With war once again breaking out in the Middle East (ME), the Israel – Hamas conflict will fundamentally redefine middle-eastern politics, the region and global multi-alignment amidst a swiftly changing political and military reality. The brutal attacks by Hamas in Israel are a stark reminder of terrorism’s unique ability to drive geopolitical agendas and completely upend status quos.
The terror attacks are most likely in response to Israel’s diplomatic normalization in relations with many Muslim countries in the Middle East and North Africa. In an Islamic Middle-East, Israel has long been considered the ‘foreign enemy’. With the diplomatic normalization, the state of Israel was finally becoming an accepted part of the region, something that was detrimental to the Palestinian cause. Yet the sheer scale, barbarity and complexity of the attacks in Israel have taken the international community by surprise. Rarely in history has a terrorist organization been able to fight from air, land and sea. Both al-Qaeda and the LTTE in Sri Lanka had similar capabilities but even they could not launch simultaneous, coordinated assaults on three fronts. Hamas has now achieved this infamous notoriety, shattering the security and deterrence of Israel – the undisputed military superpower of the region.
The attacks also demonstrate how vulnerable states become to foreign actors in the face of prolonged internal societal conflict and divide. Terrorists are always seeking for opportunities to strike precisely when nation states are distracted and preoccupied with other matters. And with the division of the Israeli Polity over several sensitive issues in the preceding months, Hamas used the perfect storm in Israel to launch an attack without precedent.
This new chapter of war, will surely escalate and devastate in equal measure in the coming days and weeks, and will have wide-ranging and longstanding repercussions. It will be a watershed moment in national, regional, and international security on par with the global reverberations of the 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States. A lot depends upon the next steps taken by Israel in its stated objective of “destroying Hamas so that it can never again threaten Israel.” Currently, while the war remains limited geographically to Israel and the Palestinian territory of Gaza in the south; the potential for it to expand to three fronts – with Hezbollah in the north and the West Bank in the east; is grave and would hugely complicate an already difficult humanitarian situation. Further, if Israel choses to directly strike Iran or if Iran decides to intervene directly in Gaza, the resulting catastrophe would be a larger regional war, the scale of which we have not seen for many decades in the Middle East. One must also factor in the possibility of a ‘global Islamic jihad’ being announced against Israel, which will introduce a diverse range of foreign fighters to the region. These military considerations signal that tactical and strategic security status quos in Israel, Iran, USA, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and others have been simultaneously upended by the Hamas terror attacks.
With the increasing likelihood of a full-scale ground invasion of Gaza, amidst a complete Siege of the Gaza strip, there are only difficult options that lie ahead for Israel. The scale of human tragedy that is unfolding before our eyes, is beyond many of our imaginations. Terrorism is, at its very core, strategic violence, selected by actors who no longer seek political solutions. Whether this attack by Hamas is a strategic victory or a stunning miscalculation remains to be seen.
If a full-scale total war in the Middle East breaks out, the security and stability of the world will be affected in ways that will surpass the global impact of the War on Terror. Yet as in the past, the principle question of geography remains unanswered. Just like the 9 million people rightfully living in Israel and desiring peace and security; the 5 million Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank too want the same – with both having nowhere else to go. In fighting and defeating the terror of Hamas, Israel must not end up in a full-scale war with millions of Palestinians. Hamas and its terror modules must be eradicated, but the millions of Palestinian civilians and their long-standing demand for basic rights have to be answered if lasting peace is to be achieved.
This I call the tyranny of geography and that is why the Middle East needs new political imagination for a decades long conflict.
