Israel and the questions of “the next day”

In its war on the Gaza Strip, Israel behaves as if it is not concerned with what will follow this war. As if it was an eternal war. It is not important to it what its relations will be with the Palestinians after this war, nor with its Arab neighbors, nor even with the outside world.

The current leaders in Israel do not give any weight to what they say or what they do. Neither racist statements against the Palestinians make them feel ashamed, nor does the threat of dropping nuclear bombs on them, nor the annihilation of entire families under the roofs of their homes move any of their conscience. No one there asks: How will we live in the future alongside those who will survive? What will we tell their children about what we committed against their fathers and grandfathers, the massacres that we never tire of repeating?

This Israeli disregard for the horror of what they are committing includes their disregard for Arab and Islamic positions, governments and peoples, which condemn the ongoing killings in Gaza and the daily violations of all humanitarian laws and rules of war. Even those who criticize Hamas and do not justify or defend what it committed last October 7 are unable to defend the ongoing acts of killing and collective punishment against the elderly, women and children of Gaza.

What makes the Israeli leaders' disregard for what their army is committing in Gaza even more horrific is their complete disregard for responsibility for why the Gaza Strip has reached this state, with its miserable conditions and the misery camps spread throughout it. No conscience in Israel is moved to ask: Where did these refugees come from? Who pushed them into the life of humiliation they suffer from? Who destroyed their homes and displaced them from the villages that were theirs in Palestine? Every attempt to open the history books is accused of anti-Semitism, by Netanyahu and his partners. Even the Secretary-General of the United Nations was not spared the harshness of their tongues when he said: The operation of last October 7 did not come out of nowhere.

Israel seems unconcerned neither by the number of civilians killed in the thousands, nor by the widespread destruction after which there is no resurrection of life, nor by the true goals of these massacres, other than imposing the logic of force, and nothing but force, on weak, helpless civilians, begging for a drop of water or a piece of bread, or Children whose thin, decrepit bodies cannot be described by words in maternity hospitals, deprived of the minimum level of care that would keep them alive.

Israel does not only underestimate the positions of its neighbors. Ignoring and belittling the criticisms of international humanitarian organizations, such as UNRWA, UNICEF, the World Health Organization, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and other organizations that considered depriving the people of the Gaza Strip of water, medicine, and fuel as acts contrary to the humanitarian rules that protect the rights of civilians in times of war.

Even Israel's friends on the international scene are becoming fed up with its crimes, voices are rising from influential figures, and the number of Western governments are increasingly criticizing what its army is doing in Gaza: Stop killing children... the number of civilian deaths is increasing... respect the rules of war and international humanitarian law. .. Gaza has turned into a cemetery for children... Positions expressed by Western heads of government who did not hesitate to condemn what Hamas committed against Israeli civilians last October 7, but they became unable to continue defending the Israeli campaign in the face of the horrific images of the massacres taking place. Screens every evening. 

The Prime Minister of Spain called for an end to the “blind killing,” and the Prime Minister of Canada did the same. The President of France has returned to calling for a ceasefire and the protection of civilians, after his early drift into calling for an international coalition against Hamas. 

The matter finally reached the point of President Biden's administration declaring its disapproval of the Israeli forces storming the Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza, and with his Secretary of State Blinken admitting that the number of civilian deaths in Gaza reached unacceptable numbers.

Israel has succeeded in turning the sympathy it found in the first days of its war on Gaza into a campaign against it, witnessed in a significant number of world capitals and with marches in the streets of major cities denouncing what its army committed in that war. 

Israeli leaders find nothing to respond to except with the slogan that their army is the most moral of all the armies in the world, and that “Hamas” is responsible for killing civilians in Gaza after turning them “hostage,” and that Israel is forced to defend its survival in the face of enemies who intend to uproot it.

The problem with the Israeli narrative is that it has become full of deception and is exposed to those who want to see and hear. The Israeli army is not able to justify its actions in Gaza as self-defense; Because this defense is not achieved by resorting to war to annihilate civilians and displace them from their homes. Nor is the argument of Hamas turning the residents of Gaza “hostage” any longer believable, after it became clear that most of the sites bombed by Israel are civilian sites in which there are no Hamas militants.

As for the argument of the “enemies” who want to uproot Israel, the recent calls for the displacement of the people of Gaza have proven that what is being proposed is the uprooting of the Palestinians from their land and not the other way around. 

The Arabs have proven the invalidity of the Israeli claims since they took one initiative after another towards peace and recognition of Israel's right to exist in the region. These are initiatives that Israel, especially under the auspices of Netanyahu, made every effort to thwart. Although there are extremist voices among the Palestinians and in the region fueled by radical trends, these voices fade away when Israel contributes to responding to calls for peace, which it does not do. Rather, it does the opposite, through continuous attacks on the Palestinians and the expansion of settlement activities, until it has become Settlements cover 40 percent of the West Bank.

The question of “the next day” is what those remaining sensible people among Israel’s leaders need to ask: What comes after this killing and destruction? What comes after these atrocities preserved in memory and documented on screens? What will our future be like in the region alongside the families of these victims?

source: Alsharq Alawsat