On October 24, after unequivocally condemning the Palestinian organisation Hamas for its 7th October acts of terror in Israel, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said something which infuriated Israel.
In his address to the UN Security Council, Guterres said it was “important to also recognise the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation”. He then went on to say how illegal (Israeli) settlements had steadily devoured their lands; how their economy was stifled, people displaced, homes demolished and hopes for a political solution extinguished.
Guterres emphasised that just as this plight of the Palestinian people did not justify terrorism by Hamas, it also did not justify the “collective punishment of the Palestinian people” by Israel.
Such was Israel’s fierce reaction to these words that the Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen announced that he would no longer meet with Guterres while Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, demanded the UN Secretary General’s resignation.
Continuing with its relentless focus on Hamas, Israel, on October 27, rejected a UN non-binding resolution calling for a “humanitarian truce” in the Israel-Palestinian conflict and enabling aid access to Gaza. Israel said it will not stop its operations until Hamas’ terror capabilities were destroyed and all hostages returned. The US and 12 other nations joined Israel in opposing the UN resolution which was passed by 120 countries, including France, New Zealand and Norway. India, like a silent spectator, abstained from voting, with 44 other nations, on the resolution drafted by 22 Arab nations.
As of October 27, at least 7,300 Palestinians and 1400 Israelis have been killed in the latest Israel-Palestine conflict which broke out on October 7. More than 220 Israeli hostages have been held by Hamas.
What Israel wants to achieve is not going to be easy as there is rising worldwide condemnation of the indiscriminate killing of hundreds of Palestinian civilians in Israeli bombings every day. Added to this is the complicated situation of about 220 Israeli hostages who are being moved every now and then in the maze of underground tunnels in Gaza. Rescuing them is not going to be easy for Israel even as hectic backroom negotiations are on to resolve this crisis.
The moot question here is, what is at the heart of this crisis? Is it terrorism by Hamas? Or is it far deeper than that?
A number of Israeli thinkers, political scientists and historians like Yuval Noah Harari, Holocaust survivor Dr Gabor Mate, Illan Pappe, Avi Shlaim and the American scholar Norman G Finkelstein are among those who have spoken at length in numerous interviews of how the creation of Israel was not accompanied with a just deal for the Arabs who were already living in Palestine.
Israel was born in May 1948 as a result of the British Government's 1917 Balfour Declaration announcing support for a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The consequent displacement of the existing Palestinian population; the Arab-Israeli wars in 1948 and 1967; the rise of Hamas in 2007 and Israel’s blockade of Gaza since then, have exacerbated the crisis rather than bring it towards a resolution.
Nowadays, our television screens have been lit up by Israel’s daily bombardment of Gaza which is home to 2.3 million Palestinians and is barely 41 km long and 10 km wide. Blockaded by Israel for the last 15 years, it is recognised as the world's largest “open air prison”.
When Guterres addressed the UN Security Council on October 24, he referred to the two-state solution, agreed to by Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) under the Oslo Accords, as “the only realistic foundation for a true peace and stability” in West Asia.
He urged all parties to uphold and respect their obligations under international humanitarian laws; spare civilians, hospitals and UN facilities which are sheltering more than 600,000 Palestinians.
As he noted, a lasting solution to the crisis rests on Israel’s legitimate right to security and the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinians to an independent state in line with UN resolutions and international agreements.
Are Israel and the US which were among the 14 nations which rejected the UN resolution for a humanitarian truce moving in this direction with the unrelenting bombardment of Gaza?
Sadly, the United States has been a big disappointment with its blind support to Israel and has suffered a serious loss of stature in world politics.
In fact, the Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar agreed with Guterres while speaking at a meeting of European Union leaders at Brussels. “The history of this conflict didn’t begin with the attack on October 7 and won't end with a land war in Gaza,” he said. In his view this was a conflict of 75 years between Israel and the Arabs which had seen wars, terror attacks and enormous instability. It is impossible that such a conflict would end with a military solution, he noted.
Hopefully, Israel and the US will see sense sooner than later in this other viewpoint on this tragic conflict.
Abhay Vaidya has worked as a senior journalist with a number of leading publications. He is now director at a policy research think tank in Pune.
