Hamas-Israel war: same pattern, more intensity: We should all be worried that given the character of Netanyahu, the heavy military deployment on the Gaza border might just be a prelude to a more troubling ethnic cleansing campaign aimed at finally driving out the irascible and irritating residents of Gaza and replacing them with Jewish settlers. Can and would the rest of the word accept such a development?
By Tiko Okoye
The tenuous peace that has fossilized as a hallmark of the Israeli-Palestine co-existence suffered another life-threatening hiatus in the wee hours of Saturday, October 8, 2023, as Hamas – the Islamist militant group running the Gaza Strip Jihad launched the most ferocious attack ever witnessed on Israel.
Conflicts between troops of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) and Palestinian militants agitating for an independent State all seem to follow a similar pattern: firing of rockets from Palestinian territories, retaliatory attacks by the IDF and the Intifada and skirmishes in-between.
But this time around, thousands of Hamas’ operatives – in a daring, well-coordinated land, sea and air attack – breached the much-touted ‘impregnable’ $1 billion Jordanian fence, heavily fortified with the most sophisticated IT-driven spy-ware and security systems in the world, built by Israel to hem in the residents of Gaza. Many were asking why the blitzkrieg wasn’t detected and nipped in the bud by the highly-storied Shin Bet and Mossad intelligence organisations, not to mention the IDF.
The general consensus seemed to be that the breach was a product of failure of intelligence. But knowing the history and capabilities of Israel, I remain fully persuaded that the intelligence agencies had a whiff of the plan but were outsmarted by Hamas intelligence operatives. How do I mean?
When the Allied Forces decided to make joint airborne and beach landings on the Normandy coast in France, an elaborate scheme – codenamed Operation Bodyguard – was hatched to deceive the Axis Forces into thinking that the main landings would occur on the coast of Pas-de-Calais (France).
I’m no purveyor of conspiracy theories but I remain convinced that Hamas simulated diversionary activities, such as physical deceptions and giving the impression of extra tunnelling and creating simulated wireless traffic with Israeli listening posts expected to pick up the traffic, that kept Israeli intelligence agencies busy harvesting low-hanging fruits with very little value.
Then again, just maybe the intelligence agencies did warn the Netanyahu government but the politicians who make the final decisions airily dismissed their reports as moonlight tales. Recall that the subsequently declassified 9/11 Investigative Panel Report revealed that contrary to denials by the George W. Bush administration at the time, the CIA did warn the White House that the Al-Qaeda terrorist organisation was planning deadly attacks on unnamed key US institutions.
As a face-saving measure, the White House and many of Israel’s friends, including global news media organisations like CNN and the Wall Street Journal, are raising the spectre of Iranian involvement. They opine that with the kind of surveillance and intelligence capabilities possessed by Israel, it won’t have been probable, talk more possible, for Hamas to pull off such an expansive infiltration scheme without the support of a foreign power. And all their fingers are pointing at Iran.
But sabre-rattling and Iran-bashing are fraught with very grave dangers, not the least of which is being unable to finish the fire-fight after being ignited. Pointing fingers at Iran is a tacit acknowledgement that Iran is very much in a position to hurt Israel and shatter the conventional wisdom that Israel is the top dog in the Middle East. Furthermore, having rushed to satiate the appetite of the domestic audience by accusing Iran in this manner, as were the contrived narratives about Saddam Hussein and the weapons of mass destruction, President Biden would come under immense domestic pressure to launch reprisal attacks on Iran, and nobody can tell with any degree of certainty how the enterprise would end.
So far, according to news reports, about 1,500 deaths have been recorded by both warring sides, with Israel having a higher proportion. It goes without saying that Israel has never been at the receiving end of such high casualty figures vis-a-vis armed confrontations with Palestinian militant groups, with several public affairs analysts dubbing it “Israel’s 9/11 similitude.” So, it hardly came as a surprise that the Israeli authorities would choose to reflexively obey the Talmudic/Mosaic law of “an eye for an eye”.
More than 100,000 Israeli soldiers, accompanied by heavy munitions, have been deployed on the Gaza border, in addition to as many as 300,000 reservists called up for military service. And by the time the Israeli Air Force ends its round-the-clock bombing sorties, Gaza would’ve become a wasteland pockmarked with deep craters and ruined infrastructures, leaving one to ponder on the puzzle of why 400,000 armed Israeli troops would still be needed. After all, Gaza is just a strip that measures 41 miles long and 12 miles wide – a territory about a third the size of Greater London.
The answers to the puzzle are located in the utterances and actions of Israeli authorities. In a post on X – formerly known as Twitter – the beleaguered Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to “leave Gaza in ruins.” Barely 24 hours later, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant announced that he has ordered the complete siege of the Gaza Strip, implying a full economic blockade: no food, no electricity and no water supplies – similar to what the Gen. Yakubu Gowon junta did to Biafra in the course of the civil war. He justified his action on the grounds that Israelis were fighting “human animals” who needed to be ‘animalistically’ treated.
It is certain that if any country outside the Western axis had adopted such an inhuman stance, regardless of the degree of provocation, an awful din would’ve been made from America through Europe to Australia. The questions consequently begging for urgent answers include: Are the lives of children, women and elderly persons in Palestine any less valuable than their counterparts in Israel? Do the latter possess two heads, four hands and four legs?
There isn’t a scintilla of doubt that Israel would feel justified in launching a take-no-prisoners military invasion of Gaza but there are more cogent reasons why it should exercise restraint. It won’t be a stroll in the park. Gaza may be a strip but with a population of over 2 million, its very high density creates a conducive environment for urban guerilla warfare, converting Israeli military assets like APCs and tanks into liabilities. The scorched-earth policy would amount to a very bloody mess, leaving massive casualties, including hostages and POWs, on both sides in its wake.
Chairman Yasser Arafat-led Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), formerly advocating the elimination of the State of Israel, formally recognized Israeli sovereignty with the Oslo-1 Accord and started only seeking Arab statehood in the Palestinian territories (the West Bank and Gaza) that have been militarily occupied by Israel since the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. The Oslo-2 Accord was intended to tie all remaining loose ends, including water-sharing and the status of Jerusalem, but every Israeli government has used every trick in the book – backed by the veto-wielding power of the USA – to prevent it from happening.
But it must be said that until the sub-human bondage the residents of the Palestinian territories are suffering is upended and they live with respect and honour in their own State, nothing Israel and America will do will guarantee the peace and security of Israel.
The closest any Israeli PM came to actualizing the spirit of the Oslo Accords was during the tenure of Aluf (Maj. Gen.) Ariel Sharon. Amid fierce opposition to his plan within his Likud Party, Sharon ordered Israel’s unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip in 2005, before leaving Likud to form a new party called Kadima, on whose platform he planned to contest the next election, with “clearing Israel out of most of the West Bank” as a major manifesto plank. It was an election Sharon was widely expected to easily win but following a stroke he suffered two months later on January 26, 2006, he remained in a permanent vegetative state until his death in 2014.
As a military war hero and patron of the settlers’ movement, Sharon ultimately understood how being a repressive occupation force was overburdening the Israeli economy and preventing it from attaining its full potential in the comity of nations. It thus became a great irony that the man Arabs called the “Butcher of Beirut” for the gruesome Sabra and Shatila massacre of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, and who championed the settlers’ occupation of confiscated Palestinian lands, was the same person who but for death would’ve made their dreams substantively come true.
The 1982 Lebanon War forced the PLO to relocate to Tunis. About 12 years later, the PLO relocated to Palestine with the signing of the Oslo-1 Accord, raising huge question marks over whether the massive collateral damage was worth the effort in the first place. Is history about to repeat itself?
Besides, we should all be worried that given the character of Netanyahu, the heavy military deployment on the Gaza border might just be a prelude to a more troubling ethnic cleansing campaign aimed at finally driving out the irascible and irritating residents of Gaza and replacing them with Jewish settlers. Can and would the rest of the word accept such a development?
