AT PENPOINT
The terrible nature of war is shown by the fact that the ceasefire in Gaza was greeted by relief by all parties. That there was no clear victor or loser was shown by the fact that there were none of the scenes of celebration that marked the end of World War II, on either side. Everyone’s main concern was whether the ceasefire would hold. This was not because there was worry about its practicability, as whether it would lead towards a solution of the problem that had caused the conflict.
One of the other features of the conflict is how much everybody had lost. Let alone a solution of the Palestinian problem, neither Israel nor Hamas had achieved their immediate war aims, as far as they could be discerned. A major reason why the ceasefire does not appear permanent is that neither side has won. Neither has the IDF been broken in the field, nor has Hamas been uprooted.
Even the aggressor in the conflict, Israel, was relieved that there was a ceasefire that looked like an end to the war. Israel had originally been the subject of attack by Hamas on 7 October 2023, and had played the victim card relentlessly. However, as the slaughter went on, it became clear that many more Palestinians had been killed than Israelis had died. However, Israel had lost the aura of invincibility that its victories in the 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973 Wars had given it. Its victory in the 1967 War had been so comprehensive that its military superiority was established, and even the massively improved performance of the Egyptian Army in 1973 could not counter it.
The most signal success was in the air. The 1967 War saw the Israeli Air Force shoot up much of the Egyptian, Iraqi and Syrian Air Forces on the ground and enjoy command of the air for the rest of the conflict, Much of the killing in Gaza was carried out by air bombardment, and Hamaas not only had no air power, it even lacked anti-aircraft defenses. It did have missiles, but those were fended off by Israeli antimissile defences. Israeli air power was mainly used to bomb civilian targets, including hospitals.
However, the assistance of the USA and France to Israel when it fended off an Iranian missile attack indicated that Israel could not defend itself on its own. That was unpalatable for Israel, which has long portrayed itself as the safe haven for persecuted Jews anywhere in the world. One effect of the conflict has been an exodus of Israelis back to Europe. This is hardly good advertising for the Zionist enterprise.
However, this has been achieved at horrific cost. The Gazans have lost no less than 46,000 people, which is about one and a half percent of their population. Those who have survived have lost houses, schools, markets, jobs, and will find the return to normalcy difficult. They were already radicalised by the refugee experience; they will probably be further radicalised.
It is in this tragedy that Israel faces its greatest threat, which will probably be such as to destroy it. The problem for Israel is that it superimposed itself on the Palestinian people, and was born from An-Nakba, The Catastrophe of 1948, when 750,000 Arabs were forced out of what is now Israel. That has created a displaced population which is ready to resist, which is willing to provide recruits to organizations willing to organize this resistance. If the organization accepts Israel, people will shift their allegiance to those willing to resist. That is what happened to the PLO, which went from having the overwhelming support of the Palestinian people to its acceptance of Israel.
The fate of the PLO, especially post-Arafat, shows how Israel sees the role of any Palestinian political organization: as a provider of a police force which will help keep the Palestinians quiet, just as the PLO is doing in the West Bank. Hamas might well learn from its example, though by following the path of resistance it has paid a terrible cost, with its leader Ismail Haniya, and then his successor Yahya Sinwar, both assassinated, as well as a massive degradation of its combat capabilities in the last year of combat. If it moves back to regroup, it will find itself elbowed aside by a new group, just as it elbowed aside the PLO
Just as the ceasefire of World War I did not last, proving just to be an interruption on the way to World War II, there is every likelihood that this ceasefire will not. The underlying reason is the same: the problems causing the war have not been solved.
This means that Israel cannot find anyone to deal with permanently. As soon as it comes to an agreement with one group, it will find it cannot depend on it to deliver. It is possible to see this happening with states. Though Arab states are brutal autocracies, Israel seems to be a breaking-point for a usually quiescent population. Recognizing Israel has had to be put on hold by Saudi Arabia, after a rush of Arab States like the UAE, Morocco and Sudan joining the line to gain US approval.
The two-state solution seems off the table, as does a one-state solution, unless it is one where Palestinians are kept in servitude to Jews. Israel finds itself in the position of an apartheid state like pre-1994 South Africa or pre-1980 Zimbabwe. Universal adult suffrage in Greater Israel, which includes the Gaza Strip and West Bank, would quite quickly mean a Palestinian majority. As it is, Israeli Arabs are on the verge of entering the Israeli government, such are the vagaries of the Israeli PR electoral system.
Though geographically limited to the sliver-like Gaza Strip, the conflict has had international implications. This is mainly because of the Jewish diaspora, which has been politically active in the West. It has not helped Israel’s cause that the Internet Age has meant that Israeli soldiers have been posting their atrocities on social media, and the Israeli sense of exceptionalism is such that their superiors have not stopped them from posting evidence of war crimes or genocide.
However, though there have been no trials, that proof, and the tens of thousands of video records posted by Gazans, as well as detailed pew a converge, has shaken the younger people in the West, which has been shown in the campus protests, especially in the USA, and the calls for universities to join the BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) movement by divesting themselves and their endowment funds of shares in Israeli companies or even in companies operating in Israel.
The political establishments of all Western countries are firmly on Israel’s side, not least because of the amounts of money it mobilises. Also, Israel plays on the guilt of the Holocaust, which was not an aberration, but the culmination of about a century of pogroms. The Zionist movement is best seen as a response to the pogroms. The pogroms were the culmination of centuries of anti-Jewish sentiment in Christian Europe because Jews were supposedly Christ-killers.
Israel might be left to fear the next outburst from the Palestinians, but that should not prevent it being realized that Israel is not viable. Even after 77 years, it has still not been accepted in the Middle East. It still remains what it was, a settler colonialist enterprise. The Palestinians are left to mount another insurrection. This time they were alone. (Iran and Hezbollah did help, but not much). Are they to be left alone in future?
Just as the ceasefire of World War I did not last, proving just to be an interruption on the way to World War II, there is every likelihood that this ceasefire will not. The underlying reason is the same: the problems causing the war have not been solved.