Now that truce has been arrived at between Israel and Hamas for a period of four days and with release of a few hostages from both sides, there is hope that truce would be further extended and the intensity of war would become significantly less. This likely “truce period” gives an opportunity for the sworn supporters and bitter opponents of Hamas as well as Israel and the observers around the world to introspect on the happenings and whether this war could have been avoided.
There is prolonged debate for the last several decades as to whom the present region that has been provided to Jews after the World War II belong. View of some people is that Jews have been occupants earlier and therefore, the region should belong to Jews only. However, Christians and those belonging to Islam have also lived in this regions for long period. While Christians make no claim, the dispute is between Jews and those who claim themselves to be Palestinians.
In any case, after the end of World War II, the victorious countries including Russia were of the view that Jews have suffered enormously in Hitler’s Germany and they were stateless and therefore , deserve sympathy and support and thus the decision was taken by them to hand over the region to Jews. This was a unanimous decision of the victorious countries in the World War II.
Now, the ground reality is that Israel would remain as a Jewish country for all time to come and any attempt to throw out the Jews from the region would be fiercely resisted by the Jews in a do or die war. This was really what happened, when Hamas made a surprise attack on Israel and killed hundreds of innocent Israeli citizens, obviously with the intention of occupying Israel.
It is surprising that leadership of Hamas did not have the intelligence to understand that such efforts to enter and occupy Israel would never be successful. Unfortunately, the hard headed leadership of Hamas did not have the wisdom to understand this ground reality. The net result is what we see today, as the merciless attack on Gaza by Israeli troops and with leadership of Hamas remaining helpless, unable to face the onslaught. The net result is that innocent people living in Israel and Gaza suffering enormously and neither people in Israel nor in Gaza have gained anything in the process but only suffered.
Many observers think that Hamas was wrong in attacking Israel without any immediate provocation and many also think that Israel was also wrong by counter attacking Gaza with such a severe force and what is termed as disproportional attack , killing many more people of Gaza; many times more than the number of people killed in Israel.
Ultimately, it has happened that the support for Hamas internationally has come largely from Muslims around the world, who are appalled by the number of people killed in Gaza. Even among the supporters of Hamas, the protest has been about the severe onslaught by Israel and the protesters have spoken very little justifying the original attack by Hamas on Israel.
It appears that the ultimate judgement should be that Hamas should not have launched the attack and provoked Israel whatever may be their grievance. So, Hamas were wrong. Israel attacked in anger. Now that Gaza has virtually been disabled by Israel forces, Israel would be deemed wrong, if it would not stop further attack immediately and fully cooperate in extending the truce.
The overwhelming world view is that respecting Israel’s sovereignty, Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be ended by envisioning an independent State of Palestine alongside the State of Israel, west of the Jordan River. The boundary between the two states is still subject to dispute and can be negotiated with the cooperation of other Arab countries , who should be interested in ensuring peaceful middle east region.
---
*Trustee, Nandini Voice For The Deprived, Chennai
Comments