EDITORIAL: In a fresh spate of violence that began last Tuesday between the Israeli forces and the Gaza-based resistance groups, 28 Palestinians and one Israeli have lost their lives.
The flare-up erupted following the death in an Israeli prison of a Palestinian hunger striker, arrested without charges. As expected, Islamic Jihad, to which he belonged, retaliated by firing several rockets into Israel.
Early next morning 40 Israeli warplanes and helicopters started a wave of attacks all across Gaza, hitting homes and other structures. Three Islamic Jihad commanders and four fighters of the secular Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine were killed. According to media reports, four children and as many women were among those killed while dozens of others were injured, several critically.
A heart-wrenching video showed a little girl crying out for her father, a well-respected dentist killed along with his wife and a 21-year-old son in the Israeli air strike. On Thursday, in the occupied West Bank, where the Israeli army has repeatedly carried out raids, in Qabatiya city, two Palestinians shot by soldiers died from their wounds while in Nabulus, 13 people were shot and wounded.
For now, calm has been restored after Egyptian, Qatari and UN officials helped broker a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Palestinian resistance groups. It may not last long. Just last August, a three-day escalation had left 49 Palestinians dead. There was no fatality on the Israeli side as the only weapon the resistance fighters in the impoverished Gaza can deploy against the military might of occupation forces to avenge atrocities are locally made simple, steel artillery rockets.
Violence can erupt again anytime as the present ultra-right Israeli government that took office last year, headed by Benjamin Netanyahu and dominated by settlers, has vowed to vastly expand Jewish settlements by confiscating more and more Palestinian lands. That will be met with resistance. There are no two ways about it.
The Palestinians have amply demonstrated through the years that they are willing to pay the price for asserting their inalienable right to national independence and sovereignty. As the Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh said in the aftermath of the latest escalation, “assassinating the leadership in a treacherous operation will not bring security to the occupier, but instead greater resistance.”
Israel can make life hard for 3 million Palestinians in West Bank and 2 million squeezed in Gaza. But that won’t work for it in the long-run. It may draw confidence from the fact that some Arab countries signed the 2020 US-sponsored Abraham Accords, normalising relations with it despite a negative perception of the Jewish state among the Arab public because of the unresolved Palestinian question. That could change.
The US has since lost much of its influence in the region; geo-political interests of the leading Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia, have been shifting eastward. Israel is likely to learn sooner rather than later that it cannot remain in occupation of another people’s land and have peace, too.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
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