Chaos: A smoke plume erupting during Israeli bombardment in Rafah in south Gaza on Friday. Thousands of people, both Israeli and Palestinians, have died since Oct 7, after Hamas’ surprise attack on southern Israel. — AFP
“ALL wars must end,” said Fred Ikle, the late undersecretary of defence of the administration of United States president Ronald Reagan. Just as countries can get themselves into a conflict, they must know how to get themselves out of one. Otherwise, being caught in an endemic conflict is meaningless.
Ikle’s advice is timely, given the gravity of the situation in the Gaza Strip, where sheer emotion has taken over decent thinking and strategic sense. Otherwise, countries and sub-state actors could indeed find themselves enmeshed in a senseless state of warfare. Be it Hamas or the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) group, they could find themselves trapped in the fast-evolving conflict in Gaza one after the other.
The spectre of an ever-enlarging conflict is therefore more than real. Even the residents in the West Bank are becoming restive against the settlers and the people of Israel. Since the imbroglio that commenced with Hamas’s incursion into Israel on Oct 7, the administration of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has, prior to the formation of his war Cabinet, all but stopped food, water and electricity supplies in the Gaza Strip, which is now a gargantuan human catastrophe.
Half of the 2.2 million people there are children below 15. Moreover, collective punishment is illegal under international humanitarian law, nor can civilians be targeted in any act of war, whether by Hamas, the PIJ, Hezbollah or Israel.
Amid all this, the US Congress has yet to find a Speaker but has somehow prepared a congressional Bill to permit the United States to go to war in the event of any antagonist actions by Iran against Israel, or any other countries with which the US has security ties or interests. If such an anarchic state of affairs were to continue, the negotiating leverage of President Joe Biden’s administration would suffer.
Israel’s corresponding effort to get a grip on Hamas and the PIJ would enter into a tailspin.
Israel needs the Arab world to assist it. President Biden’s goodwill with the Arab world is imperative. The US cannot defend Israel to no end; then the US cannot claim to be a strategic broker in the Middle East, or anywhere for that matter.
Thus, while President Biden’s meeting with King Abdullah of Jordan was originally on the cards, it is most unfortunate that this summit has been cancelled. Had it gone ahead, King Abdullah, who was one of the first leaders to speak of the importance of taking the plight of the people in the Gaza Strip and West Bank into the utmost consideration, would have been an asset to any peace process.
As things are, when on Wednesday a rocket struck a hospital in the Gaza Strip, killing a large number of Christians verging on 500, the event became another flash point.
The Arab world has accused Israel of being responsible for the war crime. The Israeli government has countered in turn that the rocket was launched by the PIJ. The latter has denied any responsibility.
With the geopolitical mercury in the Middle East and Iran continuing to rise exponentially, even the importance of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and Asean summit this weekend could not swivel away from having to confront the magnitude of the war in Gaza.
The inaugural summit of the two regional groupings from Oct 20 to Oct 21 was originally slated to focus on trade. However, their leaders could not help but be consumed by the events unfolding on the ground.
Why? First and foremost, the US Navy’s Ford and Eisenhower carrier strike groups are in the Mediterranean.
Such a naval manoeuvre by the US is not merely to keep all sides from being sucked into the conflict. Rather, the combination of the two battle groups actually portends the high likelihood of a war that demands the US’ naval power. The ostensible aim seems to be to warn Tehran and Hezbollah against joining the war in Gaza.
In recent memory, it was Donald Trump’s administration that deployed the same tactic in the South and East China seas in 2019 to add an extra deterrent for North Korea, which was getting extremely agitated, if not provoked, by any large-scale military exercises in the adjacent waters. While Pyongyang was deterred by that naval manoeuvre, the very nature of the Trump administration had probably convinced North Korea that Washington did not know what it was doing to begin with.
The situations in Gaza and Israel must not be seen in a similar light. Biden has known Netanyahu for more than 40 years. While this implies a high degree of prior knowledge of each other, the depth of their friendship is not enough to neutralise a messy region-wide conflict.
Iran and Saudi Arabia would like to coexist at a safe distance. But if the region descends into war, Saudi Arabia and other GCC member states will be in a permanent state of alert. This is also exactly what Hezbollah and Iran do not want. Arms spending would forever trend northward. All sides would be caught viselike in the region and across the world.
Whether in Syria or Yemen, not to mention Gaza and the West Bank, it is Iran that has had a greater influence on Hezbollah, the PIJ and Hamas.
It is not in Iran’s interest to see any of its proxies in need of constant arms supplies. Thus, what the world needs is to stop the pounding of Gaza, as well as the heckling and hounding of all parties. World leaders must not allow the highly fluid and volatile situation to become even more precarious than it already is. – The Jakarta Post/Asia News Network
Phar Kim Beng is CEO of consultancy firm Strategic Pan Indo Pacific Arena.
