Palestine-Israel Conflict is Between A hungry David and a well-nourished Goliath

The present Palestine-Israel conflict is between a hungry David and a well-nourished Goliath. Palestinians on one hand have survived since 1948 on leftovers from the tables of their wealthy Arab brothers and sisters, while Israel has received almost $260 billion in funding from the US. It provides it with annual foreign military funding of around $3.3 billion.

As though the years of unconditional economic and military aid were not enough, U.S. President Joe Biden said he will ask Congress for $14b in Israel Military Aid. He said ‘hostile actors will know Israel stronger than ever.

Since World War I, when Britain and France divided the Arab world in the Sykes-Picot treaty and the Balfour Declaration guaranteed Jewish immigrants a homeland on Palestinian land, an illegal century of deception, loss, death, destruction, expulsion, impoverishment, denial, misinformation, stigmatization, and hopelessness has followed.

The Gaza Strip’s fragility is revealed by its location. Its small size of 365 square kilometers makes it only one-tenth as big as the Indian state of Goa, which was formerly similarly sandwiched between a hostile continent and an unfriendly sea. That was settled when India invaded it in 1961. Israel’s 22,145 sq km is a far larger area than the Gaza Strip.

The unexpected attack by Hamas last week was a reenactment of the Yom Kippur War, which Egypt and Syria launched during the Yom Kippur holidays in 1973, which was 50 years ago. Israel was again caught by surprise by this Sabbath-day onslaught by Hamas.

In the last five years, Israel has spent more than $80 billion on defense-related investments. The Israeli defense ministry must have been furious to learn that 5,000 Hamas rockets could so precisely infiltrate its pricey security barrier, the Iron Dome.

Fears of Escalation

Fears that the conflict may spill over and start another multi-front war in the region are also growing as Israel continues its horrifying destruction of the besieged and overpopulated Gaza Strip at full speed, with hundreds of Palestinians dying in just one attack on the al-Ahli Arab Hospital on Tuesday evening.

The same Israeli missiles that previously reduced a large portion of Gaza to rubble also hit sites in Lebanon and Syria. Israeli missile strikes in Syria rendered two important airports inoperable. Israel’s continuous bombing of the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza has had a direct impact on Egypt as well.

Iran threatened Israel with a potential “preemptive” strike in retaliation for the destruction brought on by the hospital attack. The Lebanese Hezbollah has already fired some rockets at Israel in retaliation for its attacks on Lebanese territory, while members of Iraq’s potent Popular Mobilization Forces earlier declared their willingness to step in should the attacks on Gaza continue. Additionally predicting a broader battle, the United States and the United Kingdom promptly sent formidable aircraft carriers and military ships to the already tense Eastern Mediterranean. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and President Joe Biden also visited Israel.

In the meantime, hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated in cities all over the world, including Washington, DC, London, Istanbul, Amsterdam, and Beirut, to show their support for Palestinians and demand a halt to the attacks on Gaza.

It is obvious that if nothing is done to halt the bloodshed, the region may be forced to fight a war that would change the course of history. The Middle East and North Africa would witness unparalleled levels of murder and destruction if the senseless bloodshed, which has already taken more than 1,000 lives in Israel and more than 3,000 Palestinian lives in Gaza, were to extend throughout those regions.

A multi-fronted, multi-party regional battle like the one that seems to be brewing is simply too much for the majority of Middle Eastern nations, who are already struggling to recover and preserve some peace after decades of deadly heated fighting.

Israeli authorities have been associating the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 with the 9/11 attacks from the outset, indicating their determination to respond to it with the same disregard for human life and international law we’ve seen in America’s so-called “war on terror.”

As a direct result of 9/11, the US-led invasion of Iraq was ruled illegal by Kofi Annan, who was the secretary-general of the UN at the time. In reaction to its own 9/11, Israel has now started its illegal war. It is punishing Gaza’s Palestinian population as a whole for Hamas’s activities, which is against all principles of international law.

Israel, like the US, is committed to shedding as much blood as possible but is not interested in resolving the conflict’s fundamental issues or stopping the cycle of violence.

Looks like Israel hasn’t learned anything from the numerous errors and atrocities the US made in its attempts to avenge 9/11.

International Community’s Response to the Palestine-Israel Conflict

The world community is still standing by as the siege and bombardment of Gaza continue in full force, killing hundreds daily, injuring many more, and erasing entire families from the civil registry. As the world rushes not to stop the injustice but to make sure Palestinians are made into refugees, as a result, Zionist presents won’t wind up heading their way, and the discourse on the assault on Gaza is changing towards Israel’s annexation of yet another area of historic Palestine.

How the Zionist Lobby presents the Conflict to the World

The Zionist first creates a simplistic tale of good versus evil in which Israel plays the role of a peaceful, civilized democracy minding its own business and Hamas the horrifyingly evil and barbaric militia group that suddenly attacks it. Hamas is embellished with all the anti-Muslim trimmings and elements imaginable. This is true even though several Israeli human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and others, claim that Israel is an unlawful occupation and an apartheid state that has the cruelest open-air prison system in the world.

The Zionists seem to believe that the only way to truly rid oneself of “Palestine” and all of its associated moral baggage is to completely erase it off the face of the earth. And yet, Israel is the country that repeatedly comes before the UN, appealing for protection from the “barbarian” nations that it is said want to wipe it off the map. Although the irony is absurd, the hypocrisy is genuine.

Israel may have a large number of political parties, but it is impossible to believe that it is the only “democracy” in the Middle East when its veteran prime minister, who is facing corruption charges, can overthrow the judiciary and appoint senior officials to his government who openly identify themselves as fascists.

The word “Palestine” has a profoundly negative impact on Israel’s reputation abroad, that much is clear. Israel simply cannot deny its crimes when the name “Palestine” is used, no matter how hard it tries. The word “Palestine” conjures up so many instances of tyranny, subjugation, and genocide that are generally acknowledged as victims, as well as so many accounts of these things. The moral weight of Palestine is so great that you can hear Israel’s PR bubble shrinking whenever the word is mentioned. Beach resorts and technological unicorns won’t be able to remove Israel’s hands from the enduring stain of Palestinian blood.

Another Immigration Event in the making

The people of the Gaza Strip have been asked to leave by Netanyahu before they are annihilated by airstrikes. It is a harsh warning, comparable to the Nazis’ order to the Jews residing in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1940 to find other housing. According to estimates, there were “300,000 killed by bullet or gas, combined with 92,000 victims of starvation and related diseases” in that ghetto.

There is nowhere for the two million people stranded in the Gaza Strip. They do not leave through the Red Sea that Moses has split. It must pass through ancient Egypt, the Mediterranean region that two US aircraft carriers are patrolling, or into oblivion.

For Palestinians, the terror of what comes next looms greater than the cruelty of the world’s seeming indifference to their suffering.

The word Palestine itself is being lost along with the Palestinians and their nation’s name. Whether at war or peace, Palestine is being purposefully removed from conversations and consciousness.

Every single Palestinian alive today has either gone through the horrifying experience of being made stateless and/or destitute, or they have discovered that the country of their parents is ostensibly a myth.

The US and several nations in Europe, including the UK, France, and Germany, have defended Israel. By stating “I am a Jew” in front of Netanyahu in Tel Aviv, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken went too far. It was much more than what Henry Kissinger would have acknowledged, and it went beyond J.F. Kennedy’s symbolic statement, “Ich bin ein Berliner.“, which means I am also a Berliner in his famous speech in the then-West Germany against the communist regime. Throughout his delicate discussions with Israel and the Arabs, Kissinger repressed his Jewishness.

Water and Sanitation Crisis

After declaring an all-out embargo of the Palestinian enclave in response to the Hamas onslaught, Israel turned off its water pipeline to Gaza, as well as the fuel and electrical supplies that operate water and sewage plants.

If urgent humanitarian relief is not supplied, the collapse of water and sanitation facilities will result in outbreaks of cholera and other deadly infectious diseases.

The majority of Gaza’s sewage pumping stations and treating plants have been forced to close. Untreated sewage is dumped into the sea, and solid garbage ends up on certain streets alongside dead bodies waiting to be buried.

Because of the power outage, desalination plants have ceased operations, and municipalities have no way to pump water to residential areas. Some Gaza residents are drinking seawater or drinking salty tap water from the enclave’s only aquifer, which is contaminated with sewage and seawater. Others are compelled to drink from farm wells.

Conclusion

The deliberate killing of unarmed civilians by either side does not give an excuse for a false equivalence between a criminal terrorist state and an innocent traumatized people.

If Israel continues on this course, a new multi-party conflict in the Middle East will erupt, with disastrous consequences for Israelis, Palestinians, other countries in the area, and the world at large. The world community must act, and it must act quickly. We have a very short time frame to avoid repeating past mistakes and plunging the Middle East, beyond an inconceivable nightmare in Gaza, into yet another period of absurd death, violence, and suffering – an episode from which many countries in the region may never recover.

The first and most crucial move the international community must make to avoid another major war in the region is to end Israel’s continuous atrocities against Palestinians.

The Middle East cannot afford another major conflict, but it will not stand by and witness the needless killing of Palestinians in Gaza for much longer.

In the case of the United States, the argument that if a superpower stretches too far, it would face backlash or decline may be correct.

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