The complicated Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a never ending saga

How did this happen? This is Israel, the state with arguably the highest level of Military expertise in the Middle East. This is a nation that had won multiple wars against its sworn enemies in the neighborhood. They have the Shin-Bet and the Mossad, responsible for Internal and External security with some of the best personnel in the world. How on earth did they not see this coming?

The surprise attack by elements within Hamas shocked the world last Saturday as Hundreds of fighters attacked Israel by air, by land and sea in broad day light. One would argue that it was in the early hours of the day, minutes after 6am Israeli time. For the Zionist state, security is 24-hour business.

Nothing is left to chance especially under current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. How was there such a failure on the part of Israeli Intelligence? Thousands of rockets from the strip, make shift para troopers, fighters breaking through multiple barriers and attacking a number of Kibbutz and as far as Ashkelon.

This was unprecedented. There have been multiple attacks by Hamas and other factions on the state of Israel but none was as devastating as this. It has since emerged that elements within the Egyptian Intelligence had tipped the Israelis about an impending attack. They would surely not have overlooked this. What they may not have anticipated is how their enemies broke through and killed that many citizens, one thousand two hundred and counting, and abducted over one hundred people people as hostages in such a brazen attack.

HISTORICAL ANTECEDENTS

You would have to go back to over a century ago. On November 2nd, 1917, British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour wrote a letter addressed to Lord Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland. That letter would set up a conflict still being fought this day.

The content of the letter was essentially to establish a home for the Jewish people. A huge majority of the people who lived on the land at the time were Palestinians. The question one would naturally ask is how were the British literally dictating what happened thousands of miles from London?

This was during the period of World War 1 fought between 1914-1918. A war that was essentially focused on Empires wanting to dominate Global affairs. The British were making a lot of promises to the Arab states, majority of whom they colonized on condition that they rose up against the feared Ottoman Empire at the time. Well, the Arabs did.

They wanted Independence in their spaces with Egypt first to benefit in 1922. A month after the war ended, British troops took over Palestine after nearly 400 years of Ottoman control. Majority of the people in the Arab world were mostly Muslims but there were Christian and Jewish Minorities.

At a time when many Jews were suffering horrific persecution in Europe, they felt Palestine could be an escape. The idea of building up a Jewish presence in Palestine became known as Zionism but it stayed a fringe movement amongst European Jews. Enter Theodore Herzl in 1896.

The Austro-Hungarian Jewish journalist published a book in 1896 called ‘Der Judenstaat’ (The Jewish state in English). In that book, he asserted that the only way for Jews to avoid Europe’s antisemitism was not just to leave but to have their won country.

A conference led by him was organized in Basel, Switzerland amongst varied Jewish Communities where funds were then raised to buy huge plots of land to resettle and relocate many Jews from around the world and possibly form a Jewish state by fifty years. This was in 1897.

He was only off by one year as the state of Israel was founded in 1948. Remember the British had control over that space after World War 1 when the Ottomans and Germans were defeated leading to the formation of the League of Nations in 1919. Sounds familiar. Colonialist power.

The Palestinians were never then consulted on how their state could possibly look like but the Zionists appeared to be consulted in this direction. By this time, the Jewish wave in Palestine started growing thick and fast. Waves of people started finding their way to Palestine.

They had their own factories, schools and even their Militia (Haganah) and were led by Polish born David Ben Gurion, remember him? He would later become the first Prime Minister of Israel in 1948. Multiple commissions including the Peel Commission were set up by the British to ensure that these huge arrivals would not create issues with the locals (The Palestinians). The suggestions by these Commissions centered on splitting the lands and immigration. This would throw up multiple conflicts till this day.

There have always been tensions in this space since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. In 1967 various Arab leaders got into the mix in an attempt to force the hand of the Israeli’s. We know what happened in the six-day war with Israel annihilating the Arabian states and extending their territories into the Sinai and Jordanian Penisula. The Yom Kippur war in 1973 further demonstrated the Military might of the Israelis over their Arab neighbours with support from the United States.

Multiple Premiers including Golda Mier, Ezer Wiezman, Yitzhak Rabin, Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert, Ehud Barak, Naftali Bennet and current Premier Benjamin Netanyahu have been involved in long running conflicts with the Palestinian Liberation Organization led by Yasser Arafat as well as various elements within Hamas who took over the control of Gaza in 2007. Multiple Hamas leaders have been eliminated in the process in the name of reclaiming ‘lost land’.

For Hamas and groups which are supportive of the Palestinian cause, Israeli settlement expansion, coupled with various ‘incursions’ into Gaza and the West Bank, a situation decried by the International Community, has long been the catalyst for these conflicts.

REGIONAL CONTEXT

Iran has long been accused been accused of fueling the conflict by supplying weapons through its proxy Hezbollah to many armed groups in Palestine. Other Arab states, ie, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Bahrain have had tough relationships with Israel until recent times.

The Israelis have successfully navigated their way with some of these nations whiles others are very supportive of the Palestinian cause and their desire to have a country of their own with East Jerusalem as their capital. How that would work with multiple Israeli settler expansions remains to be seen.

GILAD SHALIT

Now this is where it gets quite sturdy. Gilad Shalit was a former MIA soldier of the Israel Defense Forces who, on 25 June 2006, was captured by Palestinian militants in a cross-border raid via tunnels near the Israeli border. Hamas held him captive for over five years until his release on the 18th of October, 2011 as part of a prisoner exchange deal.

The Israeli government has made it clear that their siege of Gaza will only be lifted with the release of the over 150 Israeli’s kidnapped and held hostage since last Saturday. Would Hamas budge to these demands? On the back of the Shalit experience, the Israelis would know it is going be a tough one.

Multiple International news outlets are reporting that the Israeli Defense Force may go on a ground offensive in the coming days. Anyone familiar with Gaza and how dense the settlements are will know that this is a huge risk to save the hostages from their kidnappers. There is no chance Hamas would keep all these hostages at one location. They would have split them all over Gaza by now. We know what that means. All out battles until one party succumbs by which time some of these hostages may be caught up in the crossfire.

NETANYAHU

This is tough on Prime Minister Netanyahu and a large number of Knesset Members (Parliament) including opposition leader Benny Gantz. Most of these guys, once top soldiers and commandos in their right have been involved in multiple battles with various Palestinian factions and more over the years in an effort to protect the state of Israel. Having to deal with this challenge must be extremely frustrating knowing that there would be Israeli casualties again. How Hamas fighters broke through Israeli lines with such verve would irk them for years to come.

WHITHER GOEST THOU?

Gaza may be under total siege with fuel and food running out for the locals. Israel has now ordered over a million people to move from Northern Gaza to the South. Could that be a signal for ground forces to get in? The loss of any Israeli life gets every Jew on edge. The loss of many Palestinian lives is getting everyone in the region on edge.

There have been multiple Diplomatic shuttles in the last few days by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, the Egyptians, the Turks, the Saudis and the Qataris. The Israelis have made it clear. They are not going to take any moral lectures from anyone. A large Israeli invasion appears strongly on the cards.

Since 2006, the Palestinian side has been fractured by conflict between Fatah, the traditionally dominant party and its later electoral challenger, Hamas, a militant Islamist group that gained control of the Gaza Strip.

Attempts to remedy this have been repeated and continuing. Egypt, a founding member of the Arab League, has historically been a key participant in the Arab-Israeli conflict and related negotiations, more so since the Egypt-Israel peace treaty. Another key participant is Jordan, which annexed the West Bank in 1950 and held it until 1967, relinquishing its territorial claim over it to the Palestinians in 1988. An Israel-Jordan peace treaty was signed in 1994.

Would these nations led by two strong leaders with a Military background, Gen Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi and King Abdullah, find a way to stem the ongoing loss of lives and bring finality to this conflict? Time would tell.