As Israel prepared for what amounts to a slaughter of innocent Palestinians, the reaction of the West, led by the USA, showed why there is a Palestinian problem–the apparent impunity that Israel has for bad behaviour. However, at the same time, the peeps of condemnation from the Muslim world show that Muslim countries cannot put together a reaction, and are left scrambling. Israel, feeling itself under attack, has received the sort of support that will allow it to send ground forces into Palestinian after the initial air attacks, which have come in place of the more conventional artillery bombardment before a ground attack. The expressions of support seem to express acceptance of an Israeli right of response. While they condemn the attack by Hamas on Friday as ‘terrorism’, they express a support of Israeli actions that respond to this.
This does seem to ignore all of the nuances in the situation. It seems to egg Israel on to commit exactly the sort of behaviour that it condemns, to encourage Israel to seek vengeance by slaughtering Palestinian women and children in Gaza. By backing Israel so blindly, Western governments may satisfy their domestic Zionist lobbies, but they do not bring the world any nearer to a just solution, one that will prevent such slaughter in the future.
Jordan’s King Abdullah II, whose father Hussein II had recognized Israel in 1994, once again dusted off the old two-state solution, not realizing that not only had events left it behind, but Israeli attempts to change the demography of the Occupied territories, had made it virtually impossible to implement. His response shows the bankruptcy of the Muslim world. The waffling by Saudi Arabia, which had been on the verge of recognizing Israel, was accompanied by a deafening silence by Islamic Military Counter Terrorism Coalition Commander-in-Chief Gen (retd) Raheel Sharif, who had justified his taking up the job by the ability of the IMCTC to handle any crisis, or the IMCTC hosts, Saudi Arabia. Muslim countries and their supposed collective voice, the OIC, have been reduced to making pleas for Israel to exercise restraint, something it has not done since coming into being amid the bloodshed and suffering of An-Nakba, the Catastrophe, as Palestinians call the ethnic cleansing of 1948. That, approach has not worked in the past, and there is no reason to suppose it will do so now.
