What will our region—and indeed the
world--look like once
Israel concludes its war in Gaza? The statistics coming
out of the beleaguered narrow strip of land, where 2.3 million Palestinians, 70
percent of whom are refugees from previous wars, once lived, are staggering.
اضافة اعلان
In 36 days of the
Israeli onslaught, under the
guise of self-defense, more than 11,000 people have perished, thousands are
missing under the rubble, 24,000 are injured, 4500 children are killed, 40
percent of homes and towers have been leveled to the ground, 30,000 tons of
explosives have been dumped on what has become a wasteland—unlivable. At least
50 journalists are dead—compared to 63 journalists killed in Vietnam’s 20 years
of war; the list of unimaginable atrocities goes on and on. 1.2 million Gazans have
been displaced. There is no water, food, medicine, fuel, and no safe zone. This
is truly a Palestinian holocaust.
Israel has rebuffed calls for a
ceasefire and has failed to deliver humanitarian pauses to allow sufficient aid
to pass. According to Israeli officials, international pressure will increase
on Israel to stop the war after another two weeks! Tens of millions of people
around the world have come out to call for an end to the war. Western officials
refuse to listen. In the eyes of many, this is no longer a war to destroy
militant Hamas, but a war of extermination. The appeals of UN agencies, the
International Red Cross, Human Rights Watch, and other NGOs have been trashed.
Israel is not only bent on revenge for the atrocities of 7 October but also for
a game-changing strategy that aims at bringing down the very foundations of the
Israel/Palestine conflict. The goal is to go back to the 1948 Nakba and start
again from there.
Israeli Far Right partners of Prime
Minister Benyamin Netanyahu talk publicly about the need to re-occupy the Gaza
Strip, forcibly transfer its inhabitants, and make way for new Jewish
settlements. They also say that what is happening in Gaza is a prototype of
what will happen in the occupied West Bank. Israeli analysts say Netanyahu is
too weak to rein in his radical coalition partners. The religious Zionist
movement is blackmailing Netanyahu as he tries to salvage his political career
and establish his own legacy.
Arab leaders have been explicit about
war crimes, genocide, and ethnic cleansing being perpetrated by
the invading Israeli army. They have also pointed bluntly to the double standards by which
the West applies international law and conventions. The United States has
hindered attempts by the UN Security Council to adopt a ceasefire resolution;
not that Israel, with its dismal track record at the UN, would honor it.
So, in reality, no one knows how the Gaza war
will end. But it will at one point. Then, the international community will have
a true look at what the
Israeli war machine has done. The dead will be in the
tens of thousands, and the number of maimed and injured will be appalling. The
level of destruction will resemble World War Two German and Japanese cities.
The humanitarian catastrophe will become a global nightmare for many years to
come.
Arab leaders have been explicit about war crimes, genocide, and ethnic cleansing being perpetrated by the invading Israeli army. They have also pointed bluntly to the double standards by which the West applies international law and conventions. The United States has hindered attempts by the UN Security Council to adopt a ceasefire resolution; not that Israel, with its dismal track record at the UN, would honor it.
Netanyahu and partners are using the 7 October
attack by Hamas as a blank check to carry out a war of annihilation. There is
no proportionality, restraint, or adherence to international humanitarian law
or the rules of war. For Israel’s political establishment, all Gazans are
complicit, including civilians. When Netanyahu resorts to uttering Talmudic
verses that can only be interpreted as calls for genocide, one gets a sense of
what his soldiers are doing. When US congressmen say that this is a religious
war, one can only feel a mixture of disgust and fear of what
Israel and its fanatic supporters are willing to allow to happen to hundreds of thousands of
innocent civilians.
And we have seen more than what our stomachs
can take. Then the question arises: What will the day after look like? The war
on Gaza has tested the 30-plus years new world order that George Bush Sr.
announced following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The US emerged as the
sole superpower and it promised something different from the years of the Cold
War.
But under its rule, the world suffered. The US
launched two wars against Arab and Muslim countries—mostly under false
pretexts. It killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians and made the
Middle East less secure and more polarized. Its policies unleashed sectarian
and ethnic wars, emboldened the extremists, and left the region deeply scarred
and divided. Its legacy in the region can only be described as toxic.
The miasma of despair hounded the Palestinians
for decades. The US allowed Netanyahu to pursue his destructive scheme of
killing the last remaining hope; the two-state solution. The impunity given to
Netanyahu has become a curse not only for the Palestinians but for Israelis as
well.
The region and the world cannot continue as
business as usual following the war on Gaza and its egregious outcome. The West
says that once the war is over it will push for a two-state solution and a
state for the Palestinians. This is a false and vacuous mea culpa and those who
say this are either disingenuous or naive, or both. The Israeli political
clique is vehemently and ideologically against such a proposal. The two-state
option is long gone.
But a rules-based order, the one preached by
the West for long, is in dire trouble. How can the West talk about human rights
and international law when calls for impartial investigations of what Israel
did in Gaza are not being heeded? Will the US and its allies allow the
International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue arrest warrants against Israelis,
and others who are suspected of committing war crimes or have supported and
facilitated, both politically and materially, such crimes to take place?
Will the Western world allow the testimonies
of tens of thousands of Gazans to be heard in an international tribunal? Will a
bereaved Palestinian child, who lost his or her entire family in Israeli raids,
be allowed to testify in US Congress?
The answer is probably, and in most cases
emphatically, no. And thus, the current, unipolar, world will cease to exist as
a result.
The war on Gaza has become a rallying call for everything against injustice; from globalism to the corrupt and Zionist-controlled Western political elite. Such popular momentum should not be ignored or sidelined. It should evolve into a mass call for a new world order where law and culpability are implemented on all.
A unipolar world is needed to salvage an
impotent United Nations and the entire post-World War Two legal and
humanitarian infrastructure. That would mean the Global South must have a say
in how the world is run. It also means that Russia and China must become active
participants in the new world order. But most importantly, it means that the
countries in the Middle East, like Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Iran, will have to
contribute to the safety and stability of the region.
It is sad that both China and Russia had
contented themselves to paying lip service to the Palestinian ordeal when in
fact they could have done much more. We are yet to see Russian and Chinese
relief convoys being sent to help Gazans. Both countries are missing a rare
opportunity to confront the Western pro-Israel narrative and its bias in favor
of Israel by supporting Arab and Muslim positions, as stated in the recent
summit in Riyadh, as well as appealing to millions in the West who are anti-war
and anti-genocide.
The war on Gaza has become a rallying call for
everything against injustice; from globalism to the corrupt and
Zionist-controlled Western political elite. Such popular momentum should not be
ignored or sidelined. It should evolve into a mass call for a new world
order where law and culpability are implemented on all.
The alternative looks frightening: a world
where no one adheres to the law because of the Israeli precedent and long-time
impunity. Such a scenario must never be allowed to happen.
Osama Al Sharif is a journalist and political
commentator based in Amman.
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