Israel must embrace what Arafat used to call the peace of the brave, for which the boldest and most visionary Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin paid with his life.
In the last 24 hours, Israeli attacks have killed 750 innocent Palestinians in Gaza and over 100 on the West Bank. So far, over 7,500 Palestinians have been killed, roughly half of them children. No sane person can defend what Hamas did on 7 October. This was a terrorist attack. By killing innocent Israelis and taking over 200 of them including the elderly, women and children as hostages, they committed a heinous crime, which has been deservedly condemned internationally. They deserve to be punished.
While the Hamas attack, undoubtedly, constituted an unforgivable crime, how should one describe the killing of 7,500 innocent Palestinians in Gaza by Israel? By this weekend, the death toll resulting from Israeli bombing might touch 10,000. Is depriving over 2 million Palestinians of electricity, food, medicines and even water for three weeks, reducing their homes to rubble and ordering them to move to the southern part not a crime? When Hamas kills innocent Israelis, it’s unquestionably a heinous crime but when Israel kills innocent Palestinians and reduces nearly 2 million human beings to helpless destitute, isn’t it a crime? Why should the loss of lives on two sides be viewed differently? What kind of justice is this? How long should the Israeli crimes be condoned and allowed to continue? Israel has every right to punish Hamas but should it go unpunished for the crimes it is committing against the innocent Palestinians in Gaza?
All rational and reasonable leaders the world over, barring Israel’s diehard supporters and its allies are saying: saving human lives must be the top priority at this moment. But lives can’t be saved unless the UNSC passes a resolution in favour of a ceasefire. And the resolution can’t be passed if the US and Russia use their veto power to get each other’s resolution rejected. What’s the message of the delay in imposing a ceasefire? It’s simple: if a few hundred more Palestinians are killed so be it. Palestinian lives don’t matter. Aren’t those who are delaying a ceasefire also responsible, in some ways, for the loss of lives of innocent Palestinians?
But why should we be surprised? Notwithstanding their chest thumping self-congratulatory tall claims of being a beacon of democracy and champion of human rights, their own record of the last 75 years includes bringing down elected democracies on flimsy and questionable pretexts, destruction of infrastructures including schools, hospitals and residences and gross violations of human rights and reducing millions of innocent people to displaced persons and refugees in foreign lands. The manner in which the much-touted defenders of democracy, human rights and the rule of international law have been condoning and supporting Israel’s excesses since 1948 and ignoring Palestinians’ legitimate aspirations for a free, independent and sovereign state of their own exposes the hollowness of their commitment to democracy and human rights and their brazen double standards.
Both King Abdullah II of Jordan and Abdel Fattah al Sisi, President of Egypt have rejected “the policy of collective punishment, siege, starvation and displacement of Palestinians in Gaza.” At the Cairo Peace Summit held on 21 October that couldn’t arrive at a consensus, the Jordanian king was blunt and unsparing: “Palestinian lives matter less than Israeli ones. Our lives matter less than other lives. The application of international law is optional, and human rights have boundaries—they stop at races, and they stop at religions.” Though they might not say so publicly, these sentiments are shared by the majority of the Arab leaders, even by those who have signed peace agreements with Israel in recent years under the Abraham Accords. Obviously, they are aware of the mood of the people on the street and can’t dare to oppose that.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres condemned the terrorist attacks of Hamas against Israel in the most unequivocal terms but added a historical context to the rise of Hamas: it didn’t happen in a vacuum—the continued occupation of Palestinian territories by Israel for more than half a century might have contributed to this phenomenon. Criticizing him for stating the obvious and demanding his resignation reflects an appalling ignorance of historical facts. The claim of the Israeli PR to the UN while addressing the emergency session of the UNGA that Hamas have nothing to do with the Palestinians nor with Arab-Israel relations suggests that the present leadership in Israel is living in a make-believe world of its own, oblivious of the history of 75 years and bereft of any strategic vision. There was no Hamas in 1967 but Israel still attacked and occupied territories of Egypt, Jordan and Syria and whatever space was left for the Palestinians was squeezed with more and more Israeli settlements.
Israel wants to obliterate Hamas from the face of earth. Sounds a like a daydream. Yes, they can possibly kill the Hamas to the last fighter, but peace and security will still be a daydream for them because they are addressing the symptoms but not the root cause of their insecurity. They haven’t drawn any lessons from the fate of their mentor, the US’ invasion of Afghanistan. After 20 years, having used all the military means at their command and involving more than two dozen friendly countries and spending nearly US$2 trillion of American taxpayers’ money and suffering around 4,000 casualties, they had to withdraw from Afghanistan in the most humiliating manner leaving behind their military hardware but no democracy, no human rights and no protection for women.
The Israelis have an ideal example and laudable template for ensuring long term peace and security for Israel. They must embrace what Arafat used to call the peace of the brave, for which the boldest and most visionary Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin paid with his life. As Defence Minister, Rabin personally ordered the dropping of bombs at the PLO HQ in Tunis (October 1, 1985) with clear intent to kill Arafat who, at that time, in his eyes, was a Palestinian terrorist. But he showed the historic courage and aspirational vision for peace like Anwar Sadat who travelled to Jerusalem in November 1977 for the same goal and shook hands with Arafat on the lawns of the White House on September 13, 1993 in the presence of US President Bill Clinton and gave peace a chance.
Alas, Netanyahu, who was fighting numerous corruption charges and battling with the judiciary and was on the brink of losing his Premiership has been given a lifeline by Hamas’ bloody attack on October 7, is no Rabin. He does not have any vision. He is not only killing thousands of innocent Palestinians on Gaza but filling the minds and hearts of the survivors with deep anger and hatred that will kill all future peace prospects.
Surendra Kumar is a former ambassador of India.