IN September this year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu delivered a swaggering speech at the United Nations, announcing the establishment of a ‘new Middle East’ centred around Israel and its new Arab partners. He omitted Palestine from his speculative regional map.

Bibi’s government has made no secret of its desire to annex the West Bank, and has permitted significant expansion of Jewish settlements in the territory that are illegal under international law. The notion of a ‘Greater Israel’, encompassing the current Israel as well as Palestine and Jordan is the target. Many Palestinian cities in the West Bank show a Palestine that has been absorbed by the Zionist state of Israel, with Arab villages having been wiped out.

Add to it the Israeli police raids on the Baitul Maqdis in occupied Jerusalem, the desecration of Islamic religious symbols, and the detention of thousands of Palestinians in Israeli jails in recent months, and you get to know what triggered the latest wave of outrage.

Hamas is determined to defend the holy site by any means necessary. The Al-Aqsa complex lies in East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want as the capital of their state and which many in the international community consider to be occupied territory. Israel captured it from Jordan in its Six-Day war in 1967, and considers both East and West Jerusalem as its ‘eternal capital’.

Palestinians, who are left in the regions that Israel is integrating and planning to take over, are divided into about 160 or so small enclaves surrounded by Israeli forces, which may or may not allow Palestinians to go about the business of life. The aim of the Zionists is to force the natives to leave. The far-right nationalist religious government has recently extended the right of Israeli settlements to parts of the West Bank that Israel calls Western Samaria.

Jerusalem, the third holiest city in Islam, is now perhaps five times whatever it was historically, taking in surrounding villages to ensure a Jewish majority.

The international move towards some kind of two-state arrangement has been extinguished. There is violence, intimidation and repression in the occupied territories, with the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) watching, sometimes participating.

Amnesty International’s investigation has shown that Israel imposes a system of oppression and domination against Palestinians across all areas under its control to benefit Jewish Israelis. This amounts to apartheid which is prohibited under international law.

The United States itself is hamstrung with its hands tied by a very strong influential Israel lobby. President Joe Biden and Foreign Secretary Anthony Blinken have passed insensitive remarks related to the situation. The US administration has pledged to ensure that Israel has “what it needs to defend itself” after the surprise attack.

More mature and solution-oriented appeals came from Russia and China. Russia appealed to Palestinian and Israeli sides to implement an immediate ceasefire, renounce violence, exercise the necessary restraint and establish, with the assistance of the international community, a negotiation process aimed at establishing a comprehensive, lasting and long-awaited peace in the Middle East. China urged both sides to remain calm and to end hostilities to protect civilians, adding that the fundamental way out of the conflict lies in implementing the two-state solution and establishing an independent State of Palestine.

The world needs such saner voices in the international community to have the matter resolved with due under-standing of historical and immediate reasons that actually pushed Hamas towards doing what it did on Oct 7.

Faisal Habib
Karachi

Published in Dawn, November 8th, 2023