Editorial: One year on

On Monday, Israel will observe the first anniversary of Hamas’s deadly attacks on its citizens in the South on Oct 7, 2023, which claimed 1,200 lives and led to as many as 250 people being taken hostage. In its signature style, Israel engaged in a ‘proportionate response’ to the assault — launching deadly rocket attacks into the Gaza Strip that has so far claimed 42,000 lives, with the majority of victims being women and children. As much as 90% of Gaza’s population has been displaced, with the UN estimating 15 years to rebuild the region, and Israel claiming the near-total smoking out of the Hamas leadership.

As part of neutralising the pro-Palestine militant outfit backed by Iran, Israel has now taken the battle for the Jewish homeland to the gates of Tehran and Beirut, thrusting the Middle-East into a multi-front conflict. An Israeli strike on a mosque in the Gaza Strip killed at least 19 people on Sunday. The assault came in the wake of Israel intensifying its bombardment of northern Gaza and southern Beirut in a war with Iran-allied militant groups across the region. These include the Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthi militants in Yemen. The attacks in Lebanon have so far claimed 1,400 lives while driving out an estimated 1.2 mn people out of their homes in a matter of 15 days.

The idea of a ceasefire has gone out of the window for the umpteenth time. Last week, the Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz declared that his country had banned UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres from entering the nation, accusing him of backing Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran. Guterres was termed as persona non grata (PNG) on account of him not condemning either the Oct 7 Hamas attacks or even last week’s missile strikes on Israel, carried out by Iran. This is a falsification as both the UN and Guterres have equivocally called out the use of sexual violence, torture and kidnapping of civilians by Hamas.

Interestingly, Israel’s tendency to block out any white noise or chatter pertaining to the call for ceasefire has a historic precedent. Last year, Guterres had remarked that the October 7 attacks were not perpetrated in a vacuum, but had boiled over as the result of 56 years of suffocating occupation of Palestinian area. These remarks prompted Israel to ban the then-UN Under-Secretary General Martin Griffiths. As things stand now, the battle between Hamas and Israel has evolved into a widespread conflict in the Middle-East in which the Israeli administration is contemplating strategic strikes on Iran’s military establishments, possibly with a view to lower civilian casualties. It’s a gambit that could go either way, considering how the strikes on Lebanon have entailed severe collateral damage, vis-a-vis non-combatants.

Over the past few days, the US, France and other allies jointly called for an immediate 21-day Israel-Hezbollah cease-fire, a plea that was publicly rejected by Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu.

Bibi is aware that his far-right coalition would drop him if he put an end to the war, and that he could lose his seat of power and be forced to face his legal demons. Even US President Biden expressed doubts on whether Bibi was holding up a Mideast peace deal in order to influence the outcome of the 2024 US presidential election. Notwithstanding the fate of hostages still in Hamas’s custody, Netanyahu has little incentive to stop. And that is the bigger tragedy one year later.