It’s never wise for an analyst to predict the outcome of an armed conflict, no matter how small or large its scale and how one-sided it may be. Although such a forecast in the case of the conflict between the very poorly armed people of Gaza and the vastly better armed Israel should have been very easy and straightforward, yet all those forecasts, if made, would have proved wrong. For one, in the first week of October 2023, any suggestion that Hamas can surprise Israel with an attack, and that too on a large scale, would have bordered insanity. Second, it would have been irrational to say that Gaza will not only survive the relentless bombing of their strip of land for fifteen months but ultimately force Israel, who had been demanding an unconditional surrender of Gazan fighters, to the negotiating table and bring them to a ceasefire for hostage exchange. While a forecast for the future is difficult, it can safely be said at this moment, in the beginning of March and Ramadan, that this tussle has reached a stalemate with Israel threatening Gaza with more bombing, not of standing structures as it has done for the previous year and a quarter, but of the rubble that Gaza has turned into.
As these lines are being written, the second stage of ceasefire is stalled. Clearly, Israel still believes in a military solution. It has also stopped the flow of much needed food, shelter, medicines, water and electricity. The Gazans need this aid desperately. By blocking aid, Israel has now started using hunger as a tool of war. Weaponising aid is a desperate act that speaks of their military failure. It has also exposed the western nations who, by remaining silent on the terrible human tragedy in Gaza, belie their commitment to human rights. Despite the killing of over 60.000 Gazans, most of them women and children, the West has not raised their voice against Israel; instead they continue to blame the victims.
On the 18th and 19th of January this year, when the first prisoners were exchanged, 90 Palestinians for three female Israelis, the body language and the environment clearly differentiated the victors from the losers. While there was jubilation in Palestine, there was gloom in Israel. This was not how it was supposed to happen. It was the Zionist forces that were supposed to be standing victorious over some tunnel network and retrieving their captives, without any Palestinians returning from Israeli jails to their homes.
Israel methodically destroyed literally each and every structure in the 45 sq km area of Gaza and inspected every inch of that area multiple times, but could neither eliminate the Palestinian fighters nor find their prisoners. In addition, the Israeli prisoners were healthy and well-dressed, while the Palestinian prisoners were emaciated and visibly illtreated. That clearly spelled a moral defeat for Israel, as reflected on the faces of that country’s political and military leadership. In the second prisoner exchange, when two healthy and apparently cheerful Israeli prisoners, surrounded by smartly attired and armed Hamas fighters, were released to the Red Cross in a solemn ceremony, Israel was incensed as it showed its failure to subdue Gaza.
The story of David and Goliath is one of the cornerstones of the Biblical narrative of the Jewish people. Gazans may be the modern incarnation of David standing against the juggernaut of the Israeli Goliath
For the first time in its fiendish history, Israel was observed to be in panic, as the Palestinian fighters stormed across the heavily guarded and monitored border on 7 October 2024. The fighters were heavily armed, though without high-tech gadgets. They came across on motorcycles, hand gliders and jeeps, and occupied not only the neighbouring civilian villages but also the military camps. The Israeli leadership and security apparatus were paralyzed as they attempted to ascertain the ground facts. When the reaction was organised, it was mismanaged. Israeli helicopters machine-gunned their own civilians in the music concert. The destroyed vehicles of the concert-goers that were displayed on the television across the world as a proof of Palestinian brutality, were in fact strafed by Israeli army helicopters. Of the 1,195 dead Israelis that day, many lost their lives not to the Gazan guns but to the Israeli firing. Palestinian fighters took 251 Israeli civilians as well as military personal as hostages and carried them across the border to their tunnel labyrinth. It took a full day before the Israeli government realised what had transpired.
Israel carried out one of the most intense bombing campaigns in modern post-WWII history. More bombs have been dropped on this 45 sq km area of Gaza in 15 months than NATO dropped over Afghanistan in 20 years of invasion. Israel killed nearly 50,000 civilians, including some Hamas fighters, but lost nearly 400 of their own invading soldiers.
By relentless bombing, Israel has methodically caused targeted destruction in Gaza. It has killed 170 journalists (as per the Committee for Protection of Journalists), 1,000 health workers (as per Médecins sans Frontiéres), 120 academics and 224 humanitarian aid workers. Of the 34 hospitals, only 17 are partially functional (MSF). The Guardian reported that 80% of all schools have been destroyed.
Israel has killed over 50,000 people of Gaza. This count is going up as more and more bodies are discovered under the rubble. In addition, Israel has also killed nearly 1,000 and detained about 7,000 persons during raids into the West Bank. Israel also claims to have killed 5 brigade commanders, 20 battalion commanders and 100 company commanders of the Hamas/Gaza army. Considering that the Gazans have still not be been defeated, the perceived size of their army has to be very large to sustain 15 months of one-sided war. It can only mean that it is the whole of Gaza that has risen against the illegal oppressive Israeli occupation.
In light of these realities, though the contest between the people of Gaza and the state of Israel is completely one-sided, it is the later that stands defeated as of now. It was beyond imagination that the former would stand up in any meaningful way to the later, but that is exactly how the contest has turned out to be. Israel's ministers and opposition alike are perplexed that Hamas is still standing on its feet and has not been defeated. The story of David and Goliath is one of the cornerstones of the Biblical narrative of the Jewish people. Gazans may be the modern incarnation of David standing against the juggernaut of the Israeli Goliath.
Israel claims that the its citizens held in Gaza, whether civilian or military, are hostages whereas the Palestinians held with Israel are terrorists. Without commenting on the first part of this statement which may be partially true, the second part needs to be analysed. Most of the Palestinian prisoners are held under the law of ‘Administrative Detention’. This is an Israeli law that allows the Zionist government and military to arrest any Palestinian and hold him or her for any length of time without filing any charges. In the last many decades under this rule, hundreds of Palestinians have been held at any given time. Western nations, who don't get tired of preaching democracy and human rights, have never questioned the Zionist state on this breach of human dignity. According to a European Parliament document, the prisoners held under Administrative Detention can be placed in “absolute isolation and be prevented from contact with another human being,” denied visitors and prevented from meeting lawyers. Israel terms such people as terrorists.
One of the prisoners freed in the recent exchange is Nael al-Barghouti, the longest serving prisoner in the world, who has been released after 45 years of imprisonment. Maher Younis has been released after serving four decades in Israeli prisons. Khalida Jarrar has been released having been arrested a number of times and having spent years under detention. The ninety Palestinian prisoners released by Israel in first exchange included 69 women and 21 teenage boys – some as young as 12 – from the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem. Most were held without charge and are liable to be arrested again. That one Israeli prisoner was released in lieu of 30 Palestinians appears lopsided until it is recognised that the Jewish state can literally throw a net around West Bank and take as many prisoners as it plans to, whereas the PA can't take hold of even one Israeli prisoner. It's only Hamas that can take and hold Israelis as their prisoners, but that, too, at a great effort and difficulty. The prisoner swap, therefore, is still in favour of Israel.
Among all the killings, mass murders and massacres, the story of a 12-year-old girl continues to haunt this author. She was taken prisoner on unspecified charges; perhaps, simply, for being a Palestinian. She was not beaten, or raped or physically tortured but was confined for a night with cockroaches. A young girl who would shriek and run on the sight of one cockroach, was made to spend a whole night with a host of these insects. The dead are dead and have gone past fear. This girl was alive and left to live with fear. With two similarly-aged granddaughters and knowing how they react on the sight of a cockroach, this author has nightmares of this girl screaming and begging for help. Of all the crimes that Israel has committed, this abominable act cannot be forgiven. Having known what happened in Auschwitz, of which they don't ever stop mentioning, they chose to target a 12-year old girl with fear. Let this be a reminder to the Zionists that when the time for retribution comes, and it will surely come, their children and grandchildren will pay for this crime. It shall not be forgotten.
President Trump has advocated expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza and relocating them in Egypt and Jordan. This is patently Zionist language. Ever since the creation of Israel, the Zionists have only one aim; to drive the Palestinians out of their land. Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, would freely express his views on eliminating the Palestinians and expanding the borders of Israel. To a question about what was to be done with the Palestinians, Ben Gurion replied that they be driven out. He noted in his diary in July 1948 that the Israelis should do everything to ensure that the ousted Palestinians never return. Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizmann, equated the Palestinians with rocks that had to be cleared. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said that there would be no Jewish State without eviction of the Arabs and expropriation of their lands. These are but a few of the statements from some of the Zionist leaders. Others like Yigal Allon, the first commander of army, Moshe Dayan, ex defence minister, Arthur Ruppin, the founder of Tel Aviv, Yitzhak Rabin, ex prime minister and many others voiced similar or worst views about Palestinian population. In an article on the issue of Israel-Palestine conflict, this author noted that Israel was a state born of violence and that Israeli history was replete with leaders who spoke the Biblical language of murder, pillage, expulsion and eradication when referring to the Palestinians.
Israel has one clear objective towards the West Bank and Gaza, and that is to make life so painful for Palestinians that they are forced to migrate to far away foreign lands, if possible, or simply walk into the neighbouring countries. Before the current war, Israel had repeatedly enhanced the miseries of the Palestinians in the tiny strip of Gaza, through Operations ‘Cast Lead’ in 2008-9, ‘Pillar of Defense’ in 2012, ‘Protective Edge’ in 2014, smaller raids in 2019, 2021, 2022, and 2023 and Operation ‘Shield and Arrow’ in May 2023.
The war in Gaza has proved the resilience of the Palestinian people. It has also proved that Israel is militarily beatable. It has indicated that the tide of military balance that had been heavily tilted in favour of Israel is turning the other way. It has thrown a light on a future where peaceful coexistence rather than exclusiveness is the only way forward. The western world, especially the United States, whose support keeps the Zionist state afloat, need to ensure that Jews as well as Palestinians are recognised as nations that hold a stake in the Holy Land.