That the Gaza war will be pro­longed, mer­ci­less and shape glob­al pol­i­tics for years to come is self-evi­dent. Unless the “nev­er go to war with­out a plan for the after­math” les­son of Iraq and Afghanistan is heed­ed, how­ev­er, the shape will be mould­ed by a line from George Bernard Shaw’s Cae­sar and Cleopa­tra: “And so, to the end of his­to­ry, mur­der shall breed mur­der, always in the name of right and hon­our and peace, until the gods are tired of blood and cre­ate a race that can understand.”

In the case of Gaza, it seems clear that can only come when rub­ble has been reduced to grav­el, gush­ing blood has dried, rage cools to sim­mer­ing out­rage, tears sub­side from flood to steady trick­le and the sear­ing pain of loss and mourn­ing dulls to bear­able ache.
To have even a slim chance of com­ing close to that point, the think­ing and rhetoric of abso­lutist reli­gious beliefs, be they jihadist or Jew­ish mes­sian­ic, can­not be allowed to dom­i­nate, let alone write the narrative.
To a no less impor­tant extent, the fer­vour of sup­port from allies and sym­pa­this­ers of either side of the con­flict needs to be both con­sid­ered and uttered with an eye to the future.
That the Israelis will and indeed must, apply the ethos of “nev­er again” to the idea of liv­ing next to Hamas is clear.
How they man­age that while adher­ing to their avow­al that Israel is not at war with the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple is up to the nation­al con­science, with a lit­tle help from friends.
To cheer Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Binyamin Netanyahu’s char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of the fight as a“strug­gle between the chil­dren of light and the chil­dren of dark­ness, between human­i­ty and the law of the jun­gle”, is to sup­port extrem­ists in his cab­i­net like Beza­lel Smotrich and Ita­mar Ben-Gvir, both open advo­cates of eth­nic cleans­ing, whose fol­low­ers have killed sev­er­al Pales­tini­ans in the West Bank since the Hamas attack.
The min­is­ters in ques­tion would do well to reflect on the fact that despite thou­sands of years of per­se­cu­tion, pogroms and even­tu­al­ly the Holo­caust, they have end­ed up being part of gov­ern­ing an inde­pen­dent Jew­ish nation, and Pales­tini­ans are prov­ing just as deter­mined as Jews to rule a coun­try of their own.
Arab rulers, as well as the “Arab street” and Pales­tin­ian acolytes in the West ral­ly­ing behind Hamas (and by exten­sion its atroc­i­ties), need to tem­per their pas­sion with acknowl­edge­ment that in lock-step with cyn­i­cal nods and winks from suc­ces­sive Netanyahu gov­ern­ments, they abet­ted   the inef­fec­tu­al, weak and cor­rupt Pales­tin­ian Author­i­ty and thus helped ensure Iran­ian-backed Hamas held sway in Gaza.

                          CLEAN HANDS PLEASE

UN chief Anto­nio Guter­res was doing his job accord­ing to its descrip­tion when he said: “The griev­ances of the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple can­not jus­ti­fy the appalling attacks by Hamas, and those appalling attacks can­not jus­ti­fy the col­lec­tive pun­ish­ment of the Pales­tin­ian people.”
When he lat­er added that Hamas attacks in which 1400 peo­ple were slaugh­tered  “did not hap­pen in a vac­u­um,” he was refer­ring to recent his­to­ry, not tak­ing sides.
The cur­rent gov­ern­ment in Israel is the first ever to make annex­a­tion of the West Bank a stat­ed objec­tive in its coali­tion agree­ment. It has chal­lenged the sta­tus quo on Tem­ple Mount in Jerusalem, one of both Judaism and Islam’s holi­est sites, while rapid­ly, and ille­gal­ly under inter­na­tion­al law, expand­ing Israeli set­tle­ments in the occu­pied West Bank.
Israeli ambas­sador to the Unit­ed Nations Gilad Erdan’s call for Guter­res’ res­ig­na­tion was a demand for the UN to be one-sided.
On bal­ance, nei­ther his exhor­ta­tion nor Guter­res’ “vac­u­um” obser­va­tion were use­ful for what­ev­er role the UN will play in the future.
The irre­place­able ele­ment in what comes to a cer­tain extent dur­ing and def­i­nite­ly after the war, is Washington.
Pres­i­dent Joe Biden may come to regret that when his spokesman, John F. Kir­by, said of the con­flict: “It is ugly and it’s going to be messy, and inno­cent civil­ians are going to be hurt going for­ward,” he hadn’t both­ered to add that the Unit­ed States hadn’t dis­cussed any red lines with Israel.
It will require bold lead­ers with vision, diplo­mat­ic skill and the deter­mi­na­tion to use them if this is to be any­thing but anoth­er lurch down a road both Pales­tini­ans and Israelis have been blun­der­ing with no end clear or rea­son­able des­ti­na­tion in sight for decades.
As much as Israel can­not afford to do any­thing but, as Netanyahu vowed, “crush and destroy” Hamas, it can­not re-occu­py Gaza, or impede its res­ur­rec­tion from the ruins by alien­at­ing gov­ern­ments whose involve­ment will be crucial .
If, in that over-worked but applic­a­ble phrase “the guns fall silent”, a  clear way and will to work towards a gen­uine “nev­er again”, for Pales­tini­ans and Israelis alike, isn’t on the hori­zon, the same God they both claim is on their side would be jus­ti­fied in despair­ing of ever cre­at­ing “… a race that can understand.”

Com­ments are wel­comed. Click CONTACT on the site header.
To receive e‑mail alerts to new posts, Click SIGN-UP on the header.