Israel
has all but declared war in the Middle East – a conflict it cannot hope to win
Simon
Tisdall
The killing
of Hamas’s political leader has raised tensions yet again. Only a ceasefire in
Gaza offers any prospect of peace
Wed 31 Jul
2024 08.17 EDT
Failure to
halt the war in Gaza lies at the heart of the latest lethal savagery in the
Middle East. The assassination in Tehran of Hamas’s political leader, Ismail
Haniyeh, will be celebrated in Israel as just revenge for the 7 October
atrocities. But Islamist hardliners in Iran and militant groups across the Arab
world will see it as further proof of their belief that the state of Israel is
a menace that must be destroyed at all costs.
And so the
hatred, the violence and the misery will continue unchecked, and will in all
probability worsen and spread. Just because this homicidal cycle is familiar
does not mean it cannot accelerate. Few parts of the Middle East – Lebanon,
Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Jordan – have escaped the toxic fallout of the Gaza
conflict. In Washington DC and Britain, domestic politics are roiled by the
fury and the grief. The UN’s impotence is daily, humiliatingly exposed. No one
is immune to this poison.
It would
have been preferable if Haniyeh, in common with Hamas leaders based in Gaza,
had faced trial at the international criminal court (ICC) – and been made to
answer for his crimes. That now cannot happen. Instead, Israel has once again
sought “justice” through extrajudicial murder. Only in April, a covert Israeli
strike on Iran’s consulate in Damascus killed a top Iran Revolutionary Guards
Corps general – and brought the region to the brink of all-out war. There have
been numerous similar killings.
The man
overseeing these assassinations, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister
and chief architect of the continuing genocidal campaign against Palestinian
civilians in Gaza, should be forced to answer for his crimes, too. The ICC’s
chief prosecutor is trying to ensure that happens, despite US opposition. But
there is little sign it will. More likely, given the example he sets, is that
Netanyahu will himself be targeted by assassins.
Tuesday’s
almost simultaneous, reported killing of a senior Hezbollah commander, Fuad
Shukur, in an Israeli airstrike in south Beirut, will help ensure the Middle
East’s downward spiral into destruction continues to accelerate. Once again,
the Israel-Hamas war is the driving factor. The attack was in retaliation for
an alleged Hezbollah missile strike in the occupied Golan Heights last weekend
that killed 12 young people.
Yet the main
reason Hezbollah is firing missiles into Israeli-held territory now is Gaza.
The organisation’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has been relatively restrained
since 7 October, given the huge military resources at his disposal. Nasrallah
says cross-border attacks will stop when there is a ceasefire in Gaza. Killing
Haniyeh, a senior Hamas decision-maker and negotiator, makes such a ceasefire
even less likely, at least in the short term. Killing Shukur is another
dangerous provocation.
It is also
worth pointing out, amid the frequently overwhelming welter of daily horrors,
that two children were killed and 74 people injured in the Beirut airstrike,
according to Lebanese officials. But then again, Israeli forces have been
killing Gaza’s children with impunity for months. The UN puts the total at
15,000 dead. Two more deaths barely register (except with parents and
families).
It’s not
that Israel is blind to the broader consequences of its role in this endless,
vicious cycle. But it says that everyone else is to blame. “Hezbollah’s ongoing
aggression and brutal attacks are dragging the people of Lebanon and the entire
Middle East into a wider escalation,” a military spokesperson said. “While we
prefer to resolve hostilities without a wider war, the IDF [Israel Defense
Forces] is fully prepared for any scenario.”
The wider
war Israel “prefers” to avoid is, in fact, already raging. Israel repeatedly
bombed Yemen’s Red Sea port of Hodeidah this month after a drone attack on Tel
Aviv by Tehran-backed Houthi Shia militants. Netanyahu, whose answer to almost
every problem is extreme violence, boasted the bombing “makes it clear to our
enemies that there is no place that the long arm of the state of Israel will
not reach”. That sounded very much like a declaration of war on the entire
region. Yet it’s a war Israel cannot ultimately win.
Once again,
the Houthis say the principal reason they are attacking Israel, and shipping in
the Red Sea – attacks that have sucked the US and Britain into risky military
action – is Gaza. If there’s a ceasefire, they claim, their attacks will halt.
This is hardly radical. This is the same Gaza notional ceasefire backed, in
theory, by the US, Britain, the EU and the UN security council. This is the
same ceasefire millions of people in the Arab world, Europe and the US have
been demanding for months. This is the same ceasefire that still – still –
doesn’t happen.
Will a
humiliated Iran hit back directly over the Haniyeh killing? Will Hezbollah
escalate? Will a divided Israel, its reputation further disfigured by the
torture and alleged sexual abuse of Palestinian detainees, plunge deeper
towards national disintegration as far-right zealots, backed by Netanyahu’s
ministers, storm army bases to free the alleged abusers? Quite possibly. No
outcome is off the table in a region where the so-called rules of the game that
hitherto prevented an all-consuming conflagration are being burned page by
bloody page.
People say
the Middle East is complicated. It is. They say there are no answers. This may
be true. But despite the rockets, Gaza is not rocket science. It’s not that
complicated. Stop the war. Stop the killing. Save the children. Agree a
ceasefire and free the hostages. And then all the other problems, while not
going away, may become just a little easier to manage.
Simon Tisdall is the Observer’s foreign
affairs commentator
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