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When on October 27, 2023, Israel launched a large-scale invasion inside the Gaza Strip, with the stated goal of destroying Hamas and overthrowing the organisation's governance of the Gaza Strip, the political situation in the Middle East was anything but stable. The invasion was essentially an extension of the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict resulting from a history of blockade and abuse that left most victims with few options than to retaliate on October 7. The courage, suffering and endurance of the Palestinian people as displayed in Gaza against the invading Israeli army has not only shattered the political status quo in the Middle East but also caused the collapse of the so-called rule based global order set up by the US after the World War II.
Zionism, a European colonial movement with white supremacist and fascistic ideologies spearheaded a drive to colonise Palestine in 1948 with the active support from the UK. The 1917 promise (Balfour Declaration) given by the British of a "national homeland" for European Jews was a British colonial project promising a European ethnic group land in the Arab Middle East in Palestine that at the time belonged to another empire, the Ottoman Empire. But the defeat of the Ottomans at the World War I made Britain the new colonial ruler of Palestine. During the British colonial rule from 1917 to 1948 in Palestine, the colonial rulers actively fostered Jewish immigration from Europe in the 1930s.
With the blessing of the British rulers, Palestine was partitioned in 1948, establishing a Zionist colonial settler apartheid state, thus turning Europe's longstanding problem of anti-Semitism into Palestine's Zionist problem by the British. Until October 7, Israel upheld its founding principle as the Zionist colonial settler state aspiration to enforce a narrative of endless occupation of Arab territories.
The Israeli invasion of Gaza with a carte blanche given to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu by the US, EU and UK has caused at least 30, 000 Palestinians deaths already. Palestinians cannot escape the Israeli blockade; they cannot surrender because Israeli army do not want to take Palestinian prisoners of war and be responsible for them.
All Gazans are now hostages within Gaza. More than 85 per cent of Gaza's 2.2 million population are already displaced, and the emerging lethal combination of hunger and disease could kill several hundred thousand more. Also, to eliminate Hamas, Northern Gaza has been ravaged and an environmental disaster has been quickly unfolding. The Israeli aggression has led to forced relocation of most of Gaza's population is a repetition of 1948 Nakba (catastrophe).
During this process, the US has provided financial, logistical and military support for Iraeli aggression and genocide. Also, vetoed any ceasefire proposal at the UN Security Council and voted against a peace proposal at the UN General Assembly. This clearly demonstrates that US President Joe Biden does not want a ceasefire.
On October 7, intense fear and shock gripped Israeli society and shattered its sense of invincibility. This fear is further sustained through Israeli government's initiatives to dehumanise Palestinians, militarisation and reframing Palestinian resistance as "terrorism". The Hamas attack has presented Netanyahu with the opportunity not only to quash rising dissent against his far-right corrupt government but also to pursue genocide and land grab in occupied Palestine.
As Ralph Nader pointed out in an article titled "Israel's Genocidal Antisemitism Against the Arabs Civilians in Gaza" that "The Israeli operation precisely fits the Genocide Convention's definition by intentionally creating conditions of life calculated to physically destroy a racial, religious, ethnic or national group in whole or in part".
In fact, South Africa filed a lawsuit at the end of December at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the UN's highest legal body in the Hague, accusing Israel of genocide in its war on Gaza and seeking a halt of the brutal military assault that has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians, nearly 10,000 of them children. But the case does not deal with countries complicit in committing genocide, most notably the US in funding, arming and defending as Israel carries out its genocidal acts in Gaza and also European Union countries.
While many countries have supported the South African move, but the US has voiced its opposition to the genocide case and Admiral John Kirby asserted that the South African claim was baseless. Also, Bolivia, Egypt, Jordan, Malaysia and Turkey have joined South Africa's genocide case against Israel but most Arab countries refrained from joining South Africa.
Now taking advantage of the challenge posed by Hamas, Israel has also gone to great lengths to rejuvenate the plan as envisaged by the Israeli Foreign Ministry in 1968 to push the Palestinians out of Gaza and subsequently another similar plan was worked out by Major General Giora Eiland, the then head of the Israeli National Security council in 2000 known as the Eiland Project.
Former Israeli defence minister Avigdor Liberman, who currently is also a member of Israeli parliament openly advocated the ethnic cleansing of Gaza through displacement of the population into the Sinai desert. Israeli prime minister Netanyahu also echoed the same sentiment and declared they were working on voluntary immigration and moving in that direction.
Currently, the US and Israeli plan is to relocate the Palestinian population of Gaza to Sinai Peninsula to enable Israeli settlers to occupy Gaza with the protection provided by the Israeli army in cooperation and support from the US. Despite many incentives offered by Israel and the US, Egypt opposes such a plan implementation on Egyptian territory because such a plan would cause Hamas-Israel conflict to move to Egyptian territory involving Egypt in the war among other reasons, thus escalating the conflict.
When Israel invaded Gaza, the political situation in the Middle East was anything but stable. The invasion has destabilised the entire regional order in the Middle East. Now the US and its European allies-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza is turning into a region-wide war. In fact, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently said while in Qatar that this conflict could "metastasise".
In the midst of rising war tensions, Hamas deputy chief Saleh al-Arouri was assassinated in Beirut on January 2. The following day, a large number of people were killed in a bomb attack at a memorial service for General Qassem Sulemani in the Iranian city of Kerman. In fact, the Israeli genocide in Gaza has now encouraged the US sufficiently enough to strengthen its flagging dominance in the Middle East targeting Iran and its allies in the region.
Israeli armed forces have been involved in exchanges of fire with Hezbollah in Lebanon since the start of the war with Hamas, though limited in scale. But Hezbollah's missile attack on Israel in response to Israel's assassination of the senior Hamas leader in Beirut has marked a significant escalation of the armed conflict on the Israeli-Lebanese border.
According to the Washington Post, the US Defence Intelligence agency (DIA) has made an assessment that Israeli forces would be unlikely to succeed in a two front war against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Meanwhile, Hezbollah has been very open about its role in the conflict. Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the group claimed that his forces had tied up one third of Israeli troops along the Israel Lebanon border preventing them from being deployed against Hamas in Gaza. In fact, the threat of escalation between the Israeli army and Hezbollah is growing by the day.
By spelling out that there are no red lines on how far Israel can go in Gaza, the US has allowed the Israel-Hamas war to expand into a broader regional conflict. In another case of blowback against the US backed Israeli aggression against Hamas in Gaza, Yemen's Ansarallah (popularly known as Houthis) has inserted itself as an active participant in the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.
In fact, Ansarallah now runs Yemen and therefore is the only Arab movement which controls state assets and a standing army and is participating in the current war with Israel. They already in November, following Israel's invasion of Gaza, declared that all ships "belonging to the Israeli enemy or that deal with it" would become "legitimate targets".
Ansarallah has already seized several Israel bound ships and attacking others with drones have caused activity at Eilat to drop by more than three quarters of its port capacity. Vessels bound for Israel and Israeli owned shipping companies have already opted to take the longer route which can take much longer time circumnavigating the Cape of Good Hope to reach Israeli ports. It is to be noted that Ansarallah only targets Israel bound and Israeli owned ships as a show of support for the Palestinians in Gaza.
In response the US assembled a naval task force to ensure "freedom of navigation" through the Red Sea in an operation dubbed "Prosperity Guardian". But in essence to it was designed to protect Israeli navigational interests in the Red Sea. About nine countries including one Arab country Bahrain joined the group. The US decision to form multinational naval force to confront Ansarallah is an admission that they are a major regional actor and a fore to reckon with.
However, the Ansarallah spokesperson said, "The American-formed coalition to protect Israel and militarise the sea without any justification will not stop Yemen from continuing its legitimate operations in support of Gaza". He further added that the presence of the US led forces would lead to "expanding the scope of the conflict and increasing the risks to shipping lines".
Furthermore, a top Ansarallah official and negotiator, Mohammad Absulsalam told Reuters that the US led mission was "essentially unnecessary" because the waters off Yemen were safe except for ships linked to - or headed to Israel. They also declared that the blockade on ships bound for Irael would end when war on Gaza ends.
Despite such a clear statement from Ansarallah, the US and the UK have launched an attack on Yemen, striking the cities of Sanaa and Hodeidah early on Friday (January 12)."Now America, Britain, and Israel are launching raids on Hodeidah, Sanaa, Dhamar, and Saada,"said Ansarallah spokesperson Abdulsalam Jahaf early on Friday on X (formerly Twitter), then he added, "We will discipline them, God willing."
For over five decades, the US has invested financially, militarily, politically and diplomatically in a totally morally bankrupt colonial settler apartheid state Israel. Its unlimited and unconditional support for Israel now threatens to widen the scope of the Israel-Hamas war to Yemen and beyond. The October 7 event has radically changed the geo-political landscape in the Middle East. The Israeli army with all its technological razzmatazz is being embarrassed by Hamas and defeated by Hezbollah. Its only accomplishment now appears to be succeeding in committing AI assisted political murders across middle East and other places.
The US has the ability to stop this war and work towards viable peace in the region by supporting a single secular democratic state stretching from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean Sea. This is the only option that can stop the continuing Israeli violence against the Palestinian people. In such a democratic and secular single state where Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews will be living together as equal citizens with equal rights based upon human rights and the rule of law. This is the only option that has any chance of delivering lasting peace.