Gaza and the Balance of Power in the Middle East – Ibrahim Awad

The frustration of the humanitarian and political tragedy that has been going on in Gaza for more than ten months makes interested observers hesitate to write about it again. The arguments calling for an end to the war in Gaza and the West Bank and for a serious search for solutions to calm the anger of the Palestinian people have been implemented or almost implemented. No one, except the most fanatical and extreme Zionists, questions the legitimacy of this anger expressed by the Palestinian people before and after 1948. Before the establishment of the State of Israel, the Palestinian people expressed their anger in the 1929 Brak uprising and the Great Intifada from 1936 to 1939. For nearly two decades after 1948, the Palestinian people vented their anger by demanding and calling on the world to grant them rights.
When words are useless, this anger takes the form of a national and secular armed struggle. This struggle and the uprising of the Palestinian people in the second half of the 1980s in the new territories occupied by Israel in 1967 led to the path opened by the Madrid Conference in 1991, on the one hand, and the Oslo Accords in 1993 and then the Washington Accords signed in 1994 by Yasser Arafat, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and Yitzhak Rabin, Prime Minister of Israel, in the White House, the seat of the administration of US President Bill Clinton and his House on the other hand.
Without going into details that are useless today, the negotiations of the Madrid process did not achieve anything. In turn, the Oslo-Washington process did not allow the Palestinian people to exercise any of their political rights only on the lands occupied by Israel in 1967, on which the Executive Committee of this Organization accepted the establishment of the State of Palestine, a State adjacent to Israel. As a result, in view of the expansion of settlements in the West Bank and the brutal siege of Gaza, Palestinian anger has rekindled, this time it has assumed an Islamo-political character and expanded into an armed struggle against the Palestinian people. Islamo-political characteristics. In short, the anger generated by the violation of all the national rights of the Palestinian people and the failure to address this anger are the root of all the unrest that the Middle East has experienced in the past decades, and this is the anger that has changed in both its form of expression and its nature. The attack of October 7 was an outburst of this anger. It is not reasonable or rational to link the action with its cause, to separate October 7 from its context, from the plunder, violation, evasion, recklessness and neglect that preceded it, as Israel and its supporters wish.
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In the past ten months, the General Assembly and even the Security Council have issued resolutions, and no other two international courts have issued rulings and fatwas to stop the fighting in Gaza. Israel, which has annihilated humanity in the war it has waged and illegally occupied Palestinian land, has called for the arrest of the Israeli Prime Minister and Defense Minister, who are being charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. The President of the United States has provided weapons, funds and advice to Israel in the Gaza war and has issued a three-phase plan to release Israeli detainees in Gaza and Palestinians in Israeli prisons, eventually stop the fighting, and then rebuild the Las Vegas Strip. Despite this, those who shout louder have no life to speak of, and they still brutally kill tens of thousands of people and destroy schools on the heads of students and hospitals on the bodies of the wounded and sick.
Suddenly, in the last ten days, the United States and its main Atlantic allies have become eager for a ceasefire in Gaza! This is the statement issued by the leaders of the United States, Britain, France, Germany and Italy. These leaders obviously have soft hearts for the people of Gaza, because instead of thousands or tens of thousands of people were killed, their bodies lie under the rubble, and they now want a ceasefire by today. They expressed support for the statement issued by the United States, Egypt and Qatar, in which the three countries called on Israel and Hamas to hold talks aimed at a ceasefire on August 15 and to go to Iran to demand “de-escalation of the situation in the Middle East and an end to aggression against Israel, or in other words, no response to the Israeli assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau and the ceasefire negotiator, and Palestinian detainees on its land.
These leaders were not pleased, but the leaders of France, Britain, and Germany called the new Iranian president, urging him not to respond until the ceasefire efforts in Gaza were successful, namely those made by the United States, Egypt, and Qatar. The upshot of these statements and communications was that any Iranian response would lead to escalation and regional war, eliminating the chances of a ceasefire and exchange of detainees. To show that it was serious about deterring Iran and defending Israel, the United States sent an aircraft carrier and a submarine carrying missiles to the region.
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Although we are surprised by the sudden desire for a ceasefire in Gaza, we welcome this desire. But what is the logic of linking a ceasefire with Iran’s non-response to the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh on its territory? Iran, which may have seen its sovereignty violated and may feel that its position has been seriously shaken in the eyes of its supporters and must be restored, may prefer not to respond at all or not at all. Now to avoid attacks by forces it does not have the power to do so. Iran makes decisions based on its interests. As for the war in Gaza, it is an independent issue even compared to the assassination of the head of the Hamas Political Bureau in the Iranian capital. There is no clearer proof of this than this ongoing war, even after the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, no matter what Iran planned or what Israel did. The war before and after Haniyeh’s assassination is the same. Last week alone, Israel continued its practice of destroying five schools, killing a hundred Palestinians, mostly children and women, in the last one alone. A ceasefire is necessary regardless of Iran’s response or no response, and while it is necessary, it is not necessary in itself, but as a step in the process of addressing the anger of the Palestinian people by giving them their rights, the first of which is their right to self-determination in the Palestinian land occupied in 1967. Addressing the anger of the Palestinian people is the key to de-escalating the unrest in the Middle East. Let us add that the anger of the Palestinian people and its expression predates the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran by decades.
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At the time of writing, no news has been released about the talks that began on August 15 in the Qatari capital, which Hamas has been absent from due to a perceived lack of seriousness on the part of Israel, although it appears that Hamas will follow up on what happens there through open channels with Egypt and Qatar. However, to resolve the two different issues of a ceasefire and addressing Palestinian anger on the one hand, and Iran’s reaction or non-reaction on the other, it is important that the distribution of power in the Middle East is in the right mind.
Since last October, Israel has been trying to completely eliminate not only Hamas but also the ability of the Palestinian people to express their anger, which might have manifested itself in different ways, assuming that Hamas had disappeared. Israel hopes to first provoke Iran into retaliatory action by assassinating Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. Its aim is to drag the United States back into the region to counter any Iranian retaliation and fight a regional war alongside or on behalf of Iran.
The fact is that it is Israel that threatens a regional war. With the ability to eliminate the Palestinian anger and then Iran with the help of the United States, Israel aims to eliminate any forces in the region that oppose it. In short, Israel wants to unleash its power in the Middle East. Whatever our position on the “intense” phase of Palestinian anger, and whether we are satisfied with the nature of the Iranian political system or not, it is not in our interest that the regional balance of power is heavily tilted in favor of Israeli interests. This balance of power, on the one hand, will influence the decisions of other countries in the region in a way that is not in their interests, and on the other hand, is a harbinger of continued instability in the Middle East, because even if its countries, on the other hand, reject it today, they will not accept it tomorrow or the day after tomorrow.
Ending the war in Gaza and empowering the Palestinian people to exercise their national rights in the West Bank and Gaza are two interrelated conditions necessary for stability in the Middle East.
The balance of power in the region is critical to establishing and maintaining this stability.