Hamas, you have led your people into the jaws of Netanyahu!

Wednesday, November 8, 2023

I have always held the view that the Hamas leaders are a very ‘bodoh’ lot. Yes, they do have a cause, but they simply do not have any idea how to bring the Gaza Palestinians out of the reach of the Israeli jaws.

Since their October 7 terror on the Israelis, more than ten thousand of their people have lost their lives. Out of the dead, two-thirds were children and women. Much of northern Gaza has been flattened, and they include schools and refugee centres. Aljazeera is the only TV channel that shows what has been, and is still, happening there. Many of the scenes are simply too graphic for us to watch. The world is calling for an immediate ceasefire. But America stands with Netanyahu, so do its hardcore allies. They are happy to support the bloodthirstiness of Netanyahu and his generals. (Hi Zelensky, you have a new competitor for America’s affection! It looks like you will soon be abandoned by Biden and NATO.) Palestine is the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity, and has been controlled by many kingdoms and powers, including Ancient Egypt, Ancient Israel and Judah (c 9thCentury BCE), the Persian Empire, Alexander the Great and his successors, the Roman Empire, several Muslim caliphates, and the Crusaders. In the more modern times, the area was ruled by the Ottoman Empire, then the British Empire after World War I. Starting in the late 1940s and continuing for decades thereafter, some 850,000 Jews from the Arab worlds immigrated to Israel.

In 1947, the UN General Assembly recommended partitioning Palestine into two states: one Arab and one Jewish. The Jews declared the independence of the State of Israel in 1948. Unfortunately, the Arabs rejected the partition plan. War broke out; in the aftermath, Israel not only conquered more territories than those originally mandated, but they also drove out or caused about 80% of all Palestinians to flee. After the war, only two parts of Palestine remained in Arab control – the West Bank, which was annexed by Jordan, and the Gaza Strip, which was occupied by Egypt. (Does this say something about the Arab world? Technically, Egyptians are not Arabs, but Arabic-speaking, though.) Israel took Gaza in the Six-Day War in 1967 and began to establish settlements in the occupied territories. The Palestinian national movement gradually gained international recognition under Yasser Arafat. In 1993, the Oslo Peace Accords between Israel and the PLO established the Palestine Authority as an interim body to run parts of Gaza and the West Bank (but not East Jerusalem) pending a permanent solution to the conflict. In 2007, Hamas won control of Gaza from the PA, now limited to the West Bank.

Except Israel and the US, most countries support a two-state solution to the conflict. But realistically, can the two-state proposal work?

Geographically, West Bank and Gaza are not abutting. West Bank is landlocked. The Gaza Strip does front the Mediterranean Sea, but it is too tiny to be able to survive on its own. The Arabs are generally very tribal in their mindsets – some countries practise absolute monarchy; others do show some form of democracy. You also have Muslim Brotherhood movements which countries like Egypt do not take kindly to as well. And the Muslim world is divided into the Sunnis and the Shias. While Palestinians are Sunni, Hamas is strongly supported by the Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iran, both are Shia followers. It is all very confusing indeed.

Devoid of any strong common cause, Muslims in the Middle East only lend lip services to the Hamas in the present conflict, nothing more.

Do not blame them, though. Militarily, Israel is the most powerful country in the Middle East. Judaism is puritanical. “We are God’s chosen people”, that is their belief. Period. On the other hand, the Arabs have never been cohesive. Even the Ottoman Empire, whose sultans were also not Arabic, could only rule with feudalistic iron-hands.

What was Hamas’s endgame in staging the October 7 raid into Israel? (I have loosely used the term ‘endgame’, which is a misnomer, for a foray of this nature should not be a game at all!) There is no doubt they have shaken the world up to the fact that their plights have been overlooked for a long, long time. But what are the consequences? And what can they achieve?

Hamas’s October 7 terror would only bring out the mania in Netanyahu and his generals. And to Biden, an attack on Israel is absolutely no-no, for the Jews are part-and-parcel of the US Deep State. Antony Blinken openly reminds everyone that he is Jewish and with that credential or qualification, he is trying to help. Help who? This dumb man keeps himself super busy. Who is listening to him?

When the whole of Gaza is flattened, Israel will occupy it for good. The remaining Palestinians will have to flee. Many will become suicide bombers in no time. The vicious circle continues!

As for the West Bank Palestinians, their leaders are entrenched in the trappings of the office Israel has accorded them. They will continue to pretend that they are the ‘authority’. In my opinion, statehood is not tenable there. It might as well ask to be absorbed by Jordan and live as Palestinian Jordanians – like Fujianese Chinese or Cantonese Chinese or Hainanese Chinese in China! Why try to split hair with your tribal background when you have no teeth or might? Or maybe the Autonomous State of Palentine that is guaranteed by the Arab fraternity? (Like Xinjiang, or Xichang. or for that matter SAR Hong Kong?)

Yu-Book LIM