Human catastrophe in Gaza

Gaza awaits a human catastrophe. The only way it can be averted is by a firm assurance by global powers that Hamas militants will recognize Israel and commit themselves to respect its sovereignty.

In the backdrop of the last week’s attack on Israel killing around 1,600 Israeli citizens, it appears to be a remote possibility, though still not unworthy of negotiating.

The Palestine-Israel imbroglio has a history of nearly a century when the Palestine passed under the British colonial administration following dismantling of the Ottoman Empire.

Persecution of Jews in Christian Europe had by then ignited the quest for a Jewish Homeland. Holocaust and killing of millions of Jews at the hands of German Fuhrer Hitler added the immediacy to the cause.

Lo and behold, Israel came up in Palestine in 1948 with Jewish militant organisations Irgun and Haganah driving away Arabs from their ancestral land and seizing their territory.

United Nation’s recognition and the superpower America’s support lent the state the legitimacy for survival. It was only after the crushing defeat of alliance of Arab states that Israel became a reality that Arabs could no longer afford to deny, counter or repulse.

Egyptian President Anwar Sadat took the first initiative to recognize it. Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) led by legendary Yasser Arafat was second to fall in line in lieu of the limited autonomy for the Palestinian inhabited areas of West Bank and Gaza strip, areas without contiguity.

But Israel’s continued tampering with autonomous region by allowing Jewish settlements, raising of the Apartheid wall and confiscation of water sources kept the conflict simmering.

Constant skirmishes with Palestinian groups and killing of women and children have been provocation enough for Arab militant bodies to launch operations.

While the West Bank Arabs looked somewhat pliant, Gazans hae come under the sway of militant Islamist organization Hamas. Its refusal to recognize Israel and the October 7th attack on Israel now provide the casus belli.

Hamas being a non-state actor and fighting from a narrow strip of land with 2.2 million people is no match to Israeli military prowess, more so when major Arab nations around have either resiled from or given up their belligerent stance.

Egypt and Saudi Arabia are in no mood to support it. Syria may share their vision, but has just emerged from a decade long civil war and is in no position to be of any help.

Iran is too distant to be of any consequence. Its support can merely keep the Hezbollah’s challenge to Israel from southern Lebanon alive. But nothing beyond that. Turkey being a member of the NATO can only play the role of a mediator.

Given the above scenario, it is less likely that Hamas had calculated the bloodier reprisals Israel would inflict upon it and the impact on opinion in Western nations in favour of the Palestinian cause.

Geopolitical decisions requite recognition of geopolitical realities rather than seeking solution in history or mythology. The indigenous people in North America or Australia may be the genuine owners of those lands, but have reconciled to the altered realities in a world where migrants, outsiders and settlers have proved themselves to be the real nation-builders of those lands.

It is not certain if Hamas has the perspicacity to gauge the consequences of the intransigent stances it has been adopting vis-à-vis Israel.

Israel’s threatened attack would result in a bloodbath that would render the Gazans further besieged and vulnerable to a future than cannot be foreseen as of now.