Historical context necessary to assess Israel-Hamas conflict
[ https://thestarphoenix.com/opinion/colu ... s-conflict ]
A writer from Regina offers his opinion that the war in the Middle East is leading Gaza and Hamas further away from a lasting peace.
Jim Harding - Published December 01, 2023
There’s been expected moral outrage over the horrendous violence in Israel and Gaza. We will never get beyond this if the complex historical context is ignored.
Densely populated Gaza shelters Palestinian refugee families driven from traditional lands. The 2.3 million in the 40-kilometre strip of land have lived under military blockade for 16 years. The majority, under 18, grew up knowing nothing else.
It’s called an open-air prison and incubator of rage.
In power since 2009, Prime Minister Netanyahu has been candid that Hamas’s 2006 takeover of Gaza keeps Palestinians divided.
Repressive military control is also exerted in the West Bank, which is not under Hamas control. The two-state solution negotiated in 1993 has been abandoned, as Israeli settlements steadily expand.
There are seemingly irreconcilable narratives. Most Israelis consider Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre of 1,200 civilians as the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.
Those surviving Israel’s blockade, airstrikes and destruction of their homes, by one of the world’s best equipped military, endure layers of despair that most of us cannot imagine.
Israel justifies its levelling of Gaza as necessary to eliminate the terrorist organization Hamas. Civilians are told to flee south; then, this area is also bombed. Hospitals have become war zones. More than half the dead are women and children; terror has become the norm.
There’s an imbalance in some reporting; Jewish victims are more likely to have a face and story. Trying to report from the front-line carnage, journalists die in record numbers.
The world helplessly watched the depletion of essentials, while Israel waged total war. The United Nations called it collective punishment. It seemed like shooting fish in a barrel.
Observers ask whether Netanyahu’s endgame is to drive even more Palestinians out of their shrinking, obliterated homeland. Early on, on Oct. 18, Save the Children, with 400 international humanitarian groups, called for a ceasefire. Israel insisted this would undermine its right to self-defence.
Even the U.S., which funds Israel’s military ($3.8 billion annually), called for a humanitarian pause. Canada followed suit. As Gaza’s infrastructure was imploding, and pressure grew in Israel to negotiate release of hostages, Qatar brokered a short pause. [ https://thestarphoenix.com/news/world/i ... 58b66c3c0f ]
More aid arrived, captives rejoined families, and, perhaps, momentum grew for a full ceasefire. Global opinion was clear by Oct. 27, with 120 countries voting in the UN for an immediate ceasefire. Only 14, including the U.S., were opposed. Canada abstained.
Antisemitism and Islamophobia are unfortunately, but predictably, on the rise.
No one can seriously believe that killing 14,000 and displacing 1.7 million (nearly 80 per cent) in Gaza will create the conditions necessary for lasting peace. Ideological blackmail on either side should not be tolerated. The consistent pursuit of human rights has to be our beacon.
We can only hope that Palestinians, with numbers approaching the Jewish population, but divided from each other under military rule, will become more united to pursue a path to coexistence. And that Israelis will soon reject the ethno-nationalist politics that are fuelling this conflict.
The geo-political reality has already changed, and not necessarily for the better. Israel’s supporters have advanced a questionable analogy between Ukraine attacked by Putin and Israel attacked by Hamas. Putin has neo-colonial interests, as does Netanyahu.
And all victims in this cauldron of violence, not only in Israel, will continue to claim the right to self-defence. Putin will use the obliteration of Gaza to advance his contrived anti-Western colonialism, to cloak his own ethno-nationalist, anti-democratic objectives.
It is hopeful that almost 300,000 Canadians called for a ceasefire and lifting the blockade, in the largest e-petition ever submitted to parliament. [ https://thestarphoenix.com/news/local-n ... a45ab2e19c ]
If we want to see a path towards peace, we have to replace ideological justifications for violence with solid historical understanding. It won’t be easy, but making peace is never as easy as making war.
- -
Jim Harding was director of the School of Human Justice at the University of Regina and is author of After Iraq: War, Imperialism and Democracy (2004)