The Middle East is seething. Israel, convulsed with pain for its dead and its military humiliated after Hamas’s murderous rampage, is on a mission to destroy its enemies.
But in doing so it may be walking into a trap and making some of the same mistakes that America did after the 9/11 attacks in 2001. You can already see and feel the reaction on the streets. As Joe Biden shook hands with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu angry protesters were trying to trash the US embassy in Beirut. In this part of the world when something happens, the cause often has an effect somewhere else. The widespread bombing of Gaza and the imminent ground invasion by the Israeli military may very well be the touch paper that sets the region alight. But what choice do they have? Surely, the cause of the present anguish was the Hamas terror attacks that took so many Israeli lives?
Across the Arab world that’s not how it is interpreted. Most here believe the real cause is what they see as a brutal Israeli occupation and apartheid regime. In that reading of history, October 7 was a bloody prison revolt where the Palestinians rose up against their oppressors. And if Israel’s key allies don’t understand that (different from agreeing with it) they could be complicit in making a terrible situation much worse.
The longer the violence goes on the greater the chance of another front opening
Israel’s response is easy to understand. It not only needs to deal with Hamas, it also needs to restore its deterrent. Hamas’s audacious assault made it look weak and when you live in a hostile neighbourhood that would rather you weren’t there, that’s never good. The longer the violence goes on the greater the chance of another front opening. Already we are seeing daily clashes between Hezbollah and Israel on Lebanon’s southern border. Lebanon’s foreign minister, Abdallah Buhabib, is warning the present situation is like “adding fuel to the fire”. America is using back channels to try to take the sting out of the crisis but it is not viewed in much of the region as an honest broker. As a steadfast ally of Israel, it has skin in the game.
Its failure to really address for decades an equitable solution for the Palestinians make its words sound hollow on the Arab street. Unless that is addressed there will never be a resolution. Now, in the immediate, it’s hard to see a way out of this crisis.
