time, they are also worried about Hamas’ behavior. At the same time, they are also worried that Hamas may collude with Iran, the “gold master” behind him, which will pose a greater danger to Israel and Western interests. The countries that support the Palestinians mainly include the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the Arab League, such as Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, etc., which are also subjected to the colonial domination and exploitation by the West for a long time, and are more sympathetic with the Palestinians, and at the same time, have a stronger sense of responsibility for them and are also more willing to support them. They have more sympathy for the Palestinian people and share the same religious beliefs, while Israel is the biggest aggressor against the Palestinian people and the Holy Land. China, which was initially neutral, has begun to openly criticize Israel, and its position has begun to shift in favor of the Arab camp. In today’s world, there are few grey areas of neutrality, ambiguity, and uncertainty left, as if everything requires “choosing sides.

In recent years, Russia has started the largest war in Europe since World War II, China has intensified its threat of force against Taiwan, and Israel has formed the most extreme government in history. …… The world in the post-epidemic era is in a state of turmoil and chaos, and there is no trace of the peace and prosperity that existed under globalization in the past. Everything that has happened in recent years suggests that the world may have descended into a new era of chaos. Countries – and political groups like Hamas – are willing to take big risks rather than worry about the consequences. The world is in the process of transitioning to a new order, which experts describe as “multipolar”. The United States is no longer the dominant force, and there is no alternative. As America’s presence on the international stage wanes, nations are becoming ambitious and watchful, looking for any opportunity to build on the ruins of the old order. Political leaders in many places realized that the benefits of radical action might outweigh the costs, and dared to defend their own interests, even at the cost of war. A fully multipolar world has emerged, and it has taken a long time for people to realize that multipolarity inevitably involves a great deal of chaos. How mankind is to conduct itself in this chaotic era is still unknown.

Article/SAMEWAY Editorial Department

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