The present Israel-Hamas conflict is difficult to navigate. There are historical complexities, vast and competing reserves of grievances on both sides, as well as a flood of disinformation. That opinions are polarised is evident in US President Joe Biden’s declaration on October 11 that he had seen “pictures of terrorists beheading children”, a falsehood that was later denied by the Israel Defence Forces. The Hamas attack occurred on October 7 and, there is little possibility that the US was not made aware of the facts four days later. Highly emotive parallels with the Holocaust have also been drawn by Israel, and echoed by US and Western leaders. “Hamas is ISIS” was another viral theme, even as Israel’s oldest reservist declared, in a video, “Erase them, their families, mothers and children. These animals can no longer live.”
Those who sympathise with Palestine, on the other hand, project the attack as a natural response to Israeli ‘oppression’ in Gaza, and the failure to ‘resolve’ the ‘Palestine issue’. In the initial hours, the carnage was celebrated in the Palestinian street, and it was only after Israeli retaliation began—and its scale and the international licence the Western powers had bestowed on Tel Aviv became apparent—that the mood changed abruptly, and “the war of dead babies”, as one commentator expressed it, the battle to project victimhood and garner sympathy, commenced.
The world is undergoing tectonic transformations, and it is clear that a crass, colonising Western consciousness is losing legitimacy at an unprecedented pace. Western double standards and falsehoods have been exposed in the Ukraine war, and will be further in the present conflict in and around Israel. The West can no longer dictate the global narrative, and with the loss of its credibility, a gradual erosion of power will follow.
While the bloodletting continues, the demonisation of the other—Palestinians as irredeemable terrorist monsters, and Israel as a tyrannical apartheid state and mass murderer of civilians—are the principal platforms of contestation in what will, eventually, be a battle for legitimacy. In this, questions have been rightly raised about the objective of the Hamas attack—which is now manifestly akin to an act of suicide by the group and, likely, an overwhelming proportion of its cadres and leadership. On the other hand, Israel’s aerial carnage in the Gaza Strip also appears to have an uncertain strategic purpose. In protracted conflict, however, the search for clear answers is mistaken. An ambiguity of both purpose and outcome is inevitable, even as a decisive conclusion remains necessarily elusive.
It is, nevertheless, possible and necessary to separate the Hamas attack—a transparent act of terrorism—from the broader issue of Palestine. It’s also important to recognise that Hamas and a significant proportion of Palestinians—and, indeed, many in the wider ‘Arab world’—remain committed to annihilation of Israel. Moreover, it needs to be acknowledged that Hamas locates its facilities, including missile silos and launchpads, as well as its administrative, communications and training infrastructure, in dense residential areas and a maze of underground tunnels. Hamas repeatedly puts civilians in harm’s way to protect its operations and resources and, in the wake of the recent carnage, the hostages it now conceals in these areas. It is inconceivable that Israel could avoid the use of substantial retaliatory force—with its inevitable collateral harm.
While the scale of the butchery in Israel and retaliatory action in Gaza is unprecedented, this is easily recognisable as a familiar tactical pattern. What Israel, however, is currently doing to the civilian population in Gaza cannot simply be called ‘collateral damage’. As has been noted, including by several Western and even Israeli commentators, Netanyahu’s retaliation constitutes overwhelming and collective punishment.
In the coming weeks, this bloodbath will continue, and superior force, rather than any rational or ethical resolution, will prevail. And force presently favours Israel, with the backing of the united Western powers. History records that geopolitics has been changed in the past by strategic shifts in equations of power, not by terrorist actions. The present Hamas misadventure will fail to alter the balance in the Israel-Palestine equation.
There are some who speak, even in the midst of the ongoing butchery, of justice, of negotiated settlements. The reality is, with ancient hatreds infinitely deepened by the events since October 7, neither justice nor any negotiated settlement—outside tactical initiatives such as contacts for the exchange of hostages and prisoners—are going to be possible for a long time to come. Whatever the history and present excesses, however, the inescapable reality is that five-and-a-half million Palestinians cannot be wished away. Nor, indeed, can they wish away Israel.
Ajai Sahni
Executive Director, Institute for Conflict Management, South Asia Terrorism Portal
ajaisahni@gmail.com