Israeli onslaught on Gaza, now running for more than a month, is reaching a dangerous phase. Killing more than 11,000 civilians, most of them women and children, and destroying 40,000 residential units, Israeli defence forces have opted for the “mowing the grass” doctrine to bring back the deterrent lost by Hamas attack on Israeli territory.
This policy entails collective punishment targeting civilian infrastructure like hospitals, schools, and water pipelines, and preventing fuel deliveries entering Gaza. Since October 7, 100 staff workers of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and more than 35 journalists have lost their lives in Israeli airstrikes. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected international calls for an immediate ceasefire and has moved the troops for ground operation to “eliminate Hamas” from the Gaza Strip.
Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) have so far advanced to the outskirts of the Gaza City where they are facing stiff resistance from Hamas soldiers who have created a network of tunnels and underground passages stretching under all of Gaza.
Meanwhile, the risk of a wider war engulfing regional countries is growing with each passing day. The United States has significantly increased its naval deployments in the region to deter regional forces from joining the war efforts against Israel. The deployment includes aircraft carriers and attendant vessels, large convoys of heavy-lift cargo planes loaded with bombs and missiles and the placing of THAAD and Patriot Air Defence Systems. Crucially, along with Israel, these Air Defence Systems will be deployed in Gulf countries including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Jordan and Kuwait.
Already, nuclear submarines and maritime reconnaissance aircraft with anti-submarine and anti-ship capabilities are patrolling the waters of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf. Thousands of US ground troops and special marine forces have also made their way to Israel and US military bases in Iraq and Syria. There is a growing perception in the region that the US has provided free reign and is aiding Israel in its ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population from Gaza.
While the Arab nations have voiced their anger at Israeli air strikes initiating various diplomatic measures at regional and international platforms calling for an immediate ceasefire, resistance forces in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen have upped the ante for the US and Israel by targeting US military bases in the region.
The ‘managed escalation’ by these groups is also intended to divert Israeli ground forces from Gaza. Already more than 70,000 IDF soldiers have been deployed to the Israeli northern border with Lebanon to deter Hezbollah, a Shiite Resistance group. The US has accused Iran of carrying out these strikes through its proxies in the region and has stated to respond “decisively” to Iranian threats in the region. There are reports that US forces targeted Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its affiliate groups in Syria after an attack on one of its military bases in the northeast of the country. The heart of the matter is that though a wider war is not in the interests of any country, the region is moving up the escalation ladder with a heightened probability of a direct conflict between the United States and Iran.
This escalation cannot be understood by only focusing on the security and strategic considerations of the counties of the region. Rather the internal dynamics and power play within Israel provide a better raison d’etre for Netanyahu and his cabinet ministers to outright dismiss calls for a ceasefire terming it as “surrender to Hamas” while invoking biblical sensitivities of the Jewish population equating Hamas to “Amalek”. The term references the first book of Samuel in which God orders King Saul to destroy the enemy (Amalek) and all his people.
The current coalition government has transformed Zionism from a secular political project to a messianic and ethno-religious movement, consequently, shifting the Israeli electorate to the extreme right. The Netanyahu government has pressed hard on the “eschatological understanding of being Jewish” which has not only polarised Israel but also penetrated the religious sensitivities of the wider Muslim world.
The Israeli government has pledged to extend the state boundaries to the “biblical land of Israel”. This would entail the complete dispossession of Palestinian lands in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. There are plans to settle an additional 5,00,000 settlers in the West Bank in the next decade, bringing the settler population to more than 1.2 million. In the latest United Nations address, Netanyahu showed the map of Israel from the river to the sea, eliminating all the Palestinian territory, rendering it non-existent.
Secondly, the Netanyahu government is committed to building a Jewish Temple on Temple Mount demolishing Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third most revered mosque in Islam. Also known as the “farthest mosque”, it is linked to Prophet Mohammad’s (PBUH) Isra or the night journey from Mecca to Jerusalem. Just two days before the launching of the Al-Aqsa storm by Hamas fighters, more than 800 settlers stormed the Mosque compound fully protected by Israeli police forces. Earlier this year, the Israeli government held a cabinet meeting inside a tunnel underneath the mosque to showcase its sovereignty over the holy site. These provocations by the cabinet Ministers of the Israeli government have altered the delicately held status quo allowing non-Muslims to visit the site while only permitting Muslims to pray there. Since October 7th Muslim worshippers under the age of sixty are prevented from praying inside the Al-Aqsa mosque compound.
Thirdly, the Israeli government is committed to letting go of the secular law and replacing it with “Halakha”, the Jewish Law. The passing of this law would disenfranchise non-Jews of their legal status. In 2018, the Israeli Parliament passed the Jewish Nation-State Law, articulating “proprietary Zionism”, rendering Israel as a nation-state exclusively for the Jewish people. The law provided the basis for the ‘Greater Israel’ and irreversibly divided the Israeli population leaving them with the opposing reading of what it means to be Jewish in Israel.
All three commitments made by the Israeli government hinge on an internal and external paradigm. The internal paradigm involves protecting the population in the new settlements and other occupied territories, whereas the external paradigm involves possessing military superiority and technical edge over all its neighbours.
Operation Al-Aqsa has broken both the internal and external security paradigms within Israel. The deterrence myth was shattered by Hamas soldiers penetrating deep into Israeli territories because of surveillance and intelligence failure. Israeli population themselves don’t feel safe to move back into the occupation bases and settlements. More than 1,25,000 people have been evacuated from northern and southern settlements in the West Bank region.
As Israeli security and stability get inextricably linked to the destruction of Hamas in Gaza, the narrative by political elites in Israel is turning apocalyptic. Continued ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and provocations in and around Al-Aqsa Mosque not only risks escalating the war outside the boundaries of Gaza but can also turn the regional reading of the conflict more eschatological. If and so it happens any rational negotiated settlement of the conflict will become impossible.
Bakshinder Singh Bhatia , senior blog analyst.
BY BAKSHINDER SINGH BHATIA