The surprise and large-scale attack by the Palestinian Hamas against Israel on October 7, 2023 caused a global uproar. Give-and-take analyzes and scenarios on how this conflict will play out, who gets involved next, and how it affects the other hot fronts on the planet.
1. The first is pro-Israel
It refers to an attack by the ruthless terrorists of Hamas against political and military targets.
It focuses in particular on the hundreds of casualties among civilians of all ages (1,400 dead in Israel) and the capture of approximately 210 hostages.
It states that Israel has the inalienable right to defend itself and to eliminate from Gaza the terrorists, who are described as “human beasts” and “new Nazis”.
Almost all of the countries of the Western Bloc have expressed their absolute support for the struggling Israel, while the US has declared that it will provide it with all the equipment it needs to effectively strengthen its armed forces.
Politicians, analysts, journalists and media in the West argue that Hamas does not represent the interests of the Palestinian people, but the narrow personal interests of its high-ranking officials and other state actors, mainly in Iran.
Support for Israel is the politically correct attitude that is in harmony with the narrative of the “right side of history”. Most of the supporters of this interpretation of events come from the ranks of followers of the dominant system of globalization.
2. The second is pro-Palestinian
It refers to the occupation of the Palestinian territories since 1948, when the state of Israel was established, and the millions of refugees who were forced to leave their land.
It points to the continuous occupation of territories in the West Bank, the expulsion of Palestinians and the installation of armed settlers in them. It focuses on the constant killings, arrests and humiliations suffered by Palestinians for decades.
He calls Israel an apartheid state. It considers Gaza as the largest concentration camp with over two million trapped. Hamas, like the other armed organizations are considered not terrorist, but national liberation and their men are called freedom fighters of the Palestinian people.
Most of the proponents of this interpretation of events come from the old Left which was politically connected to the former Soviet Union. The latter supported the Palestinians, like all the national liberation movements of the Cold War era, in its confrontation with Western colonialism and imperialism.
Of course, in today’s era when the influence of the Left has shrunk internationally, any national liberation movements have returned to the fundamentals, that is, to the cultural-religious foundations and roots of each people.
These are the only things that can motivate him. That is why today’s organizations are called fundamentalist. Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah et al. they have no ideological affinity with Yasser Arafat’s old Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), nor with Nasserism, nor with the Baathists of Syria and Iraq, who dominated the Arab world in the first decades after World War II .
The attack of October 7 is only the latest episode of a conflict that began in 1948. Two peoples with different cultural and religious backgrounds are claiming the same lands, which for each of them are their native land. It is a very small area of land on which it is impossible for two viable independent states to exist. Israel, with its 1967 borders, has an area of 20,770 square kilometers (km2) – much of which is covered by the Negev desert – which is roughly the size of the Peloponnese (21,000 km2). The West Bank together with Gaza has an area of 6,220 Km2. This is for those who still propose, as a solution to the problem, the coexistence of two independent states.
Israel had to fight three wars (1948, 1967 and 1973) with its neighboring countries and face many insurgencies (intifadas) to achieve recognition of its existence by some Arab states, but not by the Palestinian organizations, some of the which seek its elimination.
Hamas’s goals
With the October 7 attack, Hamas sought to:
a) To bring the unresolved Palestinian issue back to the international stage.
b) To prove that Israel is not invulnerable and that it is capable of attacking it and occupying, even for a few hours, some of its territory.
c) To instill terror, insecurity and panic among the Jewish population.
d) Cancel the attempt to normalize Israel’s relations with some Arab states, such as Saudi Arabia.
e) To mobilize the entire Muslim world against Israel and its supporters.
From the results so far it is clear that Hamas has succeeded in realizing most of these political goals. Of course, the price for the Palestinian population of Gaza is heavy. Thousands of people (4,390) have been killed by Israeli airstrikes and many more will be killed when the ground operation begins.
Also, so far, Hamas remains alone in its confrontation with Israel. It certainly has the rhetorical support of many Arab and Muslim states, but not their active support on the ground. Even Hezbollah in Lebanon remains virtually uninvolved.
But Hamas has won the admiration and acceptance of the Muslim masses in Islamic countries and among Muslim immigrants in Europe and America. This fact significantly affects the attitude of the governments in the Muslim countries who cannot ignore it, because they themselves will be destabilized.
Israel’s response
The October 7 attack took Israel completely by surprise. It turned out that his famous secret services with their state-of-the-art equipment were “caught sleeping”. The thousands of rockets fired by Hamas saturated its air defenses, with several of them hitting its urban centers. Israel’s prestige as a mighty state suffered a huge blow.
The Israeli government’s first response was a total blockade of Gaza. Residents of the area were left without water, food, electricity and medicine. Soon after, large-scale aerial bombardment and artillery bombardment began. Gaza is being systematically flattened. Even Israel’s supporters speak of a humanitarian catastrophe of large proportions that must be avoided at all costs. Muslim countries, including Turkey, talk about genocide of the Palestinians.
Fifteen days after the Hamas attack, at the time of this writing, Israel had not decided on the type and scope of the ground operation.
It must weigh:
a) Casualties among his forces in battles within populated areas.
b) The fate of the hostages.
c) The fear of a conversion of international public opinion by the thousands of deaths among Palestinian civilians that will inevitably occur.
In reality, however, Israel is forced to go ahead with the ground operation, otherwise it would admit that its mighty armed forces cannot defeat even Hamas. It is an existential issue for Israel.
For the Israelis the ideal solution would be to force the Palestinians of Gaza to flee to Egypt, to the sparsely populated Sinai – the evacuation of northern Gaza has already been demanded – and those of the West Bank to flee to Jordan. It will be a final solution, through ethnic cleansing.
But neither Cairo nor Amman want to accept these radicalized populations for fear of internal destabilization. At the same time, they fear that, after a period of time, the Palestinian resistance will act from their own territory, provoking Israeli retaliation against them.
The Neo-Ottoman Turkey
Neo-Ottoman Turkey appears as the protector of Muslims everywhere in order to become the hegemonic power of the wider region. Turkey, along with its ally Qatar, is one of the important, but not the only, financiers of Hamas, as it was previously of the Islamic State (ISIS). The political leadership of Hamas is established in Doha, Qatar, and its offices and leading officials live in Turkey.
The current leadership of Turkey is closely associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, which was born in Egypt in 1928 and from which Hamas and other Islamic organizations later came. The short-lived Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt was overthrown in a military coup in 2013 by the current president of the country, Al-Sisi.
“Nations have neither permanent friends nor permanent enemies, only permanent interests.” Lord Palmerston
