John Wight: Netanyahu now at the gates of hell

Israel Gaza Palestine Netanyahu

The sheer scale and multipronged character of the breakout of Gaza by a large force of Palestinian militants into southern Israel to take control of various Israeli settlements — penetrating as far as the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon, which lies, 7km from Gaza, in the process — is stunning on multiple levels. They came on motorcycles, via tunnels, by sea, and even from the air in paragliders under cover of an early morning barrage of thousands of rockets, many of which succeeded in penetrating Israel’s much vaunted Iron Dome anti-missile defence system and with some reaching as far as Tel Aviv.

At this writing Palestinian militants have have kidnapped dozens of Israeli soldiers and civilians and taken them back to Gaza, along with multiple IDF trucks, armoured cars and even a couple of Merkava battle tanks.

That the Palestinians achieved total surprise is a marker of a catastrophic failure of Israeli intelligence as well as the significant improvement in the training, military capability, and counterintelligence of the Palestinians.
The scenes of wanton slaughter of civilians by some of the Palestinian forces involved were resoundingly chilling. However this is a killing rage that has been a long time coming on the part of a people brutalised by the ravages of occupation and siege over many years.

The ugliness of the resistance is a direct reflection of the ugliness of the oppression, with both co-existing in a cycle that has been the lived experience of both the Palestinians and Israelis since the Six Day War of 1967.

The Hamas-led Palestinian military incursion was named Al-Aqsa Flood— this after the Al-Asqa Mosque in Jerusalem, one of the most sacred Islamic holy places and wilfully descecrated by IDF forces during Ramadan — and they have placed out a clarion call for the support of the entire Arab and Muslim world. The sight of frantic and terrified Israeli settlers fleeing for their lives that have appeared across social media are redolent of the Nakba in reverse. They are scenes that will play well in the Arab street throughout the region, and they will make uneasy viewing for Arab kings and potentates in their palaces in consequence.
Primary responsibility for this eruption of conflict lies squarely at the door of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the hard right coalition of unrepentant ethno-nationalists and religious extremists he cobbled together after the last election held in this increasingly fractious country.

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What is clear is that the centre cannot hold, that the status quo has literally just been blown asunder, and that the entire world has failed the Palestinians, both those living under blockade in Gaza and those living under occupation across the West Bank people. Suffering the daily ravages of a system of apartheid — so brutal, so entrenched, and over so long — the surprise is that anybody should be surprised when it comes to the current crisis.

The early success of the Hamas-led Palestinian military operation will reverberate throughout wider Israeli society. People who before felt themselves safe and secure in their affluent and comfortable Western-style lifestyles, have now been abruptly shaken from their bubble of comfort and reminded that the Palestinians and their suffering cannot be kept behind stone walls, wire fences, and military checkpoints forever.
Israel’s response will of course be huge, with Netanyahu already declaring a state of war and round the clock airstrikes on Gaza killing and wounding indiscriminately, as they have always done.

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Yet given how divisive his hard right regime has been within Israel since coming to power, key will be the extent to which the whole of Israeli society will rally round his leadership at this momentous juncture, or whether he will be held at least partly responsible for the disaster currently unfolding. Indeed, a Haaretz editorial, published in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas military operation, leaves no doubt that war fever will produce the national unity that Netanyahu and his regime either expects of anticipates.

The disaster that befell Israel on the holiday of Simchat Torah is the clear responsibility of one person: Benjamin Netanyahu. The prime minister, who has prided himself on his vast political experience and irreplaceable wisdom in security matters, completely failed to identify the dangers he was consciously leading Israel into when establishing a government of annexation and dispossession.

That an ocean of blood will flow over the days and weeks ahead is well nigh guaranteed — and as ever it will be the innocent who will pay the heaviest price. But in Tel Aviv and across the West, Palestinian blood has always been of the cheaper variety. If anything, the Palestinian leadership in Gaza will have embarked on this military operation driven by the desire to restore, in its eyes, the balance of terror that for so long has seen Palestinian civilians killed in regular Israeli airstrikes and military incursions without anything approaching equitable response.

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Stepping back, the Biden administration has failed and failed utterly when it comes to serious engagement on this hitherto intractable question and conflict, as have the rest of the so-called international community. The result is the Palestinians of Gaza, and quite possibly across the West Bank in the days to come, taking matters into their own hands in the tradition of a risen people.

Meanwhile, in the corridors of power across Western Europe, where the same old hypocrisy continues to reign, the unstinting declarations of solidarity with Israel are tantamount to giving Netanyahu a green light to slaughter as many Palestinians as he chooses for as long as he chooses.

A peace movement within Israel has never been more necessary than now, as has a Palestinian leadership capable of uniting the Palestinian masses in Gaza and the West Bank around a set of solid demands that the entire world understands and can no longer ignore.
Until that happens the ‘Injuns’ will either stay on the reservation on their knees, or they can die on their feet. This — this is what Israel and its apologists and supporters across the West have the temerity to describe as justice.

The author is a writer and commentator and can be found on medium where this article was originally published 

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