tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/israel-palestine-conflict-82900/articlesIsrael-Palestine conflict – The Conversation2024-02-22T11:10:59Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2240852024-02-22T11:10:59Z2024-02-22T11:10:59ZIsrael-Gaza: how opinion polls used in Northern Ireland could pave a way to peace<p>Amid the death and suffering unleashed by Israel’s war on Gaza and the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, prospects for lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians appear ever more elusive. But when the war eventually ends, pressure will mount for negotiations to begin for a deal. When that day comes, how can opposing sides in such an intractable conflict find enough common ground to reach an agreement?</p>
<p>In this episode of <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/the-conversation-weekly-98901">The Conversation Weekly</a> podcast, we hear about a method called peace polling, tried out successfully in Northern Ireland, that could offer a blueprint for how to reach a settlement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.</p>
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<p>After living through decades of violence, in May 1998 the people of Northern Ireland were asked to vote in a referendum on a peace deal, known as the Good Friday Agreement. The referendum passed with a 71% majority. </p>
<p>Colin Irwin was not surprised. He’d been part of a team working for months alongside the formal negotiations on a series of public opinion polls in Northern Ireland. The questions were agreed with all the political parties involved in the negotiations, including some of those linked to the worst of the violence during Northern Ireland’s Troubles. Irwin says the most important poll he did was the one just before a deal was reached. </p>
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<p>We had a precis of the agreement and we asked people if they would accept it. Within one percentage point, we were accurate to what the final referendum was, by which time the parties knew that our polls were very accurate … They then knew that they wouldn’t be committing political suicide by signing up to the deal.</p>
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<p>Today, Irwin is a research fellow at the University of Liverpool in the UK. He’s worked to bring the method of peace polling developed in Northern Ireland to inform peace negotiations in a variety of conflicts around the world, from Syria to the Balkans and Sri Lanka. </p>
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<p>Peace polling can work in any context and we can always find out what people can accept. My personal view is that it always should be done in every conflict all the time so the world should know what the deal is and what can be accepted.</p>
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<p>In early 2009, Irwin conducted a peace poll in Israel and Palestine, meeting with political parties from all sides in the conflict, including Hamas. The only person who wouldn’t meet him, he says, was Benjamin Netanyahu. And he argues that since then, Israel <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-israel-failed-to-learn-from-the-northern-ireland-peace-process-220170">has failed to learn the lessons</a> from the Northern Ireland peace process. </p>
<p>Listen to <a href="https://pod.link/1550643487">The Conversation Weekly</a> podcast to hear Colin Irwin explain about how the Inuit helped inform the design of peace polling, and more about his work in Northern Ireland and Israel-Palestine. The episode also includes an interview with Jonathan Este, senior international editor at The Conversation in the UK. </p>
<p>A transcript of this <a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/3170/Peace_Polls_Transcript.docx.pdf?1710953332">episode is now available</a>. </p>
<p><em>This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Gemma Ware and Mend Mariwany, with assistance from Katie Flood. Sound design was by Eloise Stevens, and our theme music is by Neeta Sarl. Stephen Khan is our global executive editor, Alice Mason runs our social media and Soraya Nandy does our transcripts.</em></p>
<p><em>You can find us on X, formerly known as Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/TC_Audio">@TC_Audio</a>, on Instagram at <a href="https://www.instagram.com/theconversationdotcom/">theconversationdotcom</a> or <a href="mailto:podcast@theconversation.com">via email</a>. You can also subscribe to The Conversation’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/newsletter">free daily email here</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>Listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our <a href="https://feeds.acast.com/public/shows/60087127b9687759d637bade">RSS feed</a> or find out <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-listen-to-the-conversations-podcasts-154131">how else to listen here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224085/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Colin John Irwin receives funding from: Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, Center for Democracy and Reconciliation in South East Europe, Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, OneVoice, Royal Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (now FCDO), Economic and Social Research Council (UK ESRC), United Nations, InterPeace, Health and Welfare Canada, Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), British Academy, Norwegian Peoples Aid, The Day After, No Peace Without Justice, US Department of State, Local Administrations Council Unit (Syria), Asia Foundation, Department for International Development (UK DFID), OpenAI, Atlantic Philanthropies, Universities: Dalhousie, Manitoba, Syracuse, Pennsylvania, Queens Belfast, Liverpool. Also member of the World Association of Public Opinion Research (WAPOR) which promotes freedom to publish public opinion polls and sets international professional standards.</span></em></p>In The Conversation Weekly podcast, researcher Colin Irwin explains how peace polls can help build consensus in conflict negotiations – but only if all parties are at the table.Gemma Ware, Editor and Co-Host, The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The ConversationLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2227182024-02-03T17:28:29Z2024-02-03T17:28:29ZUS raids in Iraq and Syria: How retaliatory airstrikes affect network of Iran-backed militias<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573194/original/file-20240203-29-7pf0p7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C126%2C1594%2C1069&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The headquarters of an Iranian-linked group in Anbar, Iraq was among the sites targeted by U.S. bombers.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/view-of-destruction-after-the-us-warplanes-carried-out-an-news-photo/1974225653?adppopup=true">Hashd al-Shaabi Media Office/Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>U.S. bombers <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us-starts-retaliatory-strikes-iraq-syria-officials-2024-02-02/">struck dozens of sites</a> across Iraq and Syria on Feb. 2, 2024, to avenge a drone attack that killed three American service members just days earlier.</em></p>
<p><em>The retaliatory strikes were the first following a deadly assault on a U.S. base in Jordan that U.S. officials blamed on Iranian-backed militias. Sites associated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) were among those hit by American bombs.</em></p>
<p><em>The Conversation U.S. turned to American University’s <a href="https://www.american.edu/profiles/students/sh5958a.cfm">Sara Harmouch</a> and <a href="https://www.westpoint.edu/social-sciences/profile/nakissa_jahanbani">Nakissa Jahanbani</a> at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center – both experts on Iran’s relationship with its network of proxies – to explain what the U.S. strikes hoped to achieve and what could happen next.</em></p>
<h2>Who was targeted in the U.S. retaliatory strikes?</h2>
<p>The U.S. response extended beyond targeting Al-Muqawama al-Islamiyah fi al-Iraq, or <a href="https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/profile-islamic-resistance-iraq">Islamic Resistance in Iraq</a>, the entity <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/01/29/us-troops-jordan-iraq-militias/">claiming responsibility</a> for the drone attack on Jan. 28. </p>
<p>This term, Islamic Resistance in Iraq, does not refer to a single group per se. Rather, it encompasses an umbrella organization that has, since around 2020, integrated various Iran-backed militias in the region. </p>
<p>Iran <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68126137#">officially denied</a> any involvement in the Jan. 28 drone strike. But the Islamic Resistance in Iraq is known to be part of the networks of militia groups that Tehran supports with money, weapons and training through the <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/irans-revolutionary-guards">Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force</a>.</p>
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<p>In recent months, parts of this network of Iran-backed militias have <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/what-is-irans-axis-resistance-which-groups-are-involved-2024-01-29/">claimed responsibility</a> for more than 150 attacks on bases housing U.S. forces in Syria and Iraq.</p>
<p>As such, the U.S. <a href="https://www.centcom.mil/MEDIA/PRESS-RELEASES/Press-Release-View/Article/3665602/centcom-statement-on-us-strikes-in-iraq-and-syria/">retaliatory strikes</a> targeted over 85 sites across Iraq and Syria, all associated with Iranian-supported groups and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.</p>
<p>The U.S. operation’s stated aim is to deter further Iranian-backed aggression. Specifically, in Syria, the U.S. executed several airstrikes, reportedly resulting in the death of at least <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/03/world/middleeast/at-least-18-members-of-iran-backed-groups-were-killed-in-syria-monitoring-group-says.html#:%7E:text=The%20aftermath%20of%20the%20U.S.,16%20people%20had%20been%20killed%2C">18 militia group members</a> and the destruction of dozens of locations in <a href="https://www.syriahr.com/en/324467/">Al-Mayadeen and Deir el-Zour</a>, a key stronghold of Iranian-backed forces.</p>
<p>In Iraq, the Popular Mobilization Forces, a state security apparatus comprising groups backed by Iran, reported that U.S. strikes resulted in the deaths of <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us-launches-retaliatory-strikes-iraq-syria-nearly-40-reported-killed-2024-02-03/">16 of its members</a>, including both fighters and medics. </p>
<p>The U.S. response was notably more robust than other recent actions against such groups, reflecting an escalation in efforts to counter the threats posed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its affiliates.</p>
<h2>What do we know about the network targeted in the strike?</h2>
<p>Initially, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq emerged as a response to foreign military presence and political interventions, especially after <a href="https://www.cfr.org/timeline/iraq-war">the 2003 U.S.-led invasion</a> of Iraq. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq acted as a collective term for pro-Tehran Iraqi militias, allowing them to launch attacks under a single banner. Over time, it evolved to become a front for Iran-backed militias operating beyond Iraq, including those in Syria and Lebanon.</p>
<p>Today, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/drone-attack-on-american-troops-risks-widening-middle-east-conflict-and-drawing-in-iran-us-tensions-222216">Islamic Resistance in Iraq</a> operates as a cohesive force rather than as a singular entity. That is to say, as a network its objectives often align with Iran’s goal of preserving its influence across the region, but on a national level – in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon – the groups have their distinct agendas.</p>
<p>Operating under this one banner of Islamic Resistance, these militias effectively conceal the identities of the actual perpetrators in their operations. This was seen in the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/biden-says-three-us-service-members-killed-drone-attack-us-forces-jordan-2024-01-28/">deadly Jan. 28, 2024, attack on Tower 22</a>, a U.S. military base in Jordan. Although it is evident that an Iranian-supported militia orchestrated the drone assault, pinpointing the specific faction within this broad coalition is difficult.</p>
<p>This deliberate strategy of obscuring the particular source of attacks hinders direct attribution and poses challenges for countries attempting to identify and retaliate against the precise culprits. </p>
<h2>What are the strikes expected to accomplish?</h2>
<p>U.S. Central Command <a href="https://www.centcom.mil/MEDIA/PRESS-RELEASES/Press-Release-View/Article/3665602/centcom-statement-on-us-strikes-in-iraq-and-syria/">said on Feb. 2</a> that the operation’s aim is to significantly impair the operational capabilities, weaponry and supply networks of the IRGC and its Iranian-backed proxies.</p>
<p>The strikes targeted key assets such as command and control centers, intelligence facilities, storage locations for rockets, missiles, drones and logistics and munitions facilities. The goal is not only to degrade their current operational infrastructure but also to deter future attacks. </p>
<p>The action followed the discovery of an <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us-believes-drone-that-killed-soldiers-was-iranian-made-sources-2024-02-01/">Iranian-made drone</a> used in an attack on Jordan. </p>
<p>In a broader strategy to counter these groups, the U.S. has also <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/02/us/politics/us-iran-sanctions-charges.html">implemented new sanctions</a> against IRGC officers and officials, unsealed criminal charges against individuals involved in selling oil to benefit Hamas and Hezbollah, and conducted <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/02/us/politics/us-iran-sanctions-charges.html">cyberattacks</a> against Iran.</p>
<h2>How will this affect Iran’s strategy in the region?</h2>
<p>Prior to the U.S. response on Feb. 2, Kataib Hezbollah, a group linked to Iran, announced <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iraqs-kataib-hezbollah-suspends-military-operations-us-forces-statement-2024-01-30/">a halt</a> in attacks on American targets – a move seen as recognizing the serious implications of the Jordan drone incident. </p>
<p>It is possible that the cessation was the result of pressure from Tehran, though this has been <a href="https://thehill.com/newsletters/morning-report/4443950-us-plan-retaliate-against-iran-takes-shape/">met with skepticism</a> in Washington.</p>
<p>But the development nonetheless speaks to the interplay of <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-much-influence-does-iran-have-over-its-proxy-axis-of-resistance-hezbollah-hamas-and-the-houthis-221269">influence and autonomy</a> among the so-called Axis of Resistance groups, which oppose U.S. presence in the Middle East and are supported by Iran <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-much-influence-does-iran-have-over-its-proxy-axis-of-resistance-hezbollah-hamas-and-the-houthis-221269">to varying</a> degrees.</p>
<p>The U.S. airstrikes – <a href="https://www.centcom.mil/MEDIA/PRESS-RELEASES/Press-Release-View/Article/3665602/centcom-statement-on-us-strikes-in-iraq-and-syria/">combined with sanctions and charges</a> – serve as a multifaceted strategy to deter further aggression from Iran and its proxies. By targeting critical infrastructure such as command and control centers, intelligence operations and weapons storage facilities, the approach aims to undermine Iran’s ability to project power in Syria and Iraq.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.centcom.mil/MEDIA/PRESS-RELEASES/Press-Release-View/Article/3665602/centcom-statement-on-us-strikes-in-iraq-and-syria/">comprehensive and broad nature</a> of the U.S. response signals a robust stance against threats to regional stability and U.S. interests.</p>
<p>The aim is to isolate Iran diplomatically and economically, while squeezing its support for regional proxies. This underscores a commitment by the U.S. to counter Iranian influence that could potentially weaken Tehran’s regional engagement strategies, negotiation positions and capacity to form alliances.</p>
<p>However, the effectiveness of airstrikes and sanctions in deterring Iranian-backed aggression remains uncertain. Historical <a href="https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/how-iranian-backed-militias-do-political-signaling">trends suggest</a> that similar U.S. actions since the Oct. 7 Hamas assault in Israel, and as far back as 2017, have not completely halted attacks from Iranian-backed groups.</p>
<p>The Biden administration’s approach seeks to navigate this landscape without <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/02/politics/us-strikes-iraq-syria/index.html">escalating the conflict</a>, focusing on <a href="https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-01-31/iran-hamas-gaza-israel-war-terrorism">targeting</a> the financial mechanisms that <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-much-influence-does-iran-have-over-its-proxy-axis-of-resistance-hezbollah-hamas-and-the-houthis-221269">support Iranian proxies</a>. Yet the impact and repercussions of such sanctions on Iran and the broader regional dynamics is complex.</p>
<p>In the short term, any direct U.S. retaliation against Iranian interests could heighten regional tensions and exacerbate the cycle of <a href="https://theconversation.com/us-uk-airstrikes-risk-strengthening-houthi-rebels-position-in-yemen-and-the-region-221006">tit-for-tat strikes</a> between the U.S. and Iranian-backed forces, increasing the risk of a broader regional conflict. And given that the attack’s pretext involves the Israel-Hamas war, any U.S. response could indirectly affect the course of that conflict, impacting future diplomatic efforts and the regional balance of power. </p>
<p>Iran’s “<a href="https://www.newamerica.org/future-security/reports/whither-irgc-2020s/">forward defense” strategy</a> – focused on addressing threats externally before they become ones within its borders – would suggest that Iran will continue to support proxies through weaponry, funding and <a href="https://warontherocks.com/2023/11/how-iran-and-its-allies-hope-to-save-hamas/">tactical knowledge</a> to reduce the influence and legitimacy of the U.S. and its allies in the region.</p>
<p>This underscores the delicate balance required in responding to Iranian-backed aggression – aiming to safeguard U.S. interests while preventing an escalation into a wider regional confrontation.</p>
<p><em>Editor’s note: Parts of this story were included in <a href="https://theconversation.com/drone-attack-on-american-troops-risks-widening-middle-east-conflict-and-drawing-in-iran-us-tensions-222216">an article</a> published on Jan. 29, 2024.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222718/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The views, conclusions, and recommendations in this article are the authors’ own and do not reflect those of the Department of Defense or the U.S. government.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sara Harmouch does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>More than 85 locations linked to militias were hit in a robust response by Washington to an earlier deadly drone attack on a US base in Jordan.Sara Harmouch, PhD Candidate, School of Public Affairs, American UniversityNakissa Jahanbani, Assistant Professor at the Combating Terrorism Center, United States Military Academy West PointLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2210062024-01-12T18:57:11Z2024-01-12T18:57:11ZUS-UK airstrikes risk strengthening Houthi rebels’ position in Yemen and the region<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569063/original/file-20240112-29-67u6k4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C15%2C5276%2C3382&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Houthi supporters rally in Yemen following U.S.-U.K. airstrikes.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/in-this-handout-image-provided-by-the-uk-ministry-of-news-photo/1918198443?adppopup=true">Mohammed Hamoud/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The U.S.- and U.K.-led <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/11/us/politics/us-houthi-missile-strikes.html">strikes on the rebel Houthi group</a> in Yemen represent a dramatic new turn in the Middle East conflict – one that could have implications throughout the region.</p>
<p>The attacks of Jan. 11, 2024, hit around 60 targets at 16 sites, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/yemen-houthis-biden-retaliation-attacks-0804b93372cd5e874a0dd03513fe36a2">according to the U.S. Air Force’s Mideast command</a>, including in Yemen’s capital Sanaa, the main port of Hodeida and Saada, the birthplace of the Houthis in the country’s northwest.</p>
<p>The military action follows weeks of warning by the U.S. to the Houthis, ordering them to stop attacking commercial ships in the strategic strait of Bab el-Mandeb in the Red Sea. The Houthis – an armed militia backed by Iran that controls most of northern Yemen following a bitter <a href="https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/war-yemen">near-decadelong civil war</a> – have also <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-houthi-attacks-affect-both-the-israel-hamas-conflict-and-yemens-own-civil-war-and-could-put-pressure-on-us-saudi-arabia-216852">launched missiles and drones toward Israel</a>. </p>
<p>As an <a href="https://www.libarts.colostate.edu/people/mmahad/">expert on Yemeni politics</a>, I believe the U.S. attacks on the Houthis will have wide implications – not only for the Houthis and Yemen’s civil war, but also for the broader region where America maintains key allies. In short, the Houthis stand to gain politically from these U.S.-U.K. attacks as they support a narrative that the group has been cultivating: that they are freedom fighters fighting Western imperialism in the Muslim world.</p>
<h2>For Houthis, a new purpose</h2>
<p>The Israel-Gaza conflict has reinvigorated the Houthis – giving them a raison d'etre at a time when their status at home was diminishing.</p>
<p>By the time of the <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/hamass-october-7-attack-visualizing-data">Oct. 7 attack by Hamas militants</a> in Israel, the Houthis’ long conflict with Saudi Arabia, which backs the Yemeni <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/gulf-and-arabian-peninsula/yemen/yemen-s-houthi-takeover">government ousted by the Houthis</a> at the start of Yemen’s civil war in 2014, had quieted after an April 2022 cease-fire drastically reduced fighting.</p>
<p>Houthi missile strikes on Saudi cities ceased, and there were hopes that a <a href="https://press.un.org/en/2023/sc15258.doc.htm">truce could bring about a permanent end</a> to Yemen’s brutal conflict.</p>
<p>With fewer external threats, <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/yemens-civilians-besieged-on-all-sides/">domestic troubles</a> that <a href="https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/1925121/extreme-poverty-threatens-yemenis-living-under-houthi-rule">surfaced in Houthi-controlled areas</a> – poverty, unpaid government salaries, crumbling infrastructure – led to growing disquiet over Houthi governance. Public support for the Houthis slowly eroded without an outside aggressor to blame; Houthi leaders could no longer justify the hardships in Yemen as a required sacrifice to resist foreign powers, namely Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates.</p>
<p>But <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/israels-military-campaign-in-gaza-is-among-the-most-destructive-in-history-experts-say">Israel’s attacks in Gaza</a> have provided renewed purpose for Houthis. <a href="https://mecouncil.org/blog_posts/houthis-involvement-in-gaza-war-a-tactical-move/">Aligning with the Palestinian cause</a> has allowed Houthis to reassert their relevance and has reenergized their fighters and leadership.</p>
<p>By <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/14/yemens-houthis-say-they-fired-ballistic-missiles-towards-israel">firing missiles toward Israel</a>, the Houthis have portrayed themselves as the lone force in the Arab Peninsula standing up to Israel, unlike regional powers such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The militia is presenting to Yemenis and others in the region a different face than Arab governments that have, to date, been unwilling to take strong action against Israel.</p>
<p>In particular, Houthis are contrasting their worldview with that of Saudi Arabia, which prior to the October Hamas attack had been <a href="https://www.mei.edu/publications/saudi-israel-normalization-still-table">looking to normalize ties</a> with Israel.</p>
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<h2>Houthi’s PR machine</h2>
<p>The U.S. and U.K. strikes were, <a href="https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3644027/us-partners-forces-strike-houthi-military-targets-in-yemen/">the governments of both countries say</a>, in retaliation for persistent attacks by Houthis on international maritime vessels in the Red Sea and followed attempts at a diplomatic solution. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3643830/statement-by-secretary-of-defense-lloyd-j-austin-iii-on-coalition-strikes-in-ho/">aim is to</a> “disrupt and degrade the Houthis’ capabilities,” according to U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.</p>
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<img alt="A blurry picture shows an aircraft at night." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569069/original/file-20240112-23-x6hitm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569069/original/file-20240112-23-x6hitm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569069/original/file-20240112-23-x6hitm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569069/original/file-20240112-23-x6hitm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569069/original/file-20240112-23-x6hitm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569069/original/file-20240112-23-x6hitm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569069/original/file-20240112-23-x6hitm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A U.K. military aircraft takes off en route to Yemen on Jan. 11, 2024.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/in-this-handout-image-provided-by-the-uk-ministry-of-news-photo/1918198443?adppopup=true">UK Ministry of Defence via Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>But regardless of the intent or the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/12/how-the-us-uk-bombing-of-yemen-might-help-the-houthis">damage caused to the Houthis militarily</a>, the Western strikes may play into the group’s narrative, reinforcing the claim that they are fighting oppressive foreign enemies attacking Yemen. And this will only bolster the Houthis’ image among supporters.</p>
<p>Already, the Houthis have managed to rally domestic public support in the part of Yemen they control behind their actions since October 2023. </p>
<p>Dramatic <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/how-houthi-rebel-attacks-in-the-red-sea-threaten-global-shipping">seaborne raids</a> and the taking hostage of ships’ crews have generated viral footage that taps into Northern Yemeni nationalism. Turning a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67632940">captured vessel into a public attraction</a> attracted more attention domestically. </p>
<p>Following the U.S.-U.K. strikes on Houthi targets, Houthi spokesperson Yahya Saree has said the group would <a href="https://news.sky.com/video/yemen-houthi-general-says-attacks-will-not-pass-without-punishment-13046755">expand its attacks in the Red Sea</a>, saying any coalition attack on Yemen will prompt strikes on all shipping through the strategic Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which connects to the Arabian Sea at the southern end of the Red Sea.</p>
<h2>Weaponizing Palestinian sympathies</h2>
<p>Meanwhile, the Houthis have successfully managed to align the Palestinian cause with that of their own. Appeals through mosques in Yemen and cellphone text campaigns have raised donations for the Houthis by invoking Gaza’s plight. </p>
<p>The U.S.-U.K strikes may backfire for another reason, too: They evoke memories of <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/30-years-after-our-endless-wars-in-the-middle-east-began-still-no-end-in-sight/">Western military interventions</a> in the Muslim and Arab world. </p>
<p>The Houthis will no doubt exploit this. </p>
<p>When U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin initially <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/19/us-announces-10-nation-force-to-counter-houthi-attacks-in-red-sea">announced the formation of a 10-country coalition</a> to counter Houthi attacks in the Red Sea on Dec. 18, 2023, there were concerns over the lack of regional representation. Among countries in the Middle East and Muslim world, only Bahrain – home to the <a href="https://cnreurafcent.cnic.navy.mil/Installations/NSA-Bahrain/">U.S. Naval Forces Central Command and the U.S. 5th Fleet</a> – joined.</p>
<p>The absence of key regional powers such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Djibouti – where the U.S. has its only military base in Africa – raised <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/2023-12-17/ty-article-magazine/.premium/under-irans-auspices-houthis-turn-red-sea-to-an-independent-strategic-threat-zone/0000018c-7452-d48b-a5ec-745308440000">further doubts among observers</a> about the coalition’s ability to effectively counter the Houthis.</p>
<p>Muslim-majority countries were no doubt hesitant to support the coalition because of the sensitivity of the Palestinian cause, which by then the Houthis had successfully aligned themselves with.</p>
<p>But the lack of regional support leaves the U.S. and its coalition allies in a challenging position. Rather than being seen as protectors of maritime security, the U.S. – rather than the Houthis – are vulnerable to being framed in the region as the aggressor and escalating party. </p>
<p>This perception could damage U.S. credibility in the area and potentially serve as a recruitment tool for terrorist organizations like <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/al-qaeda-arabian-peninsula-aqap">al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula</a> and similar groups.</p>
<p>The U.S.’s <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/history-us-support-israel-runs-deep-growing-chorus/story?id=104957109">military and diplomatic support for Israel</a> throughout the current conflict also plays into skepticism in the region over the true objectives of the anti-Houthi missile strikes.</p>
<h2>Reigniting civil war?</h2>
<p>The Houthis’ renewed vigor and Western strikes on the group also have implications for Yemen’s civil war itself.</p>
<p>Since <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/gulf-and-arabian-peninsula/yemen/moment-truth-yemens-truce">the truce between</a> the two main protagonists in the conflict – Saudi Arabia and the Houthis – fighting between the Houthis and other groups in Yemen, such as the Southern Transitional Council, the Yemen Transitional Government and the National Resistance, has reached a deadlock. </p>
<p>Each group controls different parts of Yemen, and all seem to have accepted this deadlock. </p>
<p>But the U.S.-U.K. strikes put Houthi opponents in a difficult position. They will be hesitant to openly support Western intervention in Yemen or blame the Houthis for supporting Palestinans. There remains widespread sympathy for Gazans in Yemen – something that could give Houthis an opportunity to gain support in areas not under their control.</p>
<p>The Yemeni Transitional Government <a href="https://www.mofa-ye.org/Pages/25465/">issued a statement</a> following the U.S.-U.K. strikes that shows the predicament facing Houthi rivals. While blaming the Houthis’ “terrorist attacks” for “dragging the country into a military confrontation,” they also clearly reaffirmed support for Palestinians against “brutal Israeli aggression.”</p>
<p>While Houthi rivals will likely continue this balancing act, the Houthis face no such constraints – they can freely exploit the attacks to rally more support and gain a strategic advantage over their local rivals.</p>
<p>An emboldened Houthi group might also be less likely to accept the current status quo in Yemen and seize the moment to push for more control – potentially reigniting a civil war that had looked to be on the wane.</p>
<p>The Houthis thrive on foreign aggression to consolidate their power. Without this external conflict as a justification, the shortcomings of the Houthis’ political management become apparent, undermining their governance. During the civil war, Houthis were able to portray themselves as the defender of Yemen against Saudi influence. Now they can add U.S. and U.K. interference to the mix.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221006/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mahad Darar does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The raid follows warnings from Washington to cease attacks in the Red Sea − but it could serve to strengthen rebels and reignite civil war.Mahad Darar, Ph.D. Student of Political Science, Colorado State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2206602024-01-10T02:26:13Z2024-01-10T02:26:13ZSouth Africa is taking Israel to court for genocide in Palestine. What does it mean for the war in Gaza?<p>South Africa has taken Israel to the <a href="https://www.icj-cij.org/case/192">International Court of Justice</a> (ICJ, also known as the World Court) in The Hague claiming genocide has been committed against Palestinians during the Gaza conflict. </p>
<p>A charge of genocide before the court in the midst of a heated armed conflict is exceptional. </p>
<p>Likewise, the significance of South Africa’s claim against Israel has immense cultural, diplomatic, historical, and political significance. Israel has rejected South Africa’s claim and vowed to <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67866342">contest the case</a> against it.</p>
<p>International court cases such as these typically run for many years before a final judgement is reached, however South Africa has also requested <a href="https://www.icj-cij.org/case/192/press-releases">provisional measures</a> – a form of international injunction – and preliminary hearings will take place in The Hague on January 11 and 12. </p>
<p>A decision on South Africa’s provisional measures request will most likely be made by the end of January with the potential to have a profound impact on Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/after-3-months-of-devastation-in-the-israel-hamas-war-is-anyone-winning-220644">After 3 months of devastation in the Israel-Hamas war, is anyone 'winning'?</a>
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<h2>Which laws are in question?</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.1_Convention%20on%20the%20Prevention%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Genocide.pdf">1948 Convention</a> on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention) was adopted following the 1940s holocaust by the Nazi regime, which resulted in the deaths of six million Jewish people. </p>
<p>The Genocide Convention was one of the most significant responses by the then fledgling United Nations to the holocaust. It was intended to clearly define genocide, prevent future genocides, and make nation states accountable for genocide. </p>
<p>There are a total of 153 parties to the Genocide Convention, including Israel and South Africa, and it is widely seen as one of the pillars of the United Nations human rights system. </p>
<p>States are accountable for genocide before the International Court of Justice, while individuals can be charged with the crime of genocide and placed on trial at the International Criminal Court.</p>
<p>Genocide is <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-prevention-and-punishment-crime-genocide">defined in the Convention</a> as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” and extends to:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>killing members of the group, or causing serious bodily harm to members of the group</p></li>
<li><p>deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction </p></li>
<li><p>imposing measures to prevent births.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2>What is South Africa’s case about?</h2>
<p>South Africa’s case against Israel under the Genocide Convention was commenced on December 29 2023 following lodgement of an <a href="https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20231228-app-01-00-en.pdf">84 page application</a> instituting the proceedings. </p>
<p>South Africa has brought the case by relying on the principle that as a party to the Genocide Convention, it has an obligation to enforce legal rights owed to all people that genocide not be allowed. The claim could have been commenced by any other party to the convention, however, South Africa has been <a href="https://www.dirco.gov.za/south-africa-calls-for-the-international-community-to-hold-israel-accountable-for-breaches-of-international-law/">raising concerns</a> about genocide in Gaza since October 30.</p>
<p>The claim gives an historical context to Israel’s conduct in Palestine, recounts the Hamas terrorist attacks on October 7, and details Israel’s subsequent Gaza military operations. </p>
<p>Particular attention is given to the actions and conduct of Israeli political and military leaders, especially their statements as to how Israel intended to respond to the Hamas attacks, and the extent and scale of Israel’s military operations and military objectives in Gaza. </p>
<p>South Africa then details Israel’s actual military conduct during the Gaza campaign and the consequences for Palestinian civilians. This conduct is linked directly back to acts of genocide as defined in the Genocide Convention.</p>
<p>South Africa’s court case takes two forms: a claim that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, and the urgent request for provisional measures (international legal speak for expediting the process). </p>
<p>South Africa has requested that the court order that Israel’s political and military leaders, and Israel’s military, immediately cease any activities that amount to an ongoing campaign of genocide against the Palestinian people. </p>
<p>South Africa will need to prove, both in law and in facts, that the case is admissible, that the World Court has jurisdiction to hear this claim, and that the application is urgent, requiring orders to prevent irreparable harm. </p>
<p>Importantly at this stage, South Africa does not need to conclusively prove genocide has taken place. That comes at the later phase, called the Merits phase. South Africa does, however, need to demonstrate that Palestinians face irreparable harm and that, on the facts, Israel’s conduct could be considered to be acts of genocide.</p>
<p>Israel will no doubt robustly resist any assertion genocide is occurring and argue its political and military leaders are acting consistently with international law in response to the threat posed by Hamas. Particular attention will probably be given to Israel’s right of self-defence following the October 7 attacks.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-foreign-policy-under-ramaphosa-has-seen-diplomatic-tools-being-used-to-provide-leadership-as-global-power-relations-shift-218966">South Africa's foreign policy under Ramaphosa has seen diplomatic tools being used to provide leadership as global power relations shift</a>
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<h2>How do cases like these work?</h2>
<p>The International Court of Justice has been thrust into the middle of the Israel-Hamas conflict. </p>
<p>However, it is not being asked to play the role of the United Nations Security Council and settle that dispute. The court’s role, as a United Nations organ is purely to apply the Genocide Convention and international law. </p>
<p>It will, nevertheless, be acutely aware of the significance of its role, especially in the face of claims of an ongoing genocide. This has been reflected in how it has moved quickly to hear South Africa’s case. </p>
<p>There are two potential outcomes from South Africa’s provisional measures request. </p>
<p>The court may decline to order provisional measures. It may, for example, find it lacks jurisdiction and that South Africa’s case is inadmissible on technical legal grounds, or the facts do not support the claims made. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/hamas-use-of-sexual-violence-is-an-all-too-common-part-of-modern-war-but-not-in-all-conflicts-219301">Hamas' use of sexual violence is an all-too-common part of modern war − but not in all conflicts</a>
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<p>Or the court may uphold South Africa’s request and order provisional measures. Any provisional measures ruling against Israel would require a radical modification of Israel’s military operations in Gaza. </p>
<p>The court cannot, however, enforce its decisions. In 2022, for example, Russia ignored an International Court of Justice <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/16/un-international-court-of-justice-orders-russia-to-halt-invasion-of-ukraine">provisional measures order</a> following its invasion of Ukraine.</p>
<p>No matter what the court orders, Israel will retain its right of <a href="https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2023/12/7-10-the-question-of-israels-right-to-self-defense-under-international-law/">self-defence</a> against Hamas.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220660/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Donald Rothwell receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>Today, hearings will begin in the International Court of Justice, where South Africa is accusing Israel of genocide in Palestine. How will the proceedings work, and what does it mean for the war?Donald Rothwell, Professor of International Law, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2207452024-01-09T13:57:06Z2024-01-09T13:57:06ZWhy both Israel and Hezbollah are eager to avoid tit-for-tat attacks escalating into full-blown war<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568359/original/file-20240109-23-6r2dd4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C0%2C1238%2C788&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Hezbollah commander Wissam al-Tawil, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/LebanonIsraelPalestinians/63dcedde8d9341cc990d4edb56d34a01/photo?Query=israel%20hezbollah&mediaType=photo&sortBy=creationdatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=2433&currentItemNo=11">Hezbollah Military Media, via AP</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-strike-lebanon-kills-senior-commander-elite-hezbollah-unit-security-2024-01-08/">killing of a Hezbollah commander in southern Lebanon</a> on Jan. 8, 2024, has raised concern that the conflict between Israel and Hamas could escalate into a regional war.</em></p>
<p><em>Wissam al-Tawil, the head of a unit that operates on Lebanon’s southern border, was killed in a targeted Israeli airstrike just days after a senior Hamas leader was assassinated in Beirut and amid sporadic attacks by Hezbollah on Israeli targets.</em></p>
<p><em>But how likely is a full-scale conflict between Israel and Hezbollah? The Conversation turned to <a href="https://kroc.nd.edu/faculty-and-staff/asher-kaufman/">Asher Kaufman, an expert on Lebanon-Israel relations</a> at the University of Notre Dame, to assess what could happen next.</em></p>
<h2>What do we know about the latest strike?</h2>
<p>We know that it was an <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/08/middleeast/hezbollah-commander-killed-intl/index.html">Israeli drone that killed al-Tawil</a>. Hezbollah has since released picture of him with Hassan Nasrallah, the group’s secretary general, and Qassem Soleiman, the former head of Quds Force – one of Iran’s main military branches – who was assassinated by the U.S. in 2020. This suggests that al-Tawil was a major target for Israel, as he clearly had connections with top figures in Lebanon and Iran.</p>
<p>The fact that it was a drone attack is also important. This suggests that the operation was based on good Israeli intelligence on al-Tawil’s whereabouts. This wasn’t a chance encounter. This was clearly a calculated and precise attack.</p>
<p>After the operation, Israel said al-Tawil was responsible for a recent <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-admits-mount-meron-air-traffic-control-base-damaged-in-hezbollah-attack/">missile attack on Israel’s Mount Meron intelligence base</a> in northern Israel. That attack was in response to the earlier assassination of a Hamas leader in Beirut.</p>
<p>So what we are seeing is a pattern of tit-for-tat strikes.</p>
<h2>So this doesn’t mark an escalation?</h2>
<p>I don’t see the killing of al-Tawil as an escalation, as such. Rather, it is a targeted retaliation by Israel to the earlier Hezbollah strike on one of their facilities. </p>
<p>There are some important things to note in that regard. It was just 10 kilometers north of the Israel-Lebanon border. This is still within the geographical area where the two sides have been exchanging fire since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas in Israel. So this is still within the realm of border skirmishes, to my mind, and falls short of full war.</p>
<h2>Is it in the interests of Israel to escalate conflict?</h2>
<p>I don’t think either side is interested in full-blown war, for different reasons.</p>
<p>For Israel, the pressure is from outside the country. There is immense international pressure on Israel not to start a full-blown war with Hezbollah. Indeed, U.S. Secrtary of State Antony Blinken is currently in the region and visiting Israel with that message: Do not start a war with Hezbollah.</p>
<p>I think there is a realization, certainly in the international community, that a full-blown war between Hezbollah and Israel will decimate Lebanon and also lead to major destruction in Israel.</p>
<h2>What about pressure within Israel?</h2>
<p>Certainly within Israel there is a strong lobby for war with Hezbollah. The thinking among Israeli military hawks here is a powerful military blow against Hezbollah would allow people living in the north of Israel to return to <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/20/middleeast/israel-lebanon-hezbollah-tiberias-evacuation-intl/index.html">homes they evacuated</a> when it looked like war might be in the cards.</p>
<p>Indeed, the Israeli Ministry of Defense wanted preemptive war with Hezbollah after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas. But U.S. President Joe Biden stopped that from happening for the same reason that Blinken is currently trying to dissuade Israel from further escalating the conflict.</p>
<h2>And what about Hezbollah? How might it respond?</h2>
<p>Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, is between a rock and a hard place. The majority of Lebanese people clearly do not want a war. But any attack resulting in the deaths of high-ranking Hezbollah figures will be met by internal demands for action.</p>
<p>But there is a tipping point for Hezbollah, as there is for the Israelis too – which is why this tit-for-tat pattern is such a risky matter.</p>
<p>On the Lebanese side, if Israel hits strategic Hezbollah assets deep in Lebanon – that is, outside the border areas – or launch an attack that leads to mass civilian deaths then it might lead to full-blown conflict. But so far that has not been the case. The attacks by Israel have been surgical and precise. In the case of the Hamas leader killed in Beirut, it was only Palestinians killed.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A poster of a man with a beard hangs outside a destroyed building." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568360/original/file-20240109-19-houuq6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568360/original/file-20240109-19-houuq6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568360/original/file-20240109-19-houuq6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568360/original/file-20240109-19-houuq6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568360/original/file-20240109-19-houuq6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568360/original/file-20240109-19-houuq6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568360/original/file-20240109-19-houuq6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A banner of Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah hangs on the Beirut site where a Hamas leader was killed in an Israeli attack.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/this-photograph-taken-on-january-8-2024-shows-a-banner-news-photo/1908219508?adppopup=true">Anwar Amro/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>It was a humiliation for Hezbollah for sure – it happened in Hezbollah’s stronghold in southern Beirut. But it wasn’t on Hezbollah assets, such as personnel, strategic sites or command centers. Israel has limited its attacks largely to the border area.</p>
<p>Public sentiment is still very strongly against war in Lebanon. Certainly there is strong sympathy for Gazans. But the prevailing sentiment in Lebanon is that support cannot come at the price of Lebanese lives.</p>
<p>And that suits the Hezbollah hierarchy at present. They know that the threat of war is their most important card. Once played, they can’t use it again.</p>
<h2>Is there a diplomatic way forward?</h2>
<p>Both parties are looking at diplomacy. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has said that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/01/07/israel-hezbollah-lebanon-blinken/">his country’s preferred path</a> is “an agreed-upon diplomatic settlement.” Meanwhile, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu <a href="https://www.jns.org/netanyahu-tells-hezbollah-to-learn-from-what-idf-did-to-hamas/">has said the goal of returning Israeli citizens</a> to their homes in the north would be done “diplomatically” if possible. But added, “If not, we will work in other ways.”</p>
<p>Similarly in Lebanon, the talk is of a diplomatic solution – notably by enforcing <a href="https://peacemaker.un.org/israellebanon-resolution1701">United Nations Resolution 1701</a>, which calls for Hezbollah to withdraw north of the Litani River and for Israel to withdraw to the international border.</p>
<p>So it isn’t that there isn’t a credible diplomatic path. And the fact that both sides use the language of diplomacy suggests there is no appetite for full-blown war.</p>
<p>Indeed, the U.S. has long been trying to get Israel and Lebanon to resolve disputes over their shared borders.</p>
<p>Both sides signed a <a href="https://www.state.gov/historic-agreement-establishing-a-permanent-israel-lebanon-maritime-boundary/">U.S.-brokered maritime agreement in 2022</a>, and there have been attempts at a similar deal in regards to the land boundary. There remained disagreement over 13 spots along the border. But since Oct. 7, the U.S. has tried to use the prospect of a negotiated land solution based on U.N. Resolution 1701 to diffuse tension between Israel and Lebanon. </p>
<p>The Lebanese government has said it welcomes U.S. efforts to resolve the disputes. On the Israeli side, too, they are going along with U.S. attempts to keep U.N. Resolution 1701 on the table – I think, mainly to keep America on side.</p>
<h2>Does Iran have any role in influencing Hezbollah’s response?</h2>
<p>Iran has immense influence over Hezbollah – it pays for military operations and equipment. </p>
<p>But Hezbollah is not only an Iranian proxy; it has domestic considerations, and its interests lie with the Lebanese political scene. For that reason, Hezbollah is attuned to the domestic popular pressure in Lebanon against a war.</p>
<p>Also, I don’t think Iran wants to see an escalation. Like Hezbollah, Iranian leaders know that threat of war – through their proxies in the region – is their most valuable asset. And I don’t think Iran is ready to use it.</p>
<p>Iran might also be concerned that if fighting escalates, then it will be drawn into war. Iran has so far played a smart game since the Oct. 7 attacks – it has stayed away from the battlefield, while supporting the sporadic attacks on Israel by Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen and pro-Iranian militias in Iraq and Syria. </p>
<p>But a full war between Israel and Hezbollah may draw Iran into direct confrontation with Israel and the U.S. And that is something that leaders in Tehran will most likely not want, especially after a terror attack in Iran on Jan. 3 exposed how vulnerable Iran is internally.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220745/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Asher Kaufman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Israel and Hezbollah are engaged in tit-for-tat attacks, but a diplomatic path still exists to avoid an escalation.Asher Kaufman, Professor of History and Peace Studies, University of Notre DameLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2206442024-01-07T01:47:18Z2024-01-07T01:47:18ZAfter 3 months of devastation in the Israel-Hamas war, is anyone ‘winning’?<p>The 19th century German war strategist and field marshal Helmuth von Moltke famously <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/strategy-9780199325153?cc=us&lang=en&">coined</a> the aphorism “No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy”. His observation might well be applied to the tragedy we are witnessing in Gaza.</p>
<p>Three months after the current conflict began, civilians have borne the brunt of the violence on both sides, with the deaths of more than 22,000 Palestinians in Gaza and 1,200 Israelis. Some 85% of Gazans <a href="https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-news-01-03-2024-3b77b0c36bf2cd9922b7a484234bef5f">have also been displaced</a> and a quarter of the population is facing a famine, according to the United Nations. </p>
<p>The conflict still has a long way to run and may be headed towards stalemate. From a geopolitical perspective, here’s where the main players stand at the start of the new year. </p>
<h2>Israel: limited success …</h2>
<p>Israel has so far failed to achieve either of its primary war aims: the destruction of Hamas and freedom for the remainder of the 240 Israelis taken hostage on October 7.</p>
<p>Hamas fighters continue to use their tunnel network to ambush Israeli soldiers and are firing rockets at Israel, albeit in much lower volumes: 27 were <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/at-stroke-of-midnight-hamas-attacks-israel-with-heavy-new-year-rocket-barrage/">fired</a> at the start of the new year, <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/idf-9500-rockets-fired-at-israel-since-oct-7-including-3000-in-1st-hours-of-onslaught/">compared</a> with 3,000 in the first hours of the conflict on October 7.</p>
<p>There are still around <a href="https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2023/12/20/israel-isnt-sure-what-to-do-about-the-hostages-in-gaza">130 Israelis</a> being held hostage, and only <a href="https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2023/12/five-potential-next-steps-for-the-hostage-situation.html">one hostage</a> has been freed by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), as opposed to releases arranged through Qatari and Egyptian mediators. Israeli society is divided between those who want to prioritise negotiations to release the hostages and those who want to prioritise the elimination of Hamas.</p>
<p>Israel achieved an important symbolic success with the apparent targeted killing of Hamas deputy leader <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-lebanon-hamas-saleh-al-arouri-fears-widening-regional-conflict/">Saleh al-Arouri</a> in Beirut on January 2. Though Israel has not formally claimed responsibility, there is little doubt it was <a href="https://www.axios.com/2024/01/02/hamas-saleh-arouri-killed-beirut-hezbollah-israel-gaza">behind</a> the killing.</p>
<p>But the two Gaza–based Hamas leaders Israel most wants to eliminate, political leader Yahya Sinwar and military leader Mohammed Deif, are still at large.</p>
<p>Israel still has US support in the UN Security Council, which has <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/22/politics/un-security-council-resolution-israel-gaza-resolution/index.html">managed to pass</a> only one toothless resolution since the war began. But the Biden administration is <a href="https://apnews.com/article/biden-israel-hamas-oct-7-44c4229d4c1270d9cfa484b664a22071">publicly pressuring</a> Israel to change its tactics to minimise Palestinian casualties.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/israel-hamas-war-a-ceasefire-is-now-in-sight-will-israels-prime-minister-agree-219958">Israel-Hamas war: a ceasefire is now in sight. Will Israel’s prime minister agree?</a>
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<h2>…and facing a ‘day after’ conundrum</h2>
<p>The Israeli government is also divided on how Gaza should be run when the fighting stops. </p>
<p>Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has <a href="https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-777731">said</a> he won’t accept Gaza remaining “Hamastan” (Hamas-controlled) or becoming “Fatahstan” (ruled by the Palestinian Authority, which is dominated by the secular Fatah party). US President Joe Biden <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/biden-says-palestinian-authority-should-ultimately-govern-gaza-west-bank-2023-11-18/">prefers</a> a Gaza government led by a reformed Palestinian Authority, but Netanyahu has rejected this and has not articulated an alternative plan.</p>
<p>Defence Minister Yoav Gallant this week <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/gallants-post-war-gaza-plan-palestinians-to-run-civil-affairs-with-global-task-force/">outlined</a> what seems to be his own plan for Gaza, involving governance by unspecified Palestinian authorities. His plan did not immediately have Israeli cabinet approval and has been <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4391112-dangerous-ideas-about-the-day-after-in-gaza/">slammed</a> by hard-right ministers. </p>
<p>Two of these, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben–Gvir, have <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/likud-minister-slams-smotrich-ben-gvirs-unrealistic-call-for-gazan-emigration/#:%7E:text=Ben%20Gvir%20hit%20back%20at,will%20protect%20the%20IDF%20soldiers.%E2%80%9D">called</a> for a solution that encourages the Palestinian population to emigrate and for Israeli settlers to return to the strip. That would be <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20240103-us-condemns-far-right-israeli-ministers-call-for-palestinians-to-emigrate-from-gaza">unacceptable</a> to the Biden administration.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1742863603139743805"}"></div></p>
<p>Israel’s massive bombing campaign has also slowly turned international opinion against it, as expressed in the UN General Assembly <a href="https://apnews.com/article/un-assembly-israel-palestinians-hamas-vote-resolution-bffc37b2ecc444d906492008cde0aaf6">vote</a> last month in which 153 of the 193 member states called for a ceasefire.</p>
<p>Are Netanyahu’s days now numbered? The current issue of The Economist <a href="https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/01/03/binyamin-netanyahu-is-botching-the-war-time-to-sack-him">features a headline</a> that reads “Binyamin Netanyahu is botching the war. Time to sack him”. Whether or not that’s a fair judgement, it’s clear that internal divisions and indecision within his government are hindering Israel’s prosecution of the war.</p>
<h2>Hamas – still standing</h2>
<p>The militant group has obviously been hurt. Israel claims to have <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/israel-gaza-latest-hamas-war-sky-news-blog-12978800?postid=6736630">killed or captured</a> between 8,000 and 9,000 of Hamas’ approximately 30,000–strong fighting force – though it has not explained how it calculates militant deaths. </p>
<p>Hamas’ main achievement is that it is still standing. To win, the militant group does not have to defeat Israel – it needs merely to survive the IDF onslaught.</p>
<p>Hamas can claim some positives. Its attack on October 7 has put the Palestinian issue at the top of the Middle East agenda. </p>
<p>Citizens in the Arab states that have signed peace agreements with Israel are clearly angry. And an Israeli-Saudi agreement to normalise relations between the countries, which had been imminent before the conflict, is off the table for now.</p>
<p>Opinion polling also <a href="https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-palestinians-opinion-poll-wartime-views-a0baade915619cd070b5393844bc4514">shows support</a> for Hamas has risen from 12% to 44% in the West Bank and from 38% to 42% in Gaza in the past three months. If it were possible to hold fair Palestinian elections now, they could produce results Israel and the US would not like.</p>
<h2>United States – weakness in dealing with Israel</h2>
<p>Biden embraced Netanyahu immediately after the Hamas attack, but US efforts since then to influence Israel’s war plans have not yielded any results.</p>
<p>Secretary of State Antony Blinken failed in his effort to persuade Israel to end the war by the start of the new year. His <a href="https://apnews.com/article/us-turkey-israel-greece-gaza-hamas-jordan-36e5e1be205d5200916fd447c8c8e455">current visit</a> to the region is unlikely to yield any major changes.</p>
<p>Moreover, divisions in the US may hurt Biden in the lead–up to the presidential election in November. Young, college–educated progressives, who tend to vote Democratic, have taken part in demonstrations against Biden’s public support for Israel’s right to defend itself, if not its way of doing so. </p>
<p>These progressives won’t vote for the almost–certain Republican candidate, Donald Trump. But they could stay home on election day, handing the election to Trump.</p>
<p>US support for Ukraine has also become a casualty of the war. Republicans, taking their cue from Trump, are prioritising support for Israel and stopping the flow of migrants across the US-Mexico border. They are losing interest in Ukraine – which clearly benefits Russian President Vladimir Putin. Those benefits will be reinforced if Trump wins the presidency again.</p>
<h2>United Nations – irrelevant</h2>
<p>The UN has also failed in its mission of maintaining world peace. The only Security Council resolution on the war meant nothing, as Russia was pleased to <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/22/un-security-council-gaza-aid-00133112">point out</a>. </p>
<p>The recent UN General Assembly resolution illustrated Israel’s growing isolation, but has done nothing to change the course of the war. UN Secretary–General Antonio Guterres has been powerless to influence either Israel or Hamas.</p>
<h2>Iran – watching for opportunities</h2>
<p>The Hezbollah militant group will do a lot of huffing and puffing over the killing of al-Arouri in a Hezbollah-controlled part of Beirut. But it takes its orders from Tehran, which still shows no sign of wanting to become directly involved in the war. </p>
<p>That said, Iran appears to have no problem with its proxies – Hezbollah in Lebanon and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-yemens-houthis-are-getting-involved-in-the-israel-hamas-war-and-how-it-could-disrupt-global-shipping-219220">Houthis in Yemen</a> – providing token support for Hamas through limited rocket, drone and artillery attacks.</p>
<p>Iran is likely to be reinforced in this approach by the bombings at the tomb of former Quds Force commander <a href="https://theconversation.com/iran-vows-revenge-for-soleimanis-killing-but-heres-why-it-wont-seek-direct-confrontation-with-the-us-129440">Qassem Soleimani</a> last week, which killed almost 100 Iranians. The bombings have been claimed by the Islamic State, which will likely make Iran more focused on its internal security than on assisting Hamas.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-yemens-houthis-are-getting-involved-in-the-israel-hamas-war-and-how-it-could-disrupt-global-shipping-219220">Why Yemen's Houthis are getting involved in the Israel-Hamas war and how it could disrupt global shipping</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220644/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian Parmeter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Israel has seen limited success in its primary war aims, while Hamas can claim a partial victory because it is still standing. But is the conflict headed towards a stalemate?Ian Parmeter, Research Scholar, Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2199582023-12-18T03:20:04Z2023-12-18T03:20:04ZIsrael-Hamas war: a ceasefire is now in sight. Will Israel’s prime minister agree?<p>The mistaken killing of <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-16/israel-kills-hostages-mistakenly-in-gaza/103237282">three Israeli hostages</a> by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) at the weekend has substantially increased pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept a ceasefire in the war against Hamas.</p>
<p>The Biden administration is exerting maximum pressure to convince the Israeli government that the downsides of its prosecution of the war, particularly the shockingly high Palestinian civilian death toll, now outweigh the potential gains.</p>
<p>During a visit to Israel earlier this month, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Netanyahu and his cabinet they would have to <a href="https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2023/12/14/israels-current-large-scale-operation-is-the-last-one-in-gaza">end the offensive</a> by the new year. </p>
<p>National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan visited Israel on the weekend to deliver the same message, emphasising that the US wanted to <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/live-blog/israel-hamas-war-live-updates-rcna130070">see results</a> on its demands to Israel to avoid civilian casualties in Gaza.</p>
<p>Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin is currently on a trip to the Middle East, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/live-blog/israel-hamas-war-live-updates-rcna130070">including a stopover</a> in Israel to discuss the “eventual cessation of high-intensity ground operations and air strikes”. </p>
<p>Earlier in the month, Austin <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4339335-lloyd-austin-israel-risks-defeat-if-civilians-not-protected/#:%7E:text=Defense-,Israel%20risks%20'strategic%20defeat'%20if%20civilians%20aren',t%20protected%2C%20Pentagon%20chief%20says&text=Secretary%20of%20Defense%20Lloyd%20Austin,group%20Hamas%20in%20the%20region.">warned</a> that Israel’s killing of Palestinian civilians risked driving them into the arms of the enemy – replacing “a tactical victory with a strategic defeat”.</p>
<p>Finally President Joe Biden, who won enormous kudos in Israel for his visit in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attacks on October 7, has <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/12/politics/biden-israel-losing-support-netanyahu/index.html#:%7E:text=Rifts%20between%20the%20United%20States,plans%20for%20post%2Dwar%20Gaza.">publicly warned</a> that Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing” of Gaza is losing it international support.</p>
<p>The US, if not Israel (which regards the UN as biased against it) will be concerned at the UN General Assembly vote on December 12 demanding a ceasefire. Though the resolution is non-enforceable, the large majority – 153 of the 190 members – was a clear indication of growing international opposition to the war. </p>
<p>The majority in favour of a similar resolution in October was 120. The US stood out as the only UN Security Council member to vote against the December resolution.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/gaza-war-us-israel-relationship-is-in-period-of-transition-as-biden-says-israel-is-losing-support-219571">Gaza war: US-Israel relationship is in period of transition as Biden says Israel is losing support</a>
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<h2>Israeli forces credibility reduced</h2>
<p>To underline these messages, a <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/13/politics/intelligence-assessment-dumb-bombs-israel-gaza/index.html">leaked US intelligence assessment</a> has claimed 40-45% of the 29,000 air-to-surface ground munitions Israel has used in Gaza have been “dumb” (unguided) bombs. This disclosure effectively undercuts the Israel Defense Force’s claim that its strikes have been only at <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/israel-hamas-engage-in-fierce-battles-in-gaza-s-biggest-cities-/7389468.html">proven Hamas targets</a>.</p>
<p>Details of the accidental killing of the three hostages, as they have emerged at the weekend, further reduce the credibility of the Israeli forces’ claims to be operating with full regard to international humanitarian law. The three were holding <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/world/middle-east/israeli-army-says-it-mistakenly-shot-and-killed-three-hostages-20231216-p5erwi.html">a white cloth</a>, had their hands in the air and were calling to the soldiers in Hebrew.</p>
<p>An Israeli Defense Force official has said the case was “against our rules of engagement” and an <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67738111">investigation was happening</a> at the “highest level”.</p>
<p>The tragedy has given renewed impetus to the campaign by families of the more than 100 remaining hostages and their numerous supporters. They want the government to prioritise negotiations for the release of the captives over the war against Hamas. <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/video/hundreds-protest-in-tel-aviv-after-idf-mistakenly-kills-3-hostages-200358981517">Demonstrations took place</a> in Tel Aviv after news of the three hostages’ deaths.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-brief-history-of-the-us-israel-special-relationship-shows-how-connections-have-shifted-since-long-before-the-1948-founding-of-the-jewish-state-215781">A brief history of the US-Israel 'special relationship' shows how connections have shifted since long before the 1948 founding of the Jewish state</a>
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<p>So far Netanyahu and his Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, are holding firm that the operation to destroy Hamas must continue. Gallant has said that only <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/gaza-war-puts-pressure-on-hamas-to-free-more-hostages-gallant-tells-families/#:%7E:text=%E2%80%9CWhen%20the%20military%20operations%20advance,%2C%E2%80%9D%20Gallant%20told%20the%20families.">intense military pressure</a> on Hamas will create conditions for release of more hostages.</p>
<h2>Netanyahu likely to continue the conflict</h2>
<p>Netanyahu has a number of reasons for continuing the war. </p>
<p>In the inevitable postwar inquiry into the security lapses that led to the horrific Hamas attack on October 7, major blame is certain be laid on him. That inquiry won’t be held while the war proceeds. </p>
<p>But Netanyahu will be aware that his only chance of avoiding the sort of withering criticism that would force him from office is to make good on his pledge to totally eliminate Hamas, and to find and recover the remaining hostages. That will take much more time than Biden seems willing to allow him.</p>
<p>Unfortunately for Netanyahu, he cannot yet claim victory on the basis of decapitating the Hamas leadership. The movement’s political ruler in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, and its military leader, Mohammed Deif, are still at large. They’re probably somewhere in the vast tunnel network beneath Gaza. If Israel were to capture or kill these two, Netanyahu would be able to claim substantial vindication.</p>
<p>The Biden administration’s pressure is of less concern to Netanyahu. He is practised at staring down US presidents, particularly Democratic ones. In <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL1157889/">2009</a> he defied President Barack Obama’s call for a freeze on settlement building in the West Bank.</p>
<p>In 2015 he even <a href="https://time.com/3678657/obama-netanyahu-washington/">breached protocol</a> by accepting a Republican invitation to visit Washington to address a joint sitting of Congress without calling on Obama.</p>
<p>Within Israel, Netanyahu is helped by the fact that Israelis have only a partial picture of the human toll their country’s campaign is having on Palestinian civilians. </p>
<p>The ABC Global Affairs Editor, John Lyons, who was based in Jerusalem for many years and understands Hebrew, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-10/israel-gaza-media-watching-a-sanitised-war/103206528">reported</a> after a recent visit to Israel:</p>
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<p>[…] most Israelis do not see pictures (on their televisions) of injured Palestinian women and children or the destruction of Gaza into kilometre after kilometre of rubble […] Israelis are watching a sanitised war […] They are bewildered at why the world is increasingly uncomfortable at the high civilian casualty rate.</p>
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<h2>Resumption of hostage negotiations</h2>
<p>That said, Netanyahu has bowed to the hostages lobby by reversing a decision that the head of Mossad, David Barnea, should cease negotiations in Qatar for more hostage releases. Barnea met Qatar’s prime minister in Europe <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/benjamin-netanyahu-hints-at-new-hostage-negotiations-with-hamas/cfjriz264">last week</a>. No details were available at time of writing. </p>
<p>But Hamas continues to <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/17/israel-faces-new-calls-for-truce-after-killing-of-hostages-raises-alarm-about-its-conduct-in-gaza.html">make demands</a> that Israel would find hard to accept: no further hostage releases until the war ends; and insistence that a deal would involve release of large numbers of Palestinian prisoners, including high-profile militants.</p>
<p>In the background, a worry for both Israel and the US is that support for Hamas has risen substantially in the West Bank since the war started. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/under-pressure-netanyahu-agrees-to-a-ceasefire-and-hostage-deal-with-hamas-are-his-days-now-numbered-218348">Under pressure, Netanyahu agrees to a ceasefire and hostage deal with Hamas. Are his days now numbered?</a>
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<p><a href="https://www.pcpsr.org/en/node/961">Polling</a> between November 22 and December 2 by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research indicated that backing for Hamas had risen from 12% in September to 44% at the beginning of December. This is shown also in the number of green Hamas flags in evidence when Palestinian prisoners were freed during the pauses in fighting in late November.</p>
<p>The polling even showed that support for Hamas in Gaza over the same period had risen from 38% to 42%.</p>
<p>Netanyahu may get lucky if his forces find Sinwar and Deif. In the meantime, a decision on continuation of the war rests with him.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219958/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian Parmeter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The mistaken killing of three Israeli hostages by the Israeli Defense Forces at the weekend has substantially increased pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept a ceasefire.Ian Parmeter, Research Scholar, Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2196822023-12-14T23:53:02Z2023-12-14T23:53:02ZThe Israeli-Palestinian conflict is putting Canadian multiculturalism to the test<p>In popular thinking, and according to its general image, Canada is considered to be open and welcoming to ethnocultural and religious diversity. </p>
<p>Immigration is perceived as an <a href="https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/af/index.php/af/article/view/29376">asset for Canada</a>, and over the decades, multiculturalism has come to be considered a value to be protected and cherished. This can be seen in <a href="https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/221026/dq221026b-eng.htm">the 2020 General Social Survey</a>, where 92 per cent of the population endorsed multiculturalism. <a href="https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-18.7/page-1.html">The Canadian Multiculturalism Act</a> states that multiculturalism is a “fundamental characteristic of the Canadian heritage and identity and that it provides an invaluable resource in the shaping of Canada’s future.” </p>
<p>However, since the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7 and the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, the demonstrations that have followed — both in favour of, and against Israel or in support of Palestine — have revealed many tensions linked to immigration. Hate crimes are also on the rise; in Toronto alone, there are reports of a <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/hate-crime-rise-israel-gaza-1.7001288">132 per cent increase since the start of the conflict</a>.</p>
<p>So it is imperative to consider the potential for conflict within Canada’s various communities. The issue is particularly concerning for those who are simultaneously facing racism and the repercussions of ongoing conflicts in their countries of origin. For example, the <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/sikh-separtist-movement-punjab-1.6981041">historical conflict between Hindus and Sikhs</a> is raising concern among Sikhs in Canada, particularly since one of their leaders was murdered in British Columbia.</p>
<p>As a sociologist who specializes in inclusive education, I quickly observed that racism and discrimination are significant issues in our society. I recently wrote an article entitled <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/trema/6042#:%7E:text=L'%C3%A9ducation%20inclusive%20englobe%20et,n%C3%A9gliger%20for%20all%20the%20worst">“Thinking about inclusive education in a context of discrimination and diversity in Canada,”</a> which explains, among other things, the limits of Canadian multiculturalism in the fight against discrimination. In line with the perspective <a href="https://www.ehess.fr/fr/personne/serge-paugam">of French sociologist Serge Paugam</a>, who maintains that the sociologist’s role includes speaking out <a href="https://www.puf.com/content/La_pratique_de_la_sociologie">“against all forms of domination,”</a> I will analyze how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is undermining this multiculturalism.</p>
<h2>Increase in hate crimes</h2>
<p>Statistics on hate crimes show that tensions do exist, in spite of the results of the 2020 survey. For example, from <a href="https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/230322/cg-a004-eng.htm">2019 to 2021</a>, the Jewish community was the group most frequently targeted by hate crimes, and there was a significant increase in reports made to the police. In 2019, 306 antisemitic crimes were reported nationally. A year later this figure rose to 331 and by 2021, it had risen significantly to 492. <a href="https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/cj-jp/victim/rd16-rr16/p1.html">A further rise was recorded in 2022, with 502 incidents reported</a>. </p>
<p>Muslim communities have also been heavily affected by hate crime: in 2019, 182 incidents were reported. In 2020, this number fell to 84, but increased to 144 in 2021. Finally, Catholics have also been the target of hate crimes, with a significant increase in reports: in 2019, 51 cases were recorded compared with 43 in 2020 and 155 in 2021.</p>
<p>Ontario, the province with the highest number of immigrants in Canada, seems to have the highest percentage of hate crimes per capita. According to Statistics Canada data for 2021, Ottawa is the city with the highest rate of hate crime. <a href="https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=3510019101">Among the top 10 Canadian cities most affected by the phenomenon, there are more than eight Ontario cities</a>.</p>
<h2>A switch in public opinion</h2>
<p>To put it bluntly, not all Canadians see multiculturalism as an asset, and this change is exacerbated by the ongoing conflict between two of the country’s most discriminated communities. All this is taking place in a context where Canada’s capacity to welcome immigrant populations is being questioned.</p>
<p>According to an <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/there-s-going-to-be-friction-two-thirds-of-canadians-say-immigration-target-is-too/article_7740ecbd-0aed-5d36-b5da-b67bda4a13c5.html">Abacus poll published on Nov. 29</a>, more than 67 per cent of the population believes that there will be tensions between communities, principally because of the federal government’s immigration threshold, which is considered excessive. The government is still aiming to welcome <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-immigration-500000-2025-1.6636661">more than 500,000 immigrants a year over the next few years</a>. On the other hand, Ottawa rejected the Century Initiative, led by a former McKinsey executive, which aimed to <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-canada-immigration-public-opinion/">increase Canada’s population to 100 million by 2100</a>. </p>
<p>According to <a href="https://nationalpost.com/opinion/canada-diversity-poll">another poll</a>, by Leger-Postmedia, more than 78 per cent of Canadians express concern about the impact of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the country. With respect to pro-Palestine demonstrations, more than three-quarters of those polled believe that the government should expel non-citizens who are guilty of hate speech or who have demonstrated support for Hamas from the country. </p>
<p>These figures show a major shift in public opinion about the value of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism is no longer seen simply as making citizens aware of the richness of the country’s ethnocultural and religious diversity. It is also seen as supporting the various communities that live in, or want to immigrate to Canada. <a href="https://nationalpost.com/opinion/canada-diversity-poll">According to the same survey</a>, more than half say that the Canadian government should do more to ensure that newcomers accept Canadian values, and more than 55 per cent think that Canada’s immigration policy should encourage newcomers to adopt these values, in particular by abandoning any beliefs that are incompatible with Canada.</p>
<h2>An increasingly complex world</h2>
<p>The Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems to have shaken the foundations of multiculturalism. </p>
<p>It is striking to note how a value once considered fundamental — one that in 2020 was supported by more than 92 per cent of the population — can be questioned to this extent just three years later. On the other hand, it is important to remember that hate crimes existed before this conflict and that indicated multiculturalism was not as much of a “Canadian value” as it was believed to be. </p>
<p>Sociologist Edgar Morin maintains that <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/095715589700802401?download=true&journalCode=frca">“diversity creates complexity and complexity creates richness</a>.” Of course, Canadian multiculturalism rightly relies upon the richness of diversity, but it’s now being called upon to renew itself in an increasingly complex society and world. </p>
<p>At times, Canadian multiculturalism gives the impression that communities are living side by side, tolerant of ‘the Other,’ without actually co-constructing a society in which everyone belongs. The social situation must not be allowed to deteriorate, because we do not want to live in a state of confrontation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219682/count.gif" alt="La Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christian J. Y. Bergeron ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>The recent conflict between Israel and Hamas has exacerbated hate crimes in Canada and put Canadian multiculturalism to the test.Christian J. Y. Bergeron, Professeur en sociologie de l’éducation, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of OttawaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2194542023-12-14T13:11:40Z2023-12-14T13:11:40ZIs Hamas the same as ISIS, the Islamic State group? No − and yes<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565012/original/file-20231211-25-msxpy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=42%2C0%2C4644%2C3070&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Palestinian militant rides on the back of a motorcycle near a crossing between Israel and the northern Gaza Strip on Oct. 7, 2023.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/palestinians-at-the-erez-crossing-also-known-as-the-beit-news-photo/1713407740">Ahmed Zakot/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the aftermath of Hamas’ bloody raid into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, many Israelis and people around the world equated the newly ultraviolent and audacious Palestinian militant organization with the world’s deadliest terrorist group, ISIS – the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.</p>
<p>Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for example, linked the two groups directly on Oct. 25, 2023, stating: “<a href="https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1717233019876966485">Hamas is ISIS and ISIS is Hamas</a>.” President Joe Biden and <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4254371-lloyd-austin-hamas-israel-atrocities-isis/">Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin</a> made similar comparisons. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Hamas killing families “<a href="https://www.newsnationnow.com/world/war-in-israel/idf-isis-flag-hamas-massacre/">brings to mind the worst of ISIS</a>.”</p>
<p>There are plenty of reasons for Israel to want the world to think Hamas is ISIS – including the hope of marshaling the sort of overseas support that led to the 2014 creation of the 86-member <a href="https://www.state.gov/bureaus-offices/under-secretary-for-political-affairs/bureau-of-counterterrorism/the-global-coalition-to-defeat-isis/">Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS</a>. In <a href="https://theconversation.com/who-really-defeated-the-islamic-state-obama-or-trump-148066">fighting between 2014 and 2019</a>, the coalition reclaimed all the territory the Islamic State group had seized in Iraq and Syria.</p>
<p>And it is true that the Oct. 7 attack displayed tactics that are remarkably similar to those of the Islamic State group. But as <a href="https://www.brianglynwilliams.com/">a scholar</a> of ISIS specifically, and Middle Eastern militants in general, I am inclined to agree with those who say the comparison between the two terrorist groups overlooks their underlying differences. The similarities are on the surface, in methods and tactics – but their goals and ideologies remain vastly different.</p>
<h2>Fundamental differences</h2>
<p>As <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/11/21/hamas-isis-are-not-the-same-00128107">various news articles</a> have <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/25/hamas-isis-islamic-state-israel-terrorism-analogy/">pointed out</a>, the Islamic State is a Sunni group <a href="https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-11-22/the-weak-points-of-israels-thesis-why-hamas-is-not-the-same-as-isis.html">militantly opposed to the Shia branch of Islam</a> and calls Shiites “<a href="https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-11-22/the-weak-points-of-israels-thesis-why-hamas-is-not-the-same-as-isis.html">rafida</a>,” which means “rejecter of Allah.” While it is true that <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/12/11/1218145466/israel-hamas-war-shia-sunni-iran-backed-militants">most Palestinians in Gaza are Sunni</a>, Shia-led <a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/hamas-needed-a-new-way-to-get-money-from-iran-it-turned-to-crypto-739619aa">Iran is Hamas’ primary benefactor</a>.</p>
<p>And Hamas and ISIS have even met in battle. Bloody <a href="https://ctc.westpoint.edu/islamic-state-affiliates-press-hamas/">clashes between ISIS and Hamas</a> in 2015 resulted from efforts by <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-uncovered/isis-supporters-throw-down-gauntlet-hamas-gaza-n385006">Islamic State supporters to establish ISIS affiliates in the Hamas-dominated Gaza Strip</a> and the neighboring Sinai Peninsula.</p>
<p>In January 2018, leaders of the Islamic State group in the Sinai declared war on the “Hamas tyrants” via a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/10/world/middleeast/isis-hamas-sinai.html">lengthy online video</a> that included the execution of a Hamas member.</p>
<p>The two groups’ differences also include their divergent goals. The Islamic State group aims to create a global theocracy based on the principles of fundamentalist Sunni Islam, <a href="https://www.institute.global/insights/geopolitics-and-security/isis-rejection-nation-state">with no national or territorial borders</a>.</p>
<p>Hamas, by contrast, is narrowly focused on <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/8/what-is-the-group-hamas-a-simple-guide-tothe-palestinian-group">constructing a Palestinian national state</a> by “<a href="https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/media/3416">armed resistance to the occupation</a>” of the Palestinian territories by Israel.</p>
<p>So it’s pretty clear that Hamas is not ISIS. But it’s not that simple either.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565013/original/file-20231211-29-yuy1hi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Smoke trails in the sky over an urban scene show where rockets have been fired." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565013/original/file-20231211-29-yuy1hi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565013/original/file-20231211-29-yuy1hi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565013/original/file-20231211-29-yuy1hi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565013/original/file-20231211-29-yuy1hi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565013/original/file-20231211-29-yuy1hi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565013/original/file-20231211-29-yuy1hi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565013/original/file-20231211-29-yuy1hi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hamas fired rockets into Israel as part of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/IsraelPalestinians/006937a3e5424b1cad4cd35b853349c5/photo">AP Photo/Hatem Moussa</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Interconnections and exchanges</h2>
<p>Despite their differences, there are several similarities, including the fact that both groups are on the <a href="https://www.state.gov/foreign-terrorist-organizations/">U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations</a>. The two organizations have on occasion also shared common strategic, if not necessarily ideological, goals. And, as became obvious on Oct. 7, their tactics have become similar, though in service of different objectives.</p>
<p>My long study of Islamic State fighting tactics, including <a href="https://www.brianglynwilliams.com/iraqi_kurdistan/field_iraqi_kurdistan.html">field research</a> in Iraq, leads me to believe Hamas has recently undergone a radical ISIS-inspired transformation that has not yet gotten widespread public attention. Prior to its Oct. 7 blitz, Hamas’ actions were limited to lobbing imprecise rockets and digging tunnels into Israel to kidnap or kill small numbers of Israelis.</p>
<p>But as University of Miami professor and expert in the study of jihadism Nathan S. French has noted in El Pais, “Hamas operatives – like other Islamist and jihadist groups – <a href="https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-11-22/the-weak-points-of-israels-thesis-why-hamas-is-not-the-same-as-isis.html">borrow, steal and appropriate tactics and strategies</a> from other similar political, guerrilla, or militant movements.” And it seems that Hamas has borrowed tactics from ISIS.</p>
<p>It’s likely that Hamas learned from the hundreds of Palestinians who <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/isis/2015-11-19/ty-article/isis-in-israel-and-the-palestinian-territories/0000017f-e2cc-d568-ad7f-f3efca2d0000?lts=1699816485685">joined both the core ISIS caliphate</a> in Syria and Iraq and the ISIS affiliate in the Sinai. </p>
<p>And despite their differences, Hamas officials have in the past <a href="https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/hamas-and-islamic-state-growing-cooperation-sinai">met directly with leaders of the Islamic State in the Sinai</a>. Those meetings were likely linked to <a href="https://ctc.westpoint.edu/islamic-state-affiliates-press-hamas/">collaboration between the two groups</a> for specific actions that benefited their respective goals, such as weapons smuggling, undermining Egyptian government influence in the Sinai and <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/elite-hamas-fighters-defecting-to-islamic-state/">transporting injured Islamic State fighters to Gaza</a> for medical treatment. </p>
<p>In October 2023, an article in the U.K. newspaper The Times cited an intelligence official who said, “<a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/what-are-the-connections-between-hamas-and-isis-0db9rnlg3">It’s clear that the two movements have worked together</a> close enough over the past few years to copy each other’s methods, learn tactics and train on weapons they have procured together.”</p>
<h2>Tactical similarities</h2>
<p>In many ways, Hamas’ Oct. 7 surprise attack <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/fact-why-toyota-yes-toyota-dominates-today%E2%80%99s-battlefields-158581">resembled ISIS attacks</a>, such as a June 2014 blitz in which Islamic State group fighters burst out of secret desert bases to <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-27778112">conquer much of northern Iraq</a>, including the country’s second-largest city, Mosul.</p>
<p>Both groups’ attacks took their opponents by complete surprise, indicating a high degree of secrecy and advanced preparation. And both assaults utilized “technicals” – pickup trucks with machine guns mounted in their cargo beds and carrying squads of fighters. Both attacking forces <a href="https://ctc.westpoint.edu/ctc-publishes-new-report-islamic-state-drones/">used commercial drones</a> to provide air support for their troop movements. And both organizations deployed <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/hamas-fighters-bodies-israel-toll-gaza-ground-invasion-rcna119640">suicide-attack fighters</a> known as “inghimasi,” Arabic for “plungers into battle.” </p>
<p>On Oct. 7, Hamas fighters reportedly left <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-shows-foreign-press-raw-hamas-bodycam-videos-of-murder-torture-decapitation/">black ISIS war banners</a> at the scene of several attacks. There were also videos posted online that appeared to show Hamas fighters <a href="https://talk.tv/news/38068/hamas-video-fighters-singing-isis-songs-october-7">singing popular ISIS war songs as they stormed into Israel</a>.</p>
<h2>Made for the media</h2>
<p>An additional notable similarity is that Hamas released ISIS-style videos of the horrific atrocities it inflicted on Israelis. The Islamic State group’s media approach involved disseminating videos of <a href="https://www.vox.com/videos/2015/7/6/8886461/isis-videos-burning">mutilation, rape, amputation, slavery, suicide warfare, torture and mass murder</a>.</p>
<p>On and after Oct. 7, Hamas fighters similarly uploaded videos and images of their <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/10/18/israel/palestine-videos-hamas-led-attacks-verified">executions of cowering Israeli civilians</a> and other atrocities to a Telegram channel. These visuals made their way to X – formerly known as Twitter – and TikTok and other platforms. </p>
<p>Israel Defense Forces spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari has specifically said those videos are part of why Israel has been <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-shows-foreign-press-raw-hamas-bodycam-videos-of-murder-torture-decapitation/">equating Hamas with the Islamic State group</a>.</p>
<p>The Times of Israel came to a similar conclusion, noting: “<a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/hamas-and-islamic-state-two-faces-of-jihadi-terror-same-contempt-for-human-life/ar-AA1ifNoR">Looking at images of the Hamas assault</a>, it is fair to assume that Hamas learned a lesson from the ISIS terror playbook.”</p>
<h2>Rape as a weapon</h2>
<p>Another tactic new to Hamas, but not to ISIS, was the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/17/world/israel-investigates-sexual-violence-hamas/index.html">alleged rape and mutilation of girls and women</a>. Hamas has <a href="https://apnews.com/article/sexual-assault-hamas-oct-7-attack-rape-bb06b950bb6794affb8d468cd283bc51">denied the allegations</a>. Islamic State religious scholars have previously <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/1057610X.2020.1711590">sanctioned violence against women</a> and told fighters to rape non-Muslim women “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2015/10/08/middleeast/isis-rape-theology-soldiers-rape-women-to-make-them-muslim/index.html">to make them Muslim</a>.”</p>
<p>Similarly, Israel Defense Forces officials have said the Hamas religious leaders gave their fighters ISIS-like religious texts based on extremist interpretations of traditional Islamic jurisprudence telling them <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/10/israel-womens-groups-warn-of-failure-to-keep-evidence-of-sexual-violence-in-hamas-attacks">captives were “the spoils of war</a>.”</p>
<p>All these developments indicate that ISIS has had an influence on Hamas, even if their goals remain quite different – or in direct opposition.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219454/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brian Glyn Williams does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A scholar of the Islamic State group says Hamas has undergone a radical ISIS-inspired transformation that has not yet gotten widespread public attention.Brian Glyn Williams, Professor of Islamic History, UMass DartmouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2191872023-12-07T13:30:02Z2023-12-07T13:30:02ZHow new reports reveal Israeli intelligence underestimated Hamas and other key weaknesses<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563705/original/file-20231205-17-4sueqx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C0%2C1272%2C720&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, center, meets with his security cabinet on Oct. 7, 2023, the day of the Hamas attack.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/israeli-prime-minister-benjamin-netanyahu-holds-a-meeting-news-photo/1711825822">Haim Zach (GPO) / Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>After the surprise Hamas terrorist attack on Israel from the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7, 2023, <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-did-israeli-intelligence-miss-hamas-preparations-to-attack-a-us-counterterrorism-expert-explains-how-israeli-intelligence-works-215410">many observers were puzzled</a> about how Israel could have been caught completely off-guard. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.cmu.edu/cmist/about-us/people/faculty/haleigh-bartos.html">We</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=eHm-LrkAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">were</a> among those puzzled, and <a href="https://mwi.westpoint.edu/what-went-wrong-three-hypotheses-on-israels-massive-intelligence-failure/">proposed three possible reasons</a>:</p>
<ol>
<li>Israeli leaders may have underestimated Hamas’ capabilities and misunderstood its intentions.</li>
<li>Israeli intelligence may have been tricked by Hamas’ secrecy, missing signs that it was planning and training.</li>
<li>Israeli intelligence leaders may have been so wedded to their prior conclusion that Hamas was not a major threat that they dismissed mounting evidence that it was preparing for war.</li>
</ol>
<p>New revelations from recent media coverage have shed additional light on what happened, which mostly confirm the role of faulty threat assessments, Hamas’ improved operational security, and <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctv182jrtn.10">confirmation bias</a>. </p>
<h2>An official assessment</h2>
<p>On Oct. 29, The New York Times reported that since May 2021, Israel’s military intelligence leaders and National Security Council had <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/29/world/middleeast/israel-intelligence-hamas-attack.html">officially assessed</a> that “Hamas had no interest in launching an attack from Gaza that might invite a devastating response from Israel.” </p>
<p>As a result, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and security leaders diverted attention and resources away from Hamas and toward what they saw as more existential threats: Iran and Hezbollah. For instance, in 2021, the Israeli military <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/top-israeli-intel-unit-wasnt-operational-on-october-7-due-to-personnel-decision/">cut personnel and funding for Unit 8200, a key military surveillance unit</a> watching Gaza. In 2022, the unit <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/29/world/middleeast/israel-intelligence-hamas-attack.html">stopped listening in on Hamas militants’ radio communications</a>, though it apparently gathered other intelligence.</p>
<p>The U.S. made a similar shift, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/u-s-all-but-stopped-spying-on-hamas-in-years-after-9-11-ebe8d61d">focusing on the Islamic State group and other militants</a>, leaving intelligence gathering on Hamas to Israel.</p>
<h2>Revealing surveillance</h2>
<p>Within days of Oct. 7, Egypt revealed that it had shared with Israel high-level warnings of impending Hamas violence – “<a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/egypt-intelligence-official-says-israel-ignored-repeated-warnings-of-something-big/">something big</a>.” </p>
<p>A Guardian report in early November revealed that Hamas leaders who had planned the attack <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/07/secret-hamas-attack-orders-israel-gaza-7-october">took special measures</a> to avoid being detected by Israeli intelligence, including passing orders only by word of mouth, rather than by radio or internet communication. But Hamas’ planning did not totally escape detection. </p>
<p>The Times of Israel reported in late October that Israeli troops of the Combat Intelligence Corps surveilling the Israel-Gaza border months before Oct. 7 saw Hamas militants <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/surveillance-soldiers-warned-of-hamas-activity-on-gaza-border-for-months-before-oct-7/">digging holes, placing explosives, training frequently</a> and even practicing blowing up a mock fence. Their warnings were ignored. The Financial Times reported in early November that Israeli security leaders had also ignored specific alerts of Hamas training exercises from civilian <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/f1ec2502-8220-491c-95e0-5f1504ce9554">volunteers in southern Israel who eavesdropped</a> on Hamas communications.</p>
<p>The Financial Times also reported that weeks before the Hamas attack, <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/277573ae-fbbc-4396-8faf-64b73ab8ed0a">Israeli border guards</a> sent a classified warning to the top military intelligence officer in the southern command. They had detected a high-ranking Hamas military commander overseeing rehearsals of hostage-taking and warned that Hamas was training to imminently “blow up border posts at several locations, enter Israeli territory and take over kibbutzim.” The officer who received the message dismissed it as an “imaginary scenario.” Other leaders considered the warning unremarkable.</p>
<h2>A detailed plan</h2>
<p>On Nov. 30, The New York Times reported that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/30/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-attack-intelligence.html">Israeli intelligence obtained a detailed Hamas plan of attack</a> more than a year before Oct. 7. The plan ran to 40 pages and included specifics that actually were part of the attack, including an opening rocket barrage, drones knocking out security cameras and automated weapons at the border, and gunmen crossing into Israel in paragliders as well as on foot and by motorcycle.</p>
<p>The newspaper also reported that in July 2023, a Unit 8200 analyst observed Hamas training activities that lined up with the Hamas plan, which was code-named “Jericho Wall” by Israeli officials. The analyst determined that Hamas was preparing an attack designed to provoke a war with Israel. Superior officers dismissed her assessment, saying the “Jericho Wall” plan was only aspirational primarily because they thought Hamas lacked the capacity to carry it out.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563714/original/file-20231205-28-ftbv9b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="People walk past a fortified tower with cameras and weapons on top." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563714/original/file-20231205-28-ftbv9b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563714/original/file-20231205-28-ftbv9b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563714/original/file-20231205-28-ftbv9b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563714/original/file-20231205-28-ftbv9b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563714/original/file-20231205-28-ftbv9b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563714/original/file-20231205-28-ftbv9b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563714/original/file-20231205-28-ftbv9b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Israel’s defenses include stations like this guard tower in the West Bank, with robotic weapons that can fire tear gas, stun grenades and sponge-tipped bullets, using artificial intelligence to track targets.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/IsraelRobotGun/8473ec72946f4d8eacbb3da6acbd7171/photo">AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A reflection on the Israeli intelligence community</h2>
<p>These recent reports make clear that Israeli officials had enough intelligence to step up security. The fact that they did not suggests they may have dismissed all that evidence in favor of other information they had, which suggested Hamas was not interested in or capable of going to war with Israel.</p>
<p>But that may not have been the only problem. Recent studies point to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X20903072">increasing fissures</a> in civil-military relations in Israel. For example, populist right-wing Israeli politicians in recent years have <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/psquar/qqad121">viewed senior intelligence officials with skepticism</a> as potential leftist rivals, which could have led Netanyahu’s Likud government to be hostile to alternative viewpoints and various intelligence warnings on Hamas. </p>
<p>Although we cannot observe the extent of politicization among the senior Israeli intelligence ranks, the behavior of intelligence leaders who dismissed warnings prior to Oct. 7 is <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26593670">consistent with groupthink</a>, a phenomenon that experts say may occur when social pressure, a leader’s influential position or self-censorship leads groups to express homogeneous views and make uniform – and usually poorer – decisions. </p>
<p>The fact that superiors ignored warnings from the Unit 8200 analyst and the Border Defense Corps is consistent with the idea that groupthink about <a href="https://www.newsnationnow.com/world/war-in-israel/ex-israeli-ambassador-intelligence-military-surprise-failure/">Hamas’ capabilities and intentions</a> led to confirmation bias dismissing Hamas as an imminent threat.</p>
<p>Some of the ignored intelligence analysts were young women, who have said they <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/surveillance-soldiers-say-oct-7-warnings-ignored-charge-sexism-played-a-role/">believe sexism could have been a reason</a> male superiors ignored their warnings.</p>
<p>Another form of prejudice may also have been at play. Israel has focused intensely on its <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X20903072">technological advantages over its enemies</a>, assigning large numbers of personnel to electronic and cyber warfare units. Perhaps <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/f1ec2502-8220-491c-95e0-5f1504ce9554">technological optimism</a>, faith in what the Financial Times described as “aerial drones that eavesdrop on Gaza and the sensor-equipped fence that surrounds the strip,” won out. Maybe a reliance on technology led to a false sense of security, and even the dismissal of other forms of intelligence that, it turned out, had uncovered Hamas’ real plans.</p>
<h2>A turn toward the future</h2>
<p>In the wake of the Hamas attacks, Israel’s security apparatus will need to investigate these weaknesses further and undertake reforms. So far, it remains unclear how many people, and at what levels of the Israeli government, received the various warnings in advance of Oct. 7. Therefore, it’s not yet clear what specific changes in Israel might prevent a similar failure in the future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219187/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Recent media coverage mostly confirms the role of faulty threat assessments, Hamas’ improved operational security, and confirmation bias.John Joseph Chin, Assistant Teaching Professor of Strategy and Technology, Carnegie Mellon UniversityHaleigh Bartos, Associate Professor of the Practice in Strategy and Technology, Carnegie Mellon UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2188442023-11-30T12:42:34Z2023-11-30T12:42:34ZIsrael-Gaza: what the term genocide means under international law – podcast<p>In the weeks since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 and the Israeli bombardment and ground assault on Gaza, both sides have traded accusations of genocide. Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis and took more than 200 hostage, while Israel’s subsequent aerial and ground attacks on Gaza have killed <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/more-israeli-hostages-palestinians-expected-be-freed-with-extended-truce-2023-11-27/">more than 15,000 Palestinians</a> and displaced millions. </p>
<p>In this episode of <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/the-conversation-weekly-98901">The Conversation Weekly</a> podcast, we speak to an expert on genocide about the history of the term and what’s needed to prove it under today’s international legal definition. </p>
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<p>The term genocide was first coined by the Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1944 amid the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust. Lemkin, who was Jewish, originally <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article-abstract/51/1/117/101266?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false">defined genocide</a> as “the destruction of a nation or ethnic group”, encompassing both physical killings and an assault on the spirit of a group, including its social, economic and political ways of life.</p>
<p>Lemkin’s definition laid the foundation for the 1948 UN Genocide Convention, which <a href="https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.1_Convention%20on%20the%20Prevention%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Genocide.pdf">specifies that genocide</a> can occur “with with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”. This can be through killing, destroying a group, preventing births, or transferring children to another group, among other means. This convention was instrumental in setting up international tribunals in the 1990s to prosecute war criminals in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.</p>
<h2>Proving intent</h2>
<p>However, Alexander Hinton, a professor in anthropology at Rutgers University Newark in the US, says that the need to prove intent can pose a significant hurdle to prosecutions for genocide. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s much better to have a legal definition than not to have one … but it also means that when horrific acts take place that don’t fall within the purview of that legal definition, people say, ‘well, it’s not genocide’. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Hinton is an expert on the Cambodian genocide and <a href="https://www.newark.rutgers.edu/news/professor-alex-hinton-testifies-un-backed-international-tribunal-khmer-rouge">testified</a> during the UN-backed international tribunal that convicted some of the Khmer Rouge leaders of genocide. He cautions against focusing too much attention on proving the crime of genocide, rather than on other types of crimes that may be taking place. “Atrocity crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and ethnic cleansing are all horrific,” he says, adding that the priority should be on “crimes against humanity”.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/both-israel-and-palestinian-supporters-accuse-the-other-side-of-genocide-heres-what-the-term-actually-means-217150">Both Israel and Palestinian supporters accuse the other side of genocide – here's what the term actually means</a>
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<p>Cases for atrocity crimes brought under international law can be slow, such as in The Gambia’s <a href="https://www.icj-cij.org/case/178">ongoing prosecution</a> of Myanmar for the genocide of the Rohingya people. But Hinton hopes that the Genocide Convention, alongside institutions such as the International Criminal Court and the UN Office on Genocide Prevention, provide tools that can be used to bring an end to a conflict more swiftly. Countries can also take independent actions against alleged perpetrators, such as naming and shaming or imposing sanctions.</p>
<p>When it comes to the current conflict between Israel and Hamas, Hinton refuses to be drawn on whether genocide is taking place under the legal definition of the term.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It has limitations and it’s also used politically, and so it’s important to understand there are other ways of understanding the term. And so ultimately each of us needs to bring our knowledge to bear, our critical thinking, and make a determination of what is taking place in Israel and Gaza.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Listen to the full interview with Alexander Hinton on the <a href="https://podfollow.com/the-conversation-weekly/view">The Conversation Weekly</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/both-israel-and-palestinian-supporters-accuse-the-other-side-of-genocide-heres-what-the-term-actually-means-217150">read an article he wrote here too</a>. A <a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/2976/Genocide_Transcript.docx.pdf?1702403301">transcript of this episode</a> is now available. </p>
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<p><em>This episode was written and produced by Mend Mariwany with assistance from Katie Flood and Gemma Ware. Gemma Ware is the executive producer of the show. Our theme music is by Neeta Sarl.</em></p>
<p><em>Newsclips in this episode from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7HposRq3Ds&ab_channel=UnitedNations">United Nations</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT7QUzJg0aM">BBC News.</a></em></p>
<p><em>You can find us on X, formerly known as Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/TC_Audio">@TC_Audio</a>, on Instagram at <a href="https://www.instagram.com/theconversationdotcom/">theconversationdotcom</a> or <a href="mailto:podcast@theconversation.com">via email</a>. You can also subscribe to The Conversation’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/newsletter">free daily email here</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>Listen to <em>The Conversation Weekly</em> via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our <a href="https://feeds.acast.com/public/shows/60087127b9687759d637bade">RSS feed</a> or find out <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-listen-to-the-conversations-podcasts-154131">how else to listen here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218844/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexander Hinton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Both Israelis and Palestinians are accusing each other of genocide. In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we speak to a genocide expert on the legal definition of the term.Mend Mariwany, Producer, The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The ConversationLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2185382023-11-29T16:28:09Z2023-11-29T16:28:09ZIsraeli hostages may need to fight to regain a sense of control in their everyday lives – expert explains<p>What the Israeli hostages have had to go through is unimaginable. The trauma of that unexpected, barbaric attack <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/how-israel-was-duped-hamas-planned-devastating-assault-2023-10-08/">by Hamas</a>, the murder of loved ones, then being violently abducted and dragged down into tunnels deep underground in Gaza. We live in a society where we often talk about trauma and <a href="https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd/">post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)</a> but it’s rarely this bad.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/brian-keenan-released">Northern Irish author</a> Brian Keenan wrote the book <a href="https://archive.org/details/evilcradling00keen_0/page/n327/mode/2up">An Evil Cradling</a> about his experience of being held hostage by Shi’ite militiamen in the 1980s in <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/351376/an-evil-cradling-by-brian-keenan/9780099990307">Beirut</a>. He was held for over four years in filthy rooms often smaller than a bathroom.</p>
<p>His initial response was denial “to trivialise or to minimise the event and the consequences it may have”, but this approach was soon exhausted. The reality of his situation broke through, bringing depression and frustration.</p>
<p>To survive, he says “one has to learn to unhook from the past in order to live for the present”. He developed strategies to alleviate his depressions, including imagining jokes that his friends in Belfast would make when he returned. To distract himself from the reality of his beatings and overhearing torture and executions, he concentrated on rewriting old movies in his head, or creating imaginary pictures.</p>
<p>Research on the psychological reaction of the hostages in the Moscow theatre siege of 2002 at the hands of <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247759086_Stockholm_Effects_and_Psychological_Responses_to_Captivity_in_Hostages_Held_by_Suicide_Terrorists">Chechen terrorists</a> identified six stages of adaptation: startle-panic, disbelief (many thought initially that it was part of the show), then hypervigilance, resistance-compliance, depression and finally gradual acceptance. </p>
<p>Hostages quickly lost all sense of time. They felt powerless and emotionally numb and said it seemed “like a movie”. Some suffered from <a href="https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/fbileb76&div=69&id=&page=">Stockholm syndrome</a>. </p>
<p>This occurs when hostages develop bonds of attachment to their captors as a result of an unconscious emotional response to the traumatic situation, where death seems as likely to come as a result of the actions of those outside trying to save them as from the captors themselves.</p>
<p>Being taken hostage can have profound psychological effects on people for <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0193953X1830114X">many years</a>. The psychological impact varies depending on the duration of captivity, the conditions endured, the person’s resilience and their coping mechanisms.</p>
<p>Brian Keenan was more resilient than most, but still veered close to the edge. The Israeli hostages vary significantly in age, another <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jpepsy/article/31/4/420/925265">important factor</a>. The child hostages will not have developed the necessary coping strategies, and may not understand fully what is happening, if at all.</p>
<p>Some common psychological effects are associated with being a hostage, like PTSD, characterised by intrusive memories or flashbacks, nightmares, severe anxiety, persistent feelings of fear or helplessness. One Dutch study found that a third of ex-hostages were still suffering from PTSD nine years <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00974156">after the event</a>. </p>
<h2>Memories that don’t fade</h2>
<p>These kind of traumatic events are associated with what psychologists call “flashbulb” <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1978-11559-001">memories</a> that don’t fade like normal memories over time. All of the situational information associated with the event is stored by <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Conflicted-Mind-And-Why-Psychology-Has-Failed-to-Deal-With-It/Beattie/p/book/9781138665798">the brain</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.routledge.com/Doubt-A-Psychological-Exploration/Beattie/p/book/9781032252049?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI2djp96rpggMVx5NQBh09GgKIEAAYASAAEgIjX_D_BwE">Psychologists suggest</a> that these processes have been shaped by our evolutionary past. The events are so traumatic that we must avoid the situation at all costs in the future, which is why the brain remembers them so well.</p>
<p>Hostages are also likely to experience high levels of anxiety and depression as a result of the trauma. Feelings of sadness, <a href="https://journals.lww.com/jonmd/abstract/2012/08000/hopelessness,_defeat,_and_entrapment_in.5.aspx">hopelessness</a>, and anhedonia – a loss of pleasure in previously enjoyed activities – <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1258/jrsm.2008.080347">are common</a>.</p>
<p>Anger and rage at how this event was “allowed” to happen by the intelligence failure of the Israeli government is likely to be another major issue. Being taken hostage can severely impact a person’s ability to <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/3DEDDE9813282195DC5F2DBFC4FFB5D0/S0033291718001800a.pdf/when_trust_is_lost_the_impact_of_interpersonal_trauma_on_social_interactions.pdf">trust others</a>. They may feel betrayed by their government’s failure to protect them, and struggle with trusting others. They may fight to regain a sense of personal control in their everyday lives.</p>
<p>Hostages may also remain in a constant state of <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272735813001360?casa_token=5QxQgthH4ZQAAAAA:fpvNrxZaTjq6A9osv-vJILN-VFW_5eGvu0akSQlkQzAb6cCP4NPy0R08cj9XBwCE4-mDQHSg">hypervigilance</a>, always on guard for potential threats. This heightened state of alertness can lead to difficulties in relaxing, concentrating and sleeping.</p>
<p>Those hostages released early are also likely to experience <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/19F993611E0BDE9C219F16BE0E6BD622/S1754470X21000246a.pdf/survivor_guilt_a_cognitive_approach.pdf">survivor’s guilt</a>, given that others are still captive. Then there is the survivor’s guilt associated with their very survival when so many others perished. They may struggle with feelings of guilt, shame, and self-blame for years.</p>
<h2>Long-term therapy</h2>
<p>After being released, hostages will require comprehensive psychological support to help them cope with the trauma. Typically this includes a combination of individual therapy, group therapy and <a href="https://www.wspce.org/couples/van%20der%20Kolk%20van%20der%20Hart-1995-Treatment%20Principles%20PTSD.pdf">specialised interventions</a>. </p>
<p>Techniques such as cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) and eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR) can be used to address <a href="https://palmako.fi/sites/default/files/webform/eye-movement-desensitization-and-reprocessing-emdr-therapy-thi-francine-shapiro-59d736d.pdf">symptoms of PTSD</a>. EMDR aims to alleviate the distress associated with traumatic memories or experiences. </p>
<p>The person focuses on the traumatic memory while simultaneously engaging in bilateral stimulation, following the therapist’s finger movements with their eyes. This has been shown to be beneficial, reducing the vividness of the traumatic memory and <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00534/full">lessening the emotional response</a>.</p>
<p>Hostages will also need a safe and empathetic environment where they can express their emotions about what has occurred. Emotional disclosure where victims build a narrative of their experience integrating their understanding of the events with their emotional responses, is critical for both physical and <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/40063169.pdf?casa_token=-6Hm2YrBk00AAAAA:QKiRgCT1ImG2O0_uPdtPb7YpOS2oV7eNn1BDykGsnmtWi-vb8sNCUqUAWJ-8ssK7irPisqEMJUcOmE8gqxV0n6qpuHb9wwvGnrJ-mNVLoLsFZOWR0g">mental health</a>. </p>
<p>This can be achieved through individual counselling sessions or support groups with other survivors who have endured <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/cpp.1805?casa_token=1B8n1YjULAAAAAAA%3AM8OllsvAJhA5SXEoFKM15KZgGjEgjMS0aq4_3jHk7CfKLQNi9WgMShI-N4qHar1PX9yltbddwTCV">similar experiences</a>. Educating victims about the common reactions and symptoms associated with trauma can also help, by helping to normalise their psychological reactions and reduce their feelings of isolation. </p>
<p>We must remember that the specific psychological support needed after release from a hostage situation will vary from <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166223612001981?casa_token=gpx-L03Zt0QAAAAA:Htxv6TJpUKbZbz7CE3oOYeYueIDRb2itGv4vaSvqRKS_OQVuX7InPosruuBf-WkPa1rRUapu">person to person</a>. Therefore, a comprehensive assessment by mental health professionals is crucial to determine the most appropriate and effective interventions for each victim. But, in the case of the Israeli hostages, it’s important to recognise how enduring some of the effects may well be for the majority of them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218538/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Geoff Beattie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>One Dutch study found that a third of ex-hostages were still suffering from PTSD nine years after the event.Geoff Beattie, Professor of Psychology, Edge Hill UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2157812023-11-29T13:37:58Z2023-11-29T13:37:58ZA brief history of the US-Israel ‘special relationship’ shows how connections have shifted since long before the 1948 founding of the Jewish state<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561922/original/file-20231127-30-ocla3g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=19%2C24%2C3269%2C2376&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">U.S. President Harry Truman holds a Torah given to him by Chaim Weizmann, the first president of Israel, in May 1948.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/washington-dc-president-truman-holds-the-torah-or-sacred-news-photo/514876256">Bettmann via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In his first remarks after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel, President Joe Biden affirmed the United States offered “<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/10/07/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-terrorist-attacks-in-israel/">rock solid and unwavering</a>” support to Israel, “just as we have (done) from the moment the United States became the first nation to recognize Israel, 11 minutes after its founding, 75 years ago.”</p>
<p>Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel has launched a war on Gaza that as of the end of November had killed <a href="https://www.ochaopt.org/">more than 14,000 Palestinians</a>. The fighting has also destroyed much of Gaza and <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-hamas-war-gaza-strip-palestinian-civilian-deaths-displaced-after-1-month/">displaced about 70% of its population</a>. </p>
<p>Israel, with U.S. backing, has not heeded <a href="https://interagencystandingcommittee.org/inter-agency-standing-committee/we-need-immediate-humanitarian-ceasefire-statement-principals-inter-agency-standing-committee">calls for an immediate cease-fire</a> or U.N. demands to <a href="https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/statement/2023-11-19/statement-the-secretary-general-gaza%C2%A0">stop targeting civilians</a>. The Biden administration appears to have played a key role in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/21/us/politics/biden-hostage-talks-israel-hamas.html">negotiating a temporary truce and an exchange</a> of hostages and prisoners between Israel and Hamas. </p>
<p>I <a href="https://dornsife.usc.edu/profile/fayez-hammad/">teach courses on Middle East politics</a> and the Arab-Israeli conflict, which includes the interconnected Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the conflict between Israel and Arab states. The roots of the U.S.-Israel relationship predate 1948 and provide context for what has long been characterized as a “special” relationship between the two countries – one that now appears crucial to Israel’s prosecution of a war in Gaza.</p>
<p>During the Cold War, it was the perception in the U.S. that Israel’s strategic value served as justification for the special relationship. While Israel has its own interests regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict, a supportive Congress and American domestic lobbyists have presented them as consistent with those of the U.S.</p>
<p>The Bible, Christian Zionism, popular culture, memorialization of the Holocaust after 1967 and the shared approach in the U.S. and Israel toward the land and the indigenous populations have all led to the transformation of Jews and Israelis from “outsiders” to “insiders” in the U.S. </p>
<p>This cultural and political affinity is behind the U.S.’s current unconditional support for Israel, as well as the fact that the U.S. is seen in the region and beyond as deeply implicated in Israel’s actions.</p>
<p>But since President Harry Truman <a href="https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/education/presidential-inquiries/recognition-israel">recognized Israel in 1948</a>, presidential policies show that the U.S.-Israel relationship has not always been “rock solid.”</p>
<h2>Pre-statehood: The United States and Zionism</h2>
<p>With an <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Palestine">Arab majority for more than a millennium until 1948</a>, the territory then called Palestine was <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/middle-east/ottoman-empire">part of the Ottoman Empire from 1517</a> until <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/27/palestine-and-israel-brief-history-maps-and-charts">Britain captured it during World War I</a>.</p>
<p>The Zionist movement achieved a major objective in November 1917, when Britain, for strategic and religious reasons, issued the <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/balfour.asp">Balfour Declaration</a> in support of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson endorsed both this declaration and the League of Nations-sanctioned British administrative power over Palestine.</p>
<p>In Palestine, Britain used its administrative power, under what was called <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/palmanda.asp">the Mandate over Palestine</a>, to advance the Zionist project. The rise of Hitler and U.S. entry into World War II led American Zionists in 1942 to adopt the <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-biltmore-conference-1942">Biltmore Program</a>, which called for unrestricted Jewish immigration to Palestine and for turning the territory into a Jewish state. The revelation of the full scale of Nazi atrocities boosted U.S. support for Zionism, effectively shifting the center of political Zionism from London to Washington.</p>
<p>The 1944 Democratic Party platform backed the “opening of Palestine to <a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/1944-democratic-party-platform">unrestricted Jewish immigration and colonization</a>” and the creation of a Jewish state. But fearing damage to U.S. war efforts, President Franklin Roosevelt wrote to several Arab governments shortly before his death in 1945 that no action toward Palestine would be taken “<a href="https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1945v08/d681">which might prove hostile to the Arab people</a>.”</p>
<h2>Israel, the United States and the Cold War</h2>
<p>President Harry Truman was sympathetic to Zionism because of his <a href="https://www.jpost.com/christianworld/article-704006">evangelical Christian upbringing</a>. He endorsed the 1947 U.N. <a href="https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-185393/">Partition Plan for Palestine</a> to create an Arab state and a Jewish state and, despite <a href="https://search.worldcat.org/title/608624908">opposition</a> from within the administration, <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/press-release-announcing-us-recognition-of-israel#transcript">recognized the State of Israel</a> on May 14, 1948. </p>
<p>Truman, however, refused to send weapons to either side of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, because he viewed the conflict as a source of instability in the face of the emerging communist threat. In that war, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2023/11/03/israel-nakba-history-1948/">750,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled</a>, becoming refugees from the land that became Israel. </p>
<p>President Dwight Eisenhower also sought to prevent Soviet penetration into the Middle East and attempted to maintain impartiality toward the Arab-Israeli conflict. He even threatened to cut off all official and private aid and to <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/The-Iron-Wall/">expel Israel from the U.N.</a> to force Israel’s withdrawal from Egyptian territory, the Sinai, in 1957.</p>
<h2>The conflict and US-Israeli special relationship</h2>
<p>President John F. Kennedy coined the term “<a href="https://academic.oup.com/dh/article-abstract/22/2/231/407328">special relationship</a>” about the two countries’ connection. He hoped that in exchange for U.S. defensive weapons, Israel would support <a href="https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-211174/">his plan</a>, based on <a href="https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/RESOLUTION/GEN/NR0/043/65/PDF/NR004365.pdf?OpenElement">U.N. Resolution 194</a>, which called for repatriation or compensation for the Palestinian refugees and allow effective inspections of <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/israel-and-the-bomb/9780231104838">its nuclear program</a>. Israel accepted the weapons but refused to cooperate on the other issues, neither of which was discussed again.</p>
<p>President Lyndon Johnson viewed Israel as a strategic asset and sent it advanced offensive weapons. Johnson supported Israel’s attack on Egypt, Syria and Jordan in the June 1967 war, when Israel first occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Johnson also endorsed the November 1967 <a href="https://peacemaker.un.org/sites/peacemaker.un.org/files/SCRes242%281967%29.pdf">U.N. Resolution 242</a>, which conditioned Israeli withdrawal on Arab states’ recognition of, and entering into peace treaties with, Israel. Israel’s swift victory transformed the U.S.-Israeli relationship, elevating Israel into a critical component of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41805051">American Jewish identity</a> and solidifying pro-Israel policies in Washington.</p>
<p>President Richard Nixon provided Israel with a massive increase in military and economic aid because he accepted uncritically Israel’s claim that the Soviets were the main cause of tension in the Middle East, and because of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. Generous aid packages have since become routine: In recent years, U.S. aid to Israel has been about US$3 billion to $4 billion annually, totaling almost <a href="https://www.politifact.com/article/2023/oct/18/us-aid-to-israel-what-to-know/">$318 billion since World War II</a>, including the value of weapons.</p>
<p>While President Jimmy Carter brokered the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, the Ronald Reagan administration later moved away from an active peace process and, within a Soviet-centered focus, signed with Israel memoranda on strategic cooperation, elevating the relationship to a new strategic level. The administration supported Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, refused to label <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1981/02/03/us/reagan-is-prepared-to-hold-arms-talks-if-soviet-is-sincere.html">West Bank settlements as illegal</a>, concluded with Israel and the U.S.’s <a href="https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/israel-fta">first free trade agreement</a> and designated Israel in 1987 “<a href="https://www.state.gov/u-s-security-cooperation-with-israel/">a major non-NATO ally</a>.”</p>
<p>President Bill Clinton brokered the <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1993-2000/oslo">Oslo Accords</a>, in which Israel agreed to withdraw from areas in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and cede some control to a new political entity, the Palestinian Authority. But Clinton failed to achieve a permanent Palestinian-Israeli agreement, and his administration, according to one U.S. negotiator, acted as “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2005/05/23/israels-lawyer/7ab0416c-9761-4d4a-80a9-82b7e15e5d22/">Israel’s attorney</a>, catering and coordinating with the Israelis at the expense of successful peace negotiations.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561936/original/file-20231127-27-vaazae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two men shake hands while a third stands between them, smiling." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561936/original/file-20231127-27-vaazae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561936/original/file-20231127-27-vaazae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561936/original/file-20231127-27-vaazae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561936/original/file-20231127-27-vaazae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561936/original/file-20231127-27-vaazae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561936/original/file-20231127-27-vaazae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561936/original/file-20231127-27-vaazae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, left, shakes hands with PLO leader Yasser Arafat as U.S. President Bill Clinton looks on after the signing of the Oslo Accords in September 1993.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-bill-clinton-stands-between-plo-leader-yasser-news-photo/463575454">J. David Ake, Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The ‘peace process’ and the ‘war on terrorism’</h2>
<p>In the wake of 9/11, President George W. Bush accepted Israel’s narrative that it was waging its own war on terrorism and its condition that a change of Palestinian leadership must precede any further negotiations. But neither <a href="https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2002/06/20020624-3.html">Bush’s call for a Palestinian state</a> nor the 2005 election of Mahmoud Abbas as president of the Palestinian Authority led to an agreement.</p>
<p>In 2006, the Bush administration pushed for, and <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/112456/george-w-bushs-secret-war-against-hamas">endorsed the participation of Hamas</a> in, Palestinian legislative elections. When Hamas won and formed a new government, both Israel and the U.S. refused to deal with it, imposed sanctions on the Palestinian Authority and worked to widen the split between Hamas and Abbas’ Fatah party. Bush even supported a <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2008/04/gaza200804">covert plan to spark civil war between Palestinians</a>, which in fact led to a Hamas-Fatah military confrontation. That fight ended with Hamas’ takeover of Gaza, which led Israel to impose a blockade on Gaza in 2007.</p>
<p>President Barack <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/10/world/middleeast/obama-administration-defends-israeli-airstrikes-but-cautions-against-ground-war.html">Obama supported Israeli attacks on Gaza</a>, which failed to eliminate Hamas’ military threat. Diplomatically, Obama was reluctant to get directly involved, while Israel continued to <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-offers-temporary-settlement-freeze/">refuse to permanently freeze settlement building</a>.</p>
<p>President Donald Trump’s <a href="https://www.state.gov/the-abraham-accords/">Abraham Accords</a> and the recent discussions under the Biden administration to establish Israeli-Saudi diplomatic relations assumed that the Arab-Israeli conflict could be solved without solving the Palestinian conflict. But the current war challenges such an assumption and illustrates that current U.S. support for Israel is indeed “rock solid and unwavering.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215781/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Fayez Hammad does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A historian of the Middle East examines the decades-old ‘special relationship’ between Israel and the US.Fayez Hammad, Lecturer in Political Science and International Relations, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and SciencesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2174172023-11-21T16:54:14Z2023-11-21T16:54:14ZIsrael and Palestine in the therapist’s office: how counsellors support people without taking sides<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560013/original/file-20231116-15-pqpcwc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=33%2C132%2C7238%2C4693&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/close-female-psychologist-holding-hand-senior-1038930250">SeventyFour/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>War and politics can cause serious mental anguish and trauma, even for people thousands of miles away from a conflict. Counsellors who specialise in loss and grief may well meet clients who have lost relatives in conflicts such as those in Ukraine and the Middle East. </p>
<p>How do we work on the side of our grieving client without taking sides in a conflict? </p>
<p>Counselling should be a safe and confidential space for clients to express their true feelings, particularly about complex topics. For counsellors to create this space, they must be both politically aware and self-aware, and have a healthy relationship with their own clinical supervisors. </p>
<p>Politically aware counsellors recognise that the emotional issues bringing clients to counselling often <a href="https://www.pccs-books.co.uk/products/politicizing-the-person-centred-approach-an-agenda-for-social-change-1">cannot be separated</a> from political issues – poverty, discrimination, violence and war. </p>
<h2>Dealing with personal bias</h2>
<p>Therapists are human. They will have strong feelings where they perceive inhumanity, injustice and oppression. Nevertheless, they can work with people affected by war from either side of a conflict. </p>
<p>Counsellors and psychotherapists adhere to ethical codes that inform their work. The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy’s <a href="https://www.bacp.co.uk/events-and-resources/ethics-and-standards/ethical-framework-for-the-counselling-professions/">ethical code</a> expects a therapist to be aware of strong feelings, including perceived injustice, which could affect the therapeutic relationship with their client. </p>
<p>The ethical bereavement counsellor eschews their bias. They can work with an Israeli, a Palestinian, a Ukrainian or a Russian, even with their personal perceptions of the rights and wrongs of the politics of a particular conflict. </p>
<p>Difficulties arise, however, when the counsellor is unaware of biases they may hold. <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/16/6569">Unconscious bias</a> is a prejudice against a person, group or culture which is outside of the practitioner’s awareness, and is a recognised issue in health professions. </p>
<p>Because this could negatively contribute to the counselling relationship, a therapist’s work is supervised by a peer, an experienced practitioner generally with a diploma in <a href="https://www.bacp.co.uk/media/10210/bacp-intro-to-supervision-caq-gpia064-nov20.pdf">clinical supervision</a>. In most countries, including the UK, clinical supervision is mandatory throughout a therapist’s career to ensure their clients are kept safe.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A young woman sits sadly on a couch with her head on her hands, a therapist sits on a couch and takes notes in the background" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560010/original/file-20231116-24-40s3wy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=142%2C0%2C7435%2C5166&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560010/original/file-20231116-24-40s3wy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560010/original/file-20231116-24-40s3wy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560010/original/file-20231116-24-40s3wy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560010/original/file-20231116-24-40s3wy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560010/original/file-20231116-24-40s3wy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560010/original/file-20231116-24-40s3wy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Counsellors support their clients’ feelings without taking sides in a conflict.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/mental-health-depression-psychology-black-woman-2361797061">Yuri A/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If a counsellor has any feelings that may affect their relationships with clients, they discuss it with their supervisor. This is an opportunity to reveal unconscious behaviour and harmful biases. </p>
<p>Once these have been discussed in supervision, the counsellor may decide that they favour one side in the conflict and that it would be unethical to take on a new client bereaved by war. If the relationship was with an existing client, the counsellor might decide that they couldn’t work with the new bereavement, and instead support the client in finding another counsellor.</p>
<p>However, bias doesn’t always mean ending the client relationship. A counsellor with sympathies towards Ukraine in the face of Russian military aggression may still feel able to counsel a bereaved Russian <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2023/0110/Once-influential-Russian-soldiers-mothers-speak-softly-amid-Ukraine-war">wife or mother</a>. </p>
<h2>Supporting the client without taking sides</h2>
<p>Many bereavement counsellors follow the model of person-centred counselling. This approach helps clients explore their own feelings and reach their full potential (rather than a counsellor solving their problems for them). </p>
<p>One of the <a href="https://www.simplypsychology.org/client-centred-therapy.html">core conditions</a> of person-centred counselling is not judging the client for their words and actions. The client may express vengeful thoughts about the “enemy” who killed their loved one, and here the counsellor treads a difficult path. </p>
<p>When the counsellor listens without judging, the client may interpret this as the counsellor taking their side. They may even post about their therapist’s support on social media, which would compromise the therapist’s neutrality. A counsellor may need to be explicit about supporting the client’s grief and understanding their feelings, without taking sides in the conflict.</p>
<p>For some people bereaved by war, <a href="https://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/115065/">activism becomes part of their grief</a>. Parents of victims or soldiers in a war may <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jul/06/blair-is-worlds-worst-terrorist-families-of-iraq-war-victims-react-to-chilcot-report">campaign for justice</a> for their child. Counsellors may raise with the client the possibility that activism is masking or delaying the grieving process. They may also need to be explicit that their support for the client’s grieving approach is not the same as supporting their cause.</p>
<h2>Empathy and trauma in counselling</h2>
<p>Counsellors are trained in using the skills of empathy. A bereavement counsellor learns to feel what it’s like to learn that a lost relative died in a terrorist attack, was crushed under the rubble of an apartment block, or bled to death after being hit by a mortar bomb. </p>
<p>Hearing one side of the atrocities, along with graphic news coverage, can <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Pain_of_Helping.html?id=OtmSAgAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y">vicariously traumatise</a> the counsellor, leading to strong emotions, <a href="https://www.lianalowenstein.com/artcile_helm.pdf">compassion fatigue</a> and even the risk of developing a partisan position. </p>
<p>It is just as important for counsellors to take care of their own responses to war and conflict. Counsellors are urged by their profession to practise <a href="https://terapia.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/bacp-self-care-fact-sheet-gpia088-jul18.pdf">self-care</a>, which can include regular emotional support with the therapist’s clinical supervisor. Even counsellors need counselling.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217417/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Frederick Wilson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Therapists may have strong feelings about a conflict, but they can work with people affected by either side.John Frederick Wilson, Honorary Research Fellow, Director of Bereavement Services Counselling & Mental Health Clinic, York St John UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2179662023-11-16T17:11:25Z2023-11-16T17:11:25ZGaza Update: as the world debates ‘ceasefires’ and ‘pauses’, Israel is silent on the ‘day after’<p>I spent several hours on Wednesday night wrestling over how we could best cover the raid by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) on Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital. My initial plan was to get an expert in international law to write a piece about the legality of such a raid under the various conventions that set out the rules of war. </p>
<p>Article 13 of protocols added to the Geneva Conventions in 1977, which deals with the “discontinuance of protection of civilian medical units”, sets out that in certain circumstances hospitals and other medical units can be considered military targets – if, for example, they are being used to shelter combatants or store weapons or are being used as a command and control centre.</p>
<p>But crucially, if the weapons are small arms taken from wounded soldiers and not yet removed from the hospital they don’t count. Hospitals are allowed to have armed guards or sentries and medical personnel are allowed to have small arms for their own protection and for that of their patients. </p>
<p>Since the raid we’ve seen claim and counter-claim. An IDF spokesman gave a tour of finds which appeared to be small numbers of guns, a backpack containing a grenade and a rifle and a laptop as well as a number of discs. Palestinian sources say these are not evidence that Hamas was using the hospital as a base. As yet there is still no evidence of tunnel entrances in the hospital grounds. But plenty of conflicting statements on all sides.</p>
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<p>This all makes reporting from the frontline of a conflict like this a nightmare, writes Colleen Murrell, who has worked as a reporter and producer for the BBC and ITN, among others – including a stint in Gaza – and is now a professor of journalism at Dublin City University. “Live reporting is prone to the dangers of speculation, mistakes and disinformation traps for the unwary,” <a href="https://theconversation.com/gaza-war-reporting-from-the-frontline-of-conflict-has-always-raised-hard-ethical-questions-217570">she writes</a>. “If you add in the most explosive dateline in the world, then the accusations of bias come thick and fast.”</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/gaza-war-reporting-from-the-frontline-of-conflict-has-always-raised-hard-ethical-questions-217570">Gaza war: reporting from the frontline of conflict has always raised hard ethical questions</a>
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<p>It’s also the most dangerous war to report on since the Committee to Protect Journalists began counting deaths in 1992. The CPJ reports that more than one journalist or media worker has been killed each day in Gaza since hostilities began. A week ago that was 39. That number will be higher now, sadly. </p>
<p>Peter Greste, a former foreign correspondent with BBC, Reuters and Al Jazeera and now a professor of journalism and communications at Macquarie University in Sydney, says the vast majority of these losses have been <a href="https://theconversation.com/more-than-one-journalist-per-day-is-dying-in-the-israel-gaza-conflict-this-has-to-stop-217272">among Palestinian media workers</a>. </p>
<p>The IDF says it does not target journalists, but Greste reports that Reporters Without Borders says at least ten have been killed while clearly covering the news. All civilian deaths are tragedies – but if journalists are targeted specifically for doing their jobs then the world will die in darkness.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/more-than-one-journalist-per-day-is-dying-in-the-israel-gaza-conflict-this-has-to-stop-217272">More than one journalist per day is dying in the Israel-Gaza conflict. This has to stop</a>
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<h2>Pauses and ceasefires</h2>
<p>It should go without saying that the sooner the killing stops, the better. But there has been considerable angst over how to achieve this. Clearly, with a full-blown humanitarian disaster in Gaza, food, medicine and fuel are desperately needed for civilians trapped in the conflict.</p>
<p>Western governments are divided about whether to call for a ceasefire or a “humanitarian pause”. The UK’s Labour Party, for example, is bitterly divided over the issue, with 56 MPs voting against the party whip and several senior frontbenchers resigning their positions over Labour leader Keir Starmer’s decision to oppose a ceasefire.</p>
<p>Malak Benslama-Dabdoub, who lectures in law at Royal Holloway University of London, takes us through the <a href="https://theconversation.com/israel-hamas-war-there-is-an-important-difference-between-a-humanitarian-pause-and-a-ceasefire-217157">legal differences</a> between a ceasefire and a humanitarian pause. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/israel-hamas-war-there-is-an-important-difference-between-a-humanitarian-pause-and-a-ceasefire-217157">Israel-Hamas war: there is an important difference between a humanitarian pause and a ceasefire</a>
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<p>For Kurt Mills, meanwhile, who is a visiting scholar in the school of international relations at the University of St Andrews, there is nothing humanitarian about a humanitarian pause, which, <a href="https://theconversation.com/theres-nothing-humanitarian-about-a-humanitarian-pause-in-gaza-217474">he writes</a>, “frequently amounts to little more than what is known in the medical world as ‘palliation’. This is when medical care is oriented towards making the patient as ‘comfortable as possible for the time they have left”.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/theres-nothing-humanitarian-about-a-humanitarian-pause-in-gaza-217474">There's nothing ‘humanitarian’ about a humanitarian pause in Gaza</a>
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<p>So what would a ceasefire look like – and why is it so difficult to agree on one in Gaza? Marika Sosnowski, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Melbourne, <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-exactly-is-a-ceasefire-and-why-is-it-so-difficult-to-agree-on-one-in-gaza-217683">reveals that</a> there is actually no formal provision in international law relating specifically to when ceasefires should be negotiated, what they need to contain or how they need to be applied. </p>
<p>Most of the time its difficult to get all the parties involved to agree on what the terminology means. Is it a “truce”, an “armistice” or a “cessation of hostilities”? Will it involve de-escalation areas, safe zones or windows of silence (which was one name given to the 2014 ceasefire in Ukraine)? How, she asks, “if we have no common definitions as a starting point … do parties come to any useful or enforceable agreement on a ceasefire?”</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-exactly-is-a-ceasefire-and-why-is-it-so-difficult-to-agree-on-one-in-gaza-217683">What exactly is a ceasefire, and why is it so difficult to agree on one in Gaza?</a>
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<h2>Keeping matters in proportion</h2>
<p>In the intense and often bitter public debate surrounding the conflict in Gaza one hears a lot of frankly pointless assertions being hurled by one side of the argument at another: “Hamas started it on October 7” vies for legitimacy with “Israel started it in 1948” – and so it goes on.</p>
<p>But one issue which seems very pertinent right now is that of proportionality. The Hamas attacks on October 7 which prompted Israel’s ongoing response, involved the murder of around 1,200 Israeli citizens, many – if not most – of them civilians, and the kidnapping of a further 240 people.</p>
<p>Israel’s response has been a month of relentless bombardment of Gaza with the mission of destroying Hamas once and for all as both a military and a political force. In that month, more than 11,000 people have been killed, the vast majority of whom were civilians, while the United Nations says one child is killed every ten minutes in Gaza.</p>
<p>The “rule of proportionality” features heavily in the 1949 Geneva Conventions and its subsequent additional protocols. It’s a principle that seeks to prohibit an attack that may be expected to cause incidental death or injury to civilians or the destruction of civilian objects that would be excessive – or disproportionate – in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated. The Allied bombing of Dresden in the second world war springs to mind. Robert Goldman, a professor of law at American University, <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-rule-of-proportionality-and-is-it-being-observed-in-the-israeli-siege-of-gaza-217321">explains</a> how this might apply to what is happening in Gaza.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-rule-of-proportionality-and-is-it-being-observed-in-the-israeli-siege-of-gaza-217321">What is the rule of proportionality, and is it being observed in the Israeli siege of Gaza?</a>
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<p>Another all-too predictable and wrongheaded aspect of the public debate over the war has been the way many people are holding the whole of Israel responsible for the actions of its government and military, just as many others are condemning all Palestinians for the attacks of October 7. </p>
<p>Ilan Zvi Baron, a professor of international political theory at Durham University, <a href="https://theconversation.com/gaza-conflict-if-the-cycle-of-violence-is-to-end-we-must-not-prioritise-one-sides-suffering-over-the-other-216922">writes here</a> that this “comes down to a zero-sum debate about the righteousness of being the greater victim and dismisses the rights, pain and suffering of the other”. Too much of the discussion of this conflict, he believes, is being boiled down to an “us versus them” narrative. “There is nothing inherently wrong with holding both the Israeli government and Palestinian militants such as Hamas liable for their actions,” he concludes.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/gaza-conflict-if-the-cycle-of-violence-is-to-end-we-must-not-prioritise-one-sides-suffering-over-the-other-216922">Gaza conflict: if the cycle of violence is to end we must not prioritise one side's suffering over the other</a>
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<h2>What is Israel planning for Gaza 'the day after’?</h2>
<p>When US president Joe Biden visited Benjamin Netanyahu in the aftermath of October 7, he said publicly that the world felt Israel’s pain and understood its rage. He added that the US had felt the same but warned: “While you feel that rage, don’t be consumed by it. After 9/11, we were enraged in the United States. While we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes.”</p>
<p>When US president Joe Biden visited Benjamin Netanyahu in the aftermath of October 7, he said publicly that the world felt Israel’s pain and understood its rage. He added that the US had felt the same after 9/11, but warned: “While you feel that rage, don’t be consumed by it. After 9/11, we were enraged in the United States. While we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes.”</p>
<p>Rob Geist Pinfold, a lecturer in peace and security at Durham University, says that while more extreme elements on Israel’s political right wing have envisaged clearing Gaza completely of Palestinians (“occupy, expel, settle” is their slogan) and one cabinet minister (now a former minister) even advocated the use of nuclear weapons on the Gaza Strip, it is likely that cooler heads will prevail. One must certainly hope so.</p>
<p>Pinfold says that Israel needs to learn from its bitter past experience that another attempt to occupy the territory is no more likely to be workable than the previous one that ended in 2005. He <a href="https://theconversation.com/israel-hamas-conflict-what-gaza-might-look-like-the-day-after-the-war-217323">scours Israel’s military doctrine</a> for clues as to what options Netanyahu – or his successors – might choose to consider.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/israel-hamas-conflict-what-gaza-might-look-like-the-day-after-the-war-217323">Israel-Hamas conflict: what Gaza might look like 'the day after' the war</a>
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<p><em>Gaza Update is available as a fortnightly email newsletter. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/gaza-update-159?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=Gaza">Click here to get our updates directly in your inbox</a>.</em></p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217966/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
A selection of analysis from our coverage of the war in Gaza over the past fortnight.Jonathan Este, Senior International Affairs Editor, Associate EditorLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2178082023-11-15T08:14:56Z2023-11-15T08:14:56ZPolitics with Michelle Grattan: James Paterson on the High Court’s decision on detention and rising anti-Semitism<p>Last week the High Court ruled that holding high-risk asylum seekers in indefinite detention was unconstitutional. As a consequence of the court decision, more than 80 people, some of whom were convicted of serious crimes including murder and rape, have been released. The government will rush in legislation on Thursday to deal with the fallout.</p>
<p>In this podcast, Liberal senator and Shadow Minister for Home Affairs and Cyber Security James Paterson joins The Conversation to discuss the High Court’s ruling, his concerns about increasing anti-Semitism across the country, the rising cyber risks, and Australia’s future relations with China.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217808/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In this podcast, Liberal Senator James Paterson joins The Conversation to discuss the High Court's ruling, his concerns about rising anti-Semitism, rising cyber risks, and Australia's future relations with ChinaMichelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2173232023-11-10T17:40:22Z2023-11-10T17:40:22ZIsrael-Hamas conflict: what Gaza might look like ‘the day after’ the war<p>Less than a week after Hamas’s devastating attacks on October 7, Israel’s intelligence ministry produced a <a href="https://www.972mag.com/intelligence-ministry-gaza-population-transfer/#:%7E:text=The%20Israeli%20Ministry%20of%20Intelligence,partner%20site%20Local%20Call%20yesterday.">chilling document</a>. It advocated that Israel remove all of Gaza’s Palestinian population and forcibly resettle them in the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula. </p>
<p>In November, a poster advertising a far-right rally in Tel Aviv juxtaposed an image of two cherubic Jewish-Israeli children on a beach (presumably in a vision of a future Gaza) with the ominous policy prescriptions of “occupy, expel, settle”. </p>
<p>Most worryingly, a cabinet minister suggested that Israel could <a href="https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/palestine-complains-to-iaea-about-israels-threat-to-drop-nuclear-bomb-on-gaza/3048066">use nuclear weapons</a> against the Gaza Strip. Does this bellicose and dehumanising rhetoric suggest that Israel’s long-term plan for Gaza is to ethnically cleanse the territory, or even commit genocide there? </p>
<p>There is scant evidence that Israel’s government has any intent or capability to achieve these unsettling goals. Israel’s regional and international partners – Egypt and the US – <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/egypt-rejects-any-displacement-palestinians-into-sinai-says-sisi-2023-10-18/">steadfastly reject</a> any population transfer. Jordan has gone further, claiming that any such policy would constitute a “<a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20231107-jordan-pm-attempts-to-displace-palestinians-a-declaration-of-war/">declaration of war</a>”. </p>
<p>Turnout at the far-right Tel Aviv rally was negligible, and neither the minister who considered “nuking” Gaza, nor the intelligence ministry, have any tangible input in Israel’s national security decision-making. </p>
<p>What is more likely is that Israel will indefinitely occupy parts of Gaza, while seeking to eschew responsibility for civilian governance elsewhere in the territory. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, himself <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-does-not-seek-occupy-gaza-credible-force-needed-netanyahu-2023-11-10/">claimed that</a> “we don’t seek to govern Gaza”, but <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/netanyahu-israel-will-have-overall-security-responsibility-for-gaza-indefinitely-after-war/">added that</a> the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) should have “overall security responsibility” in the territory for “an indefinite period”.</p>
<p>This strategy is unsurprising, given that Israel has pursued it in all of its diverse occupations to date. These experiences provide a projection of what Israel’s planned “day after Hamas” scenario in Gaza might look like. </p>
<h2>The day after</h2>
<p>First, Israel is unlikely to control Gaza’s urban areas for long. Israel baulks at managing everyday governance in an occupied territory and will refrain from overseeing Gaza’s health, education and welfare ministries, for example. Similarly, IDF planners know that a prolonged military presence in a dense urban area would be an operational nightmare.</p>
<p>Secondly, Israel may restore its attachment to “<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20131208174207/http://www.shaularieli.com/image/users/77951/ftp/my_files/articles_in_english/brochure_eng.pdf?id=9345485">strategic depth</a>”, a doctrine that seeks to take and indefinitely hold sparsely populated foreign territory. The idea is to keep any fighting outside of Israel itself. Israel is a small country that has gone to war with all its neighbours and as a result has felt safer the more territory it holds beyond its recognised borders. </p>
<p>Taken together, the doctrine of strategic depth and Israel’s desire to detach itself from civilian governance suggest that the IDF will seek to indefinitely occupy some, but not all, of Gaza.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/israel-hamas-war-there-is-an-important-difference-between-a-humanitarian-pause-and-a-ceasefire-217157">Israel-Hamas war: there is an important difference between a humanitarian pause and a ceasefire</a>
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<p>There is growing evidence of what this might look like. Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, called for a permanent “<a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/israel-gaza-netanyahu-us-calls-humanitarian-pause-unease/">buffer zone</a>” to the west of the Gaza-Israel border. Deeper inside Gaza, the IDF has bisected the territory and besieged its cities, while avoiding a prolonged presence within them. </p>
<p>The problem with this twin strategy can be seen in Israel’s previous experiences in Gaza, which suggests it has rarely met Israel’s security goals. </p>
<h2>Bitter experience</h2>
<p>Before it withdrew in 2005, Israel occupied <a href="https://academic.oup.com/isp/article/24/1/67/6762979">about 20%</a> of the sparsely populated but operationally valuable parts of the Gaza Strip, including access roads and strategic positions close to the border. It ceded the urban areas within most of the remaining 80% of the territory to the Palestinian Authority (PA) back in the early 1990s. </p>
<p>One factor that caused Israel to leave was the IDF’s dissatisfaction with the status quo. Strategic depth does not make violence less likely, but merely pushes it away from the border and into foreign territory. As a result, the international community saw Israel as an illegal occupier. This limited the IDF’s operational freedom, because of the international condemnation it attracted whenever it acted. </p>
<p>Strategic depth also failed to shield Israeli civilians. Despite the IDF occupation of 20% of Gaza, Hamas’ rockets were easily able to fly over the IDF soldiers and into Israel itself.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558864/original/file-20231110-29-onypdn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Map of the Gaza Strip in May 2005, a few months prior to the Israeli withdrawal. The major settlement blocs were the blue-shaded regions of this map." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558864/original/file-20231110-29-onypdn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558864/original/file-20231110-29-onypdn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=642&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558864/original/file-20231110-29-onypdn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=642&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558864/original/file-20231110-29-onypdn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=642&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558864/original/file-20231110-29-onypdn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=807&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558864/original/file-20231110-29-onypdn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=807&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558864/original/file-20231110-29-onypdn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=807&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Map of the Gaza Strip in May 2005, a few months prior to the Israeli withdrawal. The major settlement blocs were the blue-shaded regions of this map.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">US Central Intelligence Agency</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Simultaneously, Israel avoiding responsibility for Gaza’s civilian governance could allow Hamas to retake power. The Biden administration has encouraged Israel to empower the PA within Gaza’s urban areas. Yet, Israel’s far-right government will reject ceding governance to the PA, given that this would make a Palestinian state more likely. </p>
<p>The PA is weaker than ever before due to longstanding and endemic corruption and Israeli policy to curtail its power, particularly under Netanyahu, who has tacitly supported Hamas in Gaza as a competing force. As such, it is unclear the PA could ever have the capability to govern all of an independent Palestine. </p>
<p>This leaves an open question which Israel’s government can’t currently answer: who will govern Gaza if the IDF does remove Hamas? </p>
<p>The final issue with this dual strategy is that it would constitute less a new Israeli approach and more a continuation of the same policies that proved so deeply flawed on October 7. Right up until Hamas’ incursion on that day, Israel accepted the Islamist group’s control of and governance over Gaza’s urban areas. </p>
<p>Concurrently, Israel unilaterally declared a <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2004/10/17/israel-despite-gaza-pullout-plan-home-demolitions-expand">400-metre buffer zone</a> on the Gazan side of the border. An intricate network of sensors, drones, walls and watchtowers monitored this zone, with Israel often meeting any unauthorised movement within it with live fire. </p>
<p>That this strategy failed to prevent the deadly attacks of October 7 should serve as pause for thought for Israeli decision-makers deliberating how a post-Hamas security regime could look. There is, however, little evidence that it has.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217323/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rob Geist Pinfold is a Board Member at Yachad, a British NGO whose primary mission is to support a political resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.</span></em></p>Israel has bitter experience of trying to control Gaza. Now it must decide how to manage the territory in the future.Rob Geist Pinfold, Lecturer in Peace and Security, Durham UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2165082023-11-08T16:41:30Z2023-11-08T16:41:30ZThree images that show wartime photographs can have greater impact than the written word<p><em>This article contains images that some may finding distressing, including of torture.</em></p>
<p>“Images are worth a thousand words. These images <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/nato-ministers-shown-horrific-video-hamas-attack-2023-10-12/">may be worth a million</a>.” US secretary of state Antony Blinken’s response to being shown graphic images of the victims of Hamas’s recent massacre raises an important question about whether photographs are more powerful than words in conveying the brutality of war. </p>
<p>Since the announcement of its <a href="https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/photographpreservationprogram/harvards-history-photography-timeline-text-only">invention in 1839</a>, photography has been imagined as a form of “writing with light” (referring to the meanings of the Greek words <em>phos</em> and <em>graphe</em> from which it is derived).</p>
<p>Writing in the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1862/10/20/archives/bradys-photographs-pictures-of-the-dead-at-antietam.html">New York Times</a> in 1862, Oliver Wendell Holmes reflected on photographs taken after the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Antietam">Battle of Antietam</a> during the US civil war: “We see the list [of those killed in battle] in the morning paper at breakfast but dismiss its recollection with the coffee.” By contrast, it was as if the photographer had “brought bodies and laid them in our dooryards and along the streets”. </p>
<p>In a globalised and fast-moving media landscape, photographs are more efficient than words. They can be <a href="https://news.mit.edu/2014/in-the-blink-of-an-eye-0116">absorbed in an instant</a> and apparently transcend barriers of language. The notion of photography as a universal language has been around since photography’s origins <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/776511">and, despite criticism,</a> <a href="https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/10.3828/jrs.8.1.43">remains powerful</a>.</p>
<p>As the documentary photographer Sebastião Salgado put it: “I can write in photography — and you can read it in China, <a href="https://blog.ted.com/the-language-of-photography-qa-with-sebastiao-salgado/">in Canada, in Brazil, anywhere</a>.”</p>
<p>Photographs have worked alongside words to <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1750635210356813">substantiate written reports on war</a> on the basis that the mechanically produced images provide an objective and neutral record of reality. </p>
<p>Numerous scholars, however, have debunked this and shown how <a href="https://access.portico.org/Portico/auView?auId=ark:%2F27927%2Fphz3m9b08t">the camera can indeed lie</a>. Wartime photographs can be <a href="https://www.roots-routes.org/il-partito-preso-delle-cosethe-mother-from-estremadura-and-the-idea-of-a-photographic-icondi-erika-zerwes/">used for propaganda purposes</a>. Yet, even in the era of digital and AI-enhanced imagery, the idea that photography reveals the truth persists. </p>
<p>Lucy’s <a href="https://research.birmingham.ac.uk/en/publications/martyrdom-in-the-age-of-mechanical-reproduction-the-photograph-as">research has explored</a> how this perception of photography as evidence was harnessed for propaganda purposes during Mexico’s <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/4295/chapter-abstract/146187227?redirectedFrom=fulltext">Cristero War (1926-29)</a>, a struggle which saw Catholics rise up against a series of government policies curbing religious freedoms. </p>
<p>Catholic propagandists disseminated real <a href="https://mavcor.yale.edu/mavcor-journal/object-narratives/photographic-postcard-commemorating-antonio-ver-stegui">photographs of slain priests and militants</a>, both in Mexico and abroad, as proof of federal violence. This created <a href="https://research.birmingham.ac.uk/en/publications/martyrdom-in-the-age-of-mechanical-reproduction-the-photograph-as">narratives of martyrdom</a> that would galvanise support for the rebellion.</p>
<p>The most enduring photograph of this kind is the <a href="http://cehm.org.mx/Buscador/VisorArchivoDigital?jzd=/janium/JZD/CDLXXXV/26/5/CDLXXXV.26.5.jzd&fn=431662">striking image of the Jesuit priest Miguel Pro</a> who was executed without trial in 1927 on suspicion of attempting to assassinate former president Álvaro Obregón, despite limited evidence. </p>
<p>In his final moments before the firing squad Pro assumed the pose of Christ on the cross, converting his body into a symbol of non-violent Catholic resistance. The publication of the photograph in the mainstream media <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Miguel_Pro/hn4SDAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0">sparked Catholic outrage</a> around the world in 1927 and continues to circulate today.</p>
<p>Some of the most powerful photographs from wartime have catalysed fierce debate on the justification of conflict. Here are three examples.</p>
<h2>1. Liberation of concentration camps (1945)</h2>
<p>Journalists have turned to the camera when words seem incapable of describing the most extreme wartime atrocities. This was the experience of US and British reporters covering the <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/collections/the-museums-collections/about/photo-archives/world-war-ii-liberation-photography">Allied liberation of the concentration camps</a> at the end of the second world war. </p>
<p>A New York Times journalist said at the time: “Writers have tried to describe these things, <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/specials/magazine/forties.html">but words cannot describe them</a>.” Photographs offered proof that was “<a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/76383468.pdf">more difficult to deny than with words</a>”, according to professor of communication at the University of Pennsylvania <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/R/bo3637820.html">Barbie Zelizer</a>. </p>
<p>An Israeli government spokesperson said that photographs of the recent October 7 massacre had been released to combat a “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/23/israel-shows-footage-of-hamas-killings-to-counter-denial-of-atrocities">Holocaust denial-like phenomenon</a>” over the Hamas atrocities.</p>
<h2>2. “Napalm Girl” (1972)</h2>
<p>Nick Ut’s photograph of nine-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc fleeing after a napalm attack on the village of Trang Bang has been considered “a symbol of the horror of war in general, and of the war <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Moments/f65MywAACAAJ?hl=en">in Vietnam in particular”</a>. The image created <a href="https://theconversation.com/50-years-after-napalm-girl-myths-distort-the-reality-behind-a-horrific-photo-of-the-vietnam-war-and-exaggerate-its-impact-183291">the myth that the US was responsible</a> when in reality the napalm had been accidentally dropped by South Vietnamese forces.</p>
<p>Although Ut’s photograph did not radically transform US public opinion <a href="https://theconversation.com/50-years-after-napalm-girl-myths-distort-the-reality-behind-a-horrific-photo-of-the-vietnam-war-and-exaggerate-its-impact-183291">to the extent often assumed</a>, it became an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/17/opinion/photojournalism-children-nick-ut.html">icon for anti-war sentiment </a> and Ut claimed that it influenced soldiers’ decisions <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/video/how-nick-ut-s-photo-napalm-girl-changed-the-vietnam-war-908256835749">to abandon the war.</a></p>
<h2>3. Abu Ghraib (2004)</h2>
<p>Photographs have played a powerful role in exposing war crimes, as in the case of the now infamous images documenting torture against detainees at the <a href="https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/usa-pattern-brutality-and-cruelty-war-crimes-abu-ghraib">US military prison in Abu Ghraib, Iraq</a>. </p>
<p>Although written reports of abuses had been circulating for over a year, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claimed only the images provided a “vivid realisation” of what happened. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2004/05/12/mr-rumsfelds-responsibility/bde749f3-e0c9-4f0e-80fe-fe02410d3ee9/">“Words don’t do it,” </a>, he added.</p>
<p>The most striking photograph, showing the hooded figure of Ali Shallal al-Qaysi with electrical cables attached to his outstretched arms, arguably became <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/a-wretched-new-picture-of-america/2013/11/22/87083a1a-53ac-11e3-9fe0-fd2ca728e67c_story.html">the defining image of the “war on terror”</a>. The image significantly damaged public perception of <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1464884907084337">US foreign policy</a> and was appropriated as a <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Pod-silhouette-ads-converted-into-iRaq-protest-posters-by-the-graphic-design-group_fig5_249689866">symbol of protest around the world</a>.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/50-years-after-napalm-girl-myths-distort-the-reality-behind-a-horrific-photo-of-the-vietnam-war-and-exaggerate-its-impact-183291">50 years after ‘Napalm Girl,’ myths distort the reality behind a horrific photo of the Vietnam War and exaggerate its impact</a>
</strong>
</em>
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<p>These images demonstrate the power of photography not only to provide “evidence” of the realities of war, but also to elicit an emotional response from the viewer. Author <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/54582/regarding-the-pain-of-others-by-susan-sontag/9780141012377">Susan Sontag famously warned</a> that over-exposure to images of suffering could cause apathy and “compassion fatigue” but, as the photography curator and academic David Campany has shown, <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003104001-8/myth-compassion-fatigue-david-campbell">it’s not that clear-cut</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/107769901108800304">Research from 2011</a> concluded that photographs published in European news publications relating to human experiences of the 2009 Gaza conflict provoked stronger emotional reactions than articles.</p>
<p>In her work on the ongoing Israel-Palestine crisis, Israeli author and art curator Ariella Azoulay argues that contemplating images of suffering binds us in a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1qgnqg7">“civil contract”</a> with those depicted: it is up to us to respond through meaningful action.</p>
<p>As we navigate the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/25/pageoneplus/israel-gaza-war-photos.html">harrowing news coverage of the Middle East conflict</a>, perhaps what is most important is photography’s potential to remind us of our shared humanity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216508/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Pippa Oldfield's research has previously been supported by funding from AHRC; The British Academy; Paul Mellon Centre; and Peter Palmquist Memorial Fund, among others.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lucy O'Sullivan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Wartime photographs can be used for propaganda purposes.Lucy O'Sullivan, Assistant Professor in Modern Languages (Spanish), University of BirminghamPippa Oldfield, Senior Lecturer in Photography, Teesside UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2170322023-11-08T13:38:26Z2023-11-08T13:38:26ZIn Gaza, the underground war between Israeli troops and Hamas fighters in the tunnels is set to begin<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558070/original/file-20231107-252596-7d74iu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=48%2C48%2C4537%2C3320&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Hamas fighter steps out of a tunnel during a 2014 public demonstration of the group's military abilities.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/fighter-from-izz-al-din-al-qassam-stands-in-front-of-a-news-photo/1546737195">Yousef Masoud/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Israel Defense Forces have announced that they have <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/israel-hamas/2023/11/01/israel-hamas-gaza-war-live-updates/71405089007/">reached the outskirts of Gaza City</a> and are <a href="https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2023-11-06/israeli-forces-cuts-off-north-gaza">expecting to enter the city soon</a>. </p>
<p>When that happens, Israeli troops will begin a dangerous new phase of the military campaign against Hamas fighters in a densely populated urban terrain that includes closely packed buildings above ground and a troubling maze of tunnels below.</p>
<p>Until now, Israel’s campaign against Hamas seems to have been primarily carried out from the air, including via laser-guided <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67097124">bunker-buster bombs</a>, which are armed with deep-penetrating warheads and delayed fuses to enable them to blow up underground.</p>
<p>But on Oct. 29, 2023, the Israel Defense Forces said its troops had <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/israel-says-it-has-attacked-gunmen-inside-hamas-tunnels-and-releases-video-from-gaza-12997068">attacked Hamas gunmen in a tunnel</a> and killed <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/firefights-as-idf-troops-clash-with-gunmen-in-gaza-and-rockets-pound-central-israel/">Hamas fighters who emerged from a tunnel</a> to attack their positions in northwest Gaza. </p>
<p>Hamas subsequently posted a video of what <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/israel-says-it-has-attacked-gunmen-inside-hamas-tunnels-and-releases-video-from-gaza-12997068">appears to be the same attack</a> from the perspective of one of its fighters, moving across a sandy beach to strike the Israelis. </p>
<p>And on Nov. 5, 2023, Israel reported that three Hamas fighters <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-gaza-hamas-tunnels-fighters-war-rcna123708">emerged from a hidden tunnel and ambushed Israeli troops</a> behind what its forces had thought were the front lines.</p>
<p>I studied tunnel warfare during my <a href="https://www.brianglynwilliams.com/iraqi_kurdistan/field_iraqi_kurdistan.html">fieldwork in Iraq</a>, where the Islamic State group created a vast underground tunnel fortress in their defense of the city of Mosul. And I have analyzed the Germans’ underground tunnel and sewer “<a href="https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/182854">rattenkrieg</a>,” or “rat war,” fought to defeat the Soviets in one of the largest urban battles in history, the <a href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-battle-of-stalingrad">1942-43 Battle of Stalingrad</a>. </p>
<p>These and other historic battles teach one important lesson: Tunnel warfare tends to lessen many advantages a stronger, more advanced attacker might otherwise expect – and to favor the defenders hidden underground.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558073/original/file-20231107-252894-heb81a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Men in camouflage uniforms look at a massive hole in the ground." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558073/original/file-20231107-252894-heb81a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558073/original/file-20231107-252894-heb81a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558073/original/file-20231107-252894-heb81a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558073/original/file-20231107-252894-heb81a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558073/original/file-20231107-252894-heb81a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558073/original/file-20231107-252894-heb81a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558073/original/file-20231107-252894-heb81a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Palestinian security forces examine a tunnel from the Gaza Strip into Israel that was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/palestinian-security-forces-loyal-to-hamas-stand-at-the-news-photo/993035036">Hatem Omar/picture alliance via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Hamas plans a trap below ground</h2>
<p>From news reports, researchers and both Israeli and Hamas sources, it seems clear that Hamas has systematically built a complex underground city fortified with strong defenses beneath Gaza.</p>
<p>Yehia Sinwar, Hamas’ political leader, has claimed that the militant group has dug <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israeli-soldiers-will-face-labyrinth-hamas-tunnels-rcna121459">310 miles (500 kilometers) of tunnels</a> under the Gaza Strip. Hostages from this war and past ones have <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/24/israel-hamas-hostage-released-testimony/">offered eyewitness accounts of being held in this vast underground tunnel complex</a>. </p>
<p>The Israeli military has a website dedicated to what it calls “the underground city of terror,” in which it claims Hamas has built the concrete-reinforced passageways with construction materials <a href="https://www.idf.il/en/mini-sites/the-hamas-terrorist-organization/everything-you-need-to-know-about-hamas-underground-city-of-terror/">stolen from international donations</a> meant to aid the people of Gaza. The United Nations has alleged Hamas has stolen various humanitarian supplies, but it has also <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/un-refugee-agency-says-hamas-stole-fuel-and-medications-from-its-gaza-premises/">walked back those allegations</a>.</p>
<p>Israel says many of the entrances to the tunnels are “<a href="https://www.idf.il/en/mini-sites/the-hamas-terrorist-organization/everything-you-need-to-know-about-hamas-underground-city-of-terror/">hidden between schools, mosques, hospitals and other civilian buildings</a>.” In 2014, Israeli forces even reported finding a tunnel entrance hidden in a <a href="https://www.idf.il/en/mini-sites/ground-forces/combat-engineering-corps/diamonds-in-the-rough-finding-weapons-nobody-else-can/">washing machine in a Palestinian home</a>.</p>
<p>Hamas fighters have reportedly <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/28/middleeast/hamas-tunnels-gaza-intl/index.html">lined the tunnels with transport rails</a> to move rockets to locations where they can be launched from firing pads concealed by trap doors. Hamas’ tunnelers have also apparently built <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/11/01/1210000788/a-look-at-hamas-labyrinthine-tunnel-network">sleeping areas</a>, ventilation and resupply shafts, medical facilities and command centers. There are also storage areas said to hold food for a siege, fuel, weapons and ammunition – and even areas to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/11/03/gaza-tunnels-hamas-israel-war/">manufacture rockets</a>. This advanced tunnel network is all reportedly interconnected by a <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/24/politics/intelligence-hamas-israel-attack-tunnels-phone-lines/index.html">wired telephone system</a>, and guarded by <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/world/middle-east/booby-traps-mines-hamas-tunnel-network-under-gaza-helps-in-a-war-20231013-p5ec5o.html">mines and booby traps</a>.</p>
<p>Even if only some of those claims are true, it is clear that Hamas has built a formidable subterranean fortress beneath Gaza City that is <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/how-hamas-secretly-built-mini-army-fight-israel-2023-10-13">meant to be a trap for the Israelis</a> as well as a refuge for Hamas.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558074/original/file-20231107-27-edfclt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A person walks through a concrete tunnel." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558074/original/file-20231107-27-edfclt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558074/original/file-20231107-27-edfclt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558074/original/file-20231107-27-edfclt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558074/original/file-20231107-27-edfclt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558074/original/file-20231107-27-edfclt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558074/original/file-20231107-27-edfclt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558074/original/file-20231107-27-edfclt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Palestinian youth walks inside a tunnel used for military exercises during a weapons exhibition at a Hamas-run youth summer camp in Gaza City on July 20, 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/IsraelPalestiniansHamasTunnels/430337b57c1a463e889d815a407cb595/photo">AP Photo/Adel Hana</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Israel’s plans to defeat the tunnel fortress</h2>
<p>Israeli forces have encountered these tunnels before.</p>
<p>In 2013, for example, <a href="https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9975.html">Israeli troops unearthed a particularly large invasion tunnel</a> that began nearly three-quarters of a mile (1 km) inside the Gaza border, and was 72 feet (22 meters) deep. It burrowed under the border wall and was detected nearly 60 feet (18 meters) below the surface 1,000 feet (300 meters) inside Israel. </p>
<p>In 2014, Israeli troops fought underground during a <a href="https://merip.org/2015/10/operation-protective-edge">51-day ground invasion of Gaza</a> waged to destroy some of the tunnels. During that campaign, <a href="https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9975.html">Israeli troops were surprised by the requirements of tunnel warfare</a>, according to an analysis by the Rand Corporation think tank. They <a href="https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9975.html">had trouble finding</a>, fighting in and destroying what they came to call the “<a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/11/02/1210088853/one-of-israel-s-military-challenges-in-gaza-is-dealing-with-hamas-network-of-tun">Gaza metro</a>.” </p>
<p>Since that experience, Israel has created a <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/11/02/1210088853/one-of-israel-s-military-challenges-in-gaza-is-dealing-with-hamas-network-of-tun">special tunnel-warfare unit</a>, known as Samur, which translates as “weasels” in Hebrew, that is trained specifically to fight underground. </p>
<p>The Samur unit has been working for years to develop sensors that can <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/new-technology-to-help-idf-locate-tunnels-in-gaza/">detect underground tunnels</a>, booby traps and explosives. </p>
<p>The troops have also developed ground-penetrating radar <a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/mena/palestine-israel/2023/10/31/robots-and-attack-dogs-what-israel-brings-to-tunnel-combat/">to identify tunnels</a>. </p>
<p>And when they find a tunnel, they can destroy or seal its entrance with specialized weapons known as “<a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/10/25/sponge-bomb-new-weapon-israel-gaza-tunnels-war-hamas/">sponge bombs</a>.” These have no explosives but instead contain quickly expanding foam that hardens like concrete to seal off passages.</p>
<p>The Samur unit also has specially trained military dogs that can <a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/mena/palestine-israel/2023/10/31/robots-and-attack-dogs-what-israel-brings-to-tunnel-combat/">detect explosives in the tunnels</a> and attack opposing troops.</p>
<p>The tunnel corps troops are taught to operate <a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/mena/palestine-israel/2023/10/31/robots-and-attack-dogs-what-israel-brings-to-tunnel-combat/">mobile robots equipped with cameras</a> that can explore tunnels, relay pictures back and detonate booby traps without risking human lives.</p>
<p>Those who are chosen for this unit are reportedly soldiers who can <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/30/opinions/hamas-underground-tunnels-richemond-barak-bergen/index.html">tolerate the tunnels’ oppressive environment</a>. Conditions in the underground passages are said to be “<a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/like-fighting-ghosts-the-challenge-the-idf-faces-in-destroying-hamass-tunnels/">dark, terrifying and claustrophobic</a>,” with “ghosts” coming out of the darkness to attack.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bzY59lJ1A-w?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">In 2014, Vice News got a rare view of Israeli forces training for urban combat at a facility designed to look like Gaza City.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Israel’s troops train for urban combat, including in tunnels, at a <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/how-israel-is-training-for-urban-warfare/a-67134424">mock-up Palestinian city</a> on a military base located in the Negev Desert. They also use <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/28/middleeast/hamas-tunnels-gaza-intl/index.html">virtual reality environments</a> built from digital scans of actual tunnels discovered in previous military operations to train their troops for subterranean warfare.</p>
<p>According to <a href="https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R47754#page=40">an Oct. 20, 2023, Congressional Research Service report</a>, it is likely that some of these facilities and technologies were paid for by American taxpayers, as part of US$320 million in U.S. military funding meant for U.S.-Israel collaboration on “detecting, mapping, and neutralizing underground tunnels that threaten either country.”</p>
<p>But all this practice and preparation may not be enough. Harel Chorev, a Palestinian historian at Tel Aviv University’s Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, has said, “<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/12/israel-hamas-war-gaza-tunnels-pose-deadly-challenge.html">Nobody really knows what’s underground</a>. I don’t see Israeli soldiers being able to storm these tunnels.” </p>
<p>But as Israeli troops prepare to plunge into the densely packed heart of Gaza City in an effort to occupy the city above ground, they will likely end up fighting in a dangerous city below ground, too.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217032/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brian Glyn Williams does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Tunnel warfare tends to lessen any advantages a stronger, more advanced attacker might otherwise expect – and to favor the defenders hidden underground.Brian Glyn Williams, Professor of Islamic History, UMass DartmouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2171572023-11-07T14:30:39Z2023-11-07T14:30:39ZIsrael-Hamas war: there is an important difference between a humanitarian pause and a ceasefire<p>The British Labour Party leader, Keir Starmer, has come under fire from members of his own party for <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/gaza-lucy-powell-israel-hamas-burnley-b2442285.html">refusing to call for a ceasefire in the Hamas-Israel war</a>, instead pushing for a humanitarian pause in the conflict. As a result, <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-keir-starmer-gaza-israel-ceasefire-b2442358.html">50 Labour councillors</a> have quit the party. The controversy raises the question of the <a href="https://www.chathamhouse.org/2023/11/humanitarian-pauses-and-ceasefires-what-are-differences">difference between a humanitarian pause and a ceasefire</a>. </p>
<p>The conflict began in the early morning of <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-did-hamas-attack-and-why-now-what-does-it-hope-to-gain-215248">October 7 2023</a> when armed Hamas fighters launched a surprise attack against Israel, killing at least 1,400 Israelis and taking more than 200 civilians hostage. </p>
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<p>Israel responded to this attack by launching an assault on Gaza beginning with a relentless aerial bombardment and continuing now with a ground offensive. According to the Gaza health ministry, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/06/world/middleeast/gaza-death-toll-israel-hamas-war.html">at least 10,000 people</a> – mainly civilians – have been killed in Gaza in the month since the conflict began, including 4,100 children. </p>
<p>A further 25,000 people have been injured and hundreds of thousands have been displaced within the Gaza Strip, unable to leave because of the blockade imposed by Israel.</p>
<p>Israel’s massive bombing campaign has unsurprisingly led to a disastrous humanitarian situation. The UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, has described the situation in Gaza as a <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20231021-un-chief-urges-ceasefire-to-end-gaza-s-godawful-nightmare">“godawful nightmare”</a>. </p>
<p>This has led the UN and other countries to pressure Israel for a “pause” in the fighting to at least provide temporary humanitarian relief to the people of Gaza.</p>
<p>A number of resolutions calling for a ceasefire or some form of truce have been raised in the UN security council, but on each occasion <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-israel-hamas-war-benefits-russia-but-so-would-playing-peacemaker-216113">they have been vetoed</a> by one or more of the permanent members. A <a href="https://apnews.com/article/un-resolution-vote-israel-hamas-gaza-truce-7eec00b0e28ef2036636b166b48ca030">non-binding resolution</a> passed the UN general assembly on October 27, but this has been ignored by the Israeli government.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-israel-hamas-war-benefits-russia-but-so-would-playing-peacemaker-216113">The Israel-Hamas war benefits Russia, but so would playing peacemaker</a>
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<h2>A humanitarian pause</h2>
<p>Gaza has no access to basic humanitarian aid due to the siege and blockade that Israel has inflicted on the strip. Even before the beginning of the war, Gaza had been subject to a <a href="https://theconversation.com/gaza-has-been-blockaded-for-16-years-heres-what-a-complete-siege-and-invasion-could-mean-for-vital-supplies-215359">16-year blockade</a> after Hamas took political control of the strip in June 2007. </p>
<p>After the October 7 Hamas attack, the Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant ordered a <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2023/10/9/israeli-defence-minister-orders-complete-siege-on-gaza">“complete siege”</a> on Gaza, which included cutting off supplies of electricity, food, water and gas. These shortages have put the country’s health system at risk – hospitals are now being run on power from electric generators and with severe shortages of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/06/world/middleeast/gaza-hospitals-israel-war.html">vital medical supplies</a>.</p>
<p>According to the UN, a <a href="https://www.unocha.org/sites/unocha/files/dms/Documents/AccessMechanisms.pdf">humanitarian pause</a> is defined as “a temporary cessation of hostilities purely for humanitarian purposes”. It is carried out for a certain period of time and in a specific geographic location. </p>
<p>The pause allows civilians trapped in conflict areas to safely flee, access assistance or receive medical treatment. It also enables the passage of essential supplies such as food, fuel and medicines.</p>
<p>In the context of Gaza, a pause could, for example, enable civilians to <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/01/middleeast/rafah-border-crossing-egypt-foreign-nationals-gaza-intl-hnk/index.html">flee the enclave through the Rafah crossing</a> into Egypt. The crossing has been <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/gaza-border-authority-says-rafah-crossing-open-only-listed-egyptians-foreigners-2023-11-06/#">opened for limited periods</a> to allow some evacuees to leave and some supplies to enter. But not enough.</p>
<p>There is <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/un-chief-surprised-by-escalation-israels-bombardment-calls-humanitarian-2023-10-28/">an increasing international consensus</a>, including from countries supporting Israel such as <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/02/us/politics/biden-israel-gaza-fighting-pause.html">the US</a>, that at least a humanitarian pause is needed.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, some argue that using a humanitarian pause to provide a temporary halt in the bombing of Gaza is not enough. In a report calling for a general ceasefire, <a href="https://views-voices.oxfam.org.uk/2023/11/why-humanitarian-pause-or-corridors-not-the-answer-in-gaza/">Oxfam said</a> its experience is that such pauses can even put civilians at a greater risk, as there is usually less clarity involved about safe zones and the duration of pauses. </p>
<p>“Rumours and misinformation spreads that this road or that ‘safe zone’ has been declared a demilitarised area, but that is often not true, leaving people walking into a warzone believing it is safe,” the report said. At the beginning of the war, routes that were thought to have been designated safe passages for evacuation from Gaza <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/14/gaza-civilians-afraid-to-leave-home-after-bombing-of-safe-routes">were bombed</a>.</p>
<p>As a result, the only true humanitarian solution that appears ideal is a complete ceasefire.</p>
<h2>A ceasefire: roadmap for an end to hostilities</h2>
<p>A <a href="https://casebook.icrc.org/a_to_z/glossary/ceasefire">ceasefire</a> is a political process rather than simply a humanitarian one. It urges parties to come together to find a political solution to the conflict. </p>
<p>It is meant to a be a longer-term process than a “pause” and should apply to the entire geographical area of the conflict. In this case, it would mean the whole of Gaza strip but also all others affected by the conflict such as <a href="https://apnews.com/article/lebanon-israel-hezbollah-civilians-killed-hamas-03a050045c6bf3f87e12086b63b40a1c">the south of Lebanon</a> where Israeli troops are battling with Hezbollah.</p>
<p>In the context of Gaza, a ceasefire would mean a complete stop of fighting on all sides, and the eventual release or exchange of hostages. It would not only mean the end of the bombardment of Gaza, but would also obligate Hamas to stop its attacks on Israel. </p>
<p>It is important to note that, like a pause, a ceasefire is <a href="https://guide-humanitarian-law.org/content/article/3/cease-fire/#">not a permanent peace agreement</a>. That said, the aim would be to create the conditions for a permanent settlement.</p>
<p>Reaching a ceasefire would likely require the involvement of a third party mediator, such as the US, Qatar or Iran. </p>
<p>In the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinian-cease-fire-hamas-caac81bc36fe9be67ac2f7c27000c74b">previous Hamas-Israel war in 2021</a>, both parties eventually managed to reach a ceasefire after 11 days of destruction which left more than 200 people dead. In that conflict, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/4/26/egypts-role-gaza-more-than-mediator">Egypt</a> played a major role as a mediator. </p>
<p>Since the latest conflict began on October 7, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has resisted all calls for a <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/3/blinken-discusses-humanitarian-pauses-as-israel-encircles-gaza-city">humanitarian pause</a> and a <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2023/10/30/israel-hamas-war-live-palestinian-death-toll-gaza-rises-above-8000">ceasefire</a>.</p>
<p>But the US and other allies of Israel continue to press Netanyahu for at least a pause in Israel’s assault. He insists that while “<a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-open-little-pauses-gaza-fighting-netanyahu-says-2023-11-07/#:%7E:text=Asked%20if%20he%20was%20open,we've%20had%20them%20before.">little pauses</a>” might be arranged to allow for the exit of hostages or to facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid, a longer halt in hostilities is not possible until all hostages taken by Hamas are released. And so the killing continues</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217157/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Malak Benslama-Dabdoub does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>At present the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has ruled out a ceasefire but may allow ‘little pauses’.Malak Benslama-Dabdoub, Lecturer in law, Royal Holloway University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2169222023-11-06T13:06:16Z2023-11-06T13:06:16ZGaza conflict: if the cycle of violence is to end we must not prioritise one side’s suffering over the other<p>Shortly after the Hamas massacre in Israel on October 7, people I know and respect were posting Palestinian solidarity notices on their social media feeds. I am supportive of the rights of the Palestinian people and am greatly disturbed by their treatment under Israel’s military occupation. But I found this response troubling. </p>
<p>Why is it appropriate to respond to <a href="https://forward.com/fast-forward/566249/israeli-officials-and-civilian-responders-describe-evidence-of-rape-and-other-atrocities-in-hamas-attack/">rape</a>, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-forensic-teams-describe-signs-torture-abuse-2023-10-15/">torture and murder (including decapitation)</a>, as a moment to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/08/israel-hamas-war-security-police-jewish/">celebrate</a> Palestinian resistance? </p>
<p>This response has only increased with time and the rising <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/10/1142687">Palestinian death toll</a> because of Israel’s bombing campaign.</p>
<p>I’ve noticed a discourse in some quarters that repeatedly privileges the victimhood and suffering of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/31/nyregion/israel-gaza-kidnapped-poster-fight.html">one group at the expense of the other</a> – in this case the Palestinian civilian casualties of Israel’s assault on Gaza over the Israeli civilians massacred on October 7. There are also those who tend to prioritise the suffering of Israelis in this terrible conflict. </p>
<p>And here’s the problem: it comes down to a <a href="https://publicseminar.org/author/ilan-zvi-baron/">zero-sum debate</a> about the righteousness of being the greater victim and dismisses the rights, pain and suffering of the other.</p>
<p>This seems to stem from an impoverished way of understanding political responsibility. </p>
<p>In political thought, responsibility is often understood as a <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/290293">synonym for being “answerable” for something</a>, which assumes that we can be <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/philosophy/article/abs/collective-responsibility/26700BC2E1DCCFAA959950C4BE8E6DE8">held to account for our actions</a>. <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/4381">Political</a> or <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo3634549.html">collective</a> responsibility explores the question of being responsible for things that we have not done but arise because of our membership in a <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/burdens-of-political-responsibility/burdens-of-political-responsibility/1514F5586A37CCAC5894DE7C011D6D4D">specific group</a>. </p>
<p>Whatever definition we take, when we hold any individual or group responsible, we are attributing to them a form of moral agency. A problem in the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that responsibility is used to dehumanise the other.</p>
<h2>‘Us versus them’</h2>
<p>Too much rhetoric about this conflict is a simplistic contrast between right and wrong in its “us versus them” formulation. It is not hard to find fault on both sides. There is nothing inherently wrong with holding both the Israeli government and Palestinian militants such as Hamas liable for their actions.</p>
<p>But when it comes to Israel-Palestine, it is sadly common to hear that <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/27/business/adl-open-letter-colleges-spj/index.html">Israel is to blame</a> for the actions of Palestinian terrorists. Such claims stretch the idea of responsibility to the extent that it becomes largely meaningless.</p>
<p>It is undeniable that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is responsible for creating the conditions for Palestinians to want to resist. His policies – and the ideology of the ultra-nationalist right that he has worked with over his many years in office – involved supporting Hamas. </p>
<p>This took the form of <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/netanyahu-israel-gaza-hamas-1.7010035">significant financial payments</a> to Hamas in Gaza alongside a wider strategy of undermining the peace process by supporting the expansion of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-palestinian-territory-israel-has-turned-into-a-firing-zone-meet-the-cave-dwelling-people-of-masafer-yatta-191356">Jewish settlements in the West Bank</a>, who all too often get away with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/30/world/middleeast/west-bank-settlers-palestinians-violence.html?searchResultPosition=1">the murder of Palestinians</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-palestinian-territory-israel-has-turned-into-a-firing-zone-meet-the-cave-dwelling-people-of-masafer-yatta-191356">The Palestinian territory Israel has turned into a firing zone: meet the cave-dwelling people of Masafer Yatta</a>
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<p>However, he is not responsible for the actions taken by Hamas.
It is possible to <a href="https://file.hukum.uns.ac.id/data/PDIH%20File/e-book/the%20question%20of%20german%20guilt.pdf">contribute to an outcome without being responsible for it</a>. Hamas needs to be held to account and we must not forget what they did on October 7.</p>
<p>Hamas violated multiple international humanitarian laws in its October 7 attack, which included murdering more than 1,400 Israelis, wounding another 5,000, and taking <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/article/israel-hostages-hamas-explained.html">over 200 hostages</a>. They are responsible for that, and for the high number of <a href="https://twitter.com/IsraelinUSA/status/1719333607108378833?s=20">missile launches</a> against Israel. We should not buy into the “look what you made me do” excuse that attempts to justify Hamas’ terrorism as a legitimate response to the treatment of Palestinians by multiple Israeli governments over the years.</p>
<p>Israel has the right to self-defence. But the brutality of the October 7 attack does not mean that we can excuse the form of Israel’s <a href="https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news-11-2-2023-6a398d4aeba979aef24960efc31eb772">military response</a> or <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/11/01/gaza-israeli-attacks-blockade-devastating-people-disabilities#">blockade</a> of Gaza which is in violation of the international law pertaining to collective punishment, among other aspects of the <a href="https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.33_GC-IV-EN.pdf">Geneva conventions</a>. </p>
<p>We need to hold the appropriate agents responsible for their own actions and choices, including Netayanhu and his government, and Hamas. </p>
<h2>Antisemitism and Islamophobia on the rise</h2>
<p>There are a lot of different ways to be held responsible, but blanket condemnations that feed into a zero-sum ways of thinking are dangerous.</p>
<p>The dangers are evident in <a href="https://www.adl.org/resources/blog/global-antisemitic-incidents-wake-hamas-war-israel">rising antisemitism</a> including <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2023/10/31/paris-prosecutor-opens-investigation-after-stars-of-david-found-tagged-on-buildings_6216629_7.html">spray painting Stars of David on buildings</a> in Paris which has <a href="https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/video/nazi-soldiers-rousting-office-workers-nazi-soldier-news-footage/509271021">echoes of Nazi era Germany</a>. </p>
<p>When we hold Jews in the diaspora <a href="https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-obligation-in-exile.html">responsible for Israeli policy,</a>, we are not engaging in any sensible notion of individual or political responsibility. Holding Jews to account for what Israel does is a variant of antisemitism. </p>
<p>By the same token, blaming all Palestinians – or Muslims – for the actions of Hamas is equally disturbing. Worryingly, both antisemitism and Islamophobia seem to be <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/10/26/israel-palestine-hostilities-affect-rights-europe">on the rise</a>.</p>
<p>Much of the public discourse and protest against Israel’s military response has sought to minimise Hamas’ violence on October 7. At times it seems that the horror of Hamas’s massacre of Israeli civilians is diminished once Palestinian suffering is taken into account. That’s disturbing. </p>
<p>One side’s tragedy does not undermine the reality of the other’s. One group’s responsibility does not mitigate the other’s moral agency. Responsibility is a mechanism that makes us moral agents. Let’s not use it to dehumanise each other.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216922/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>I have received funding in the past from the British Council for Research on the Levant, as well as a scholarship from the Rothschild Foundation Hanadiv (Europe).</span></em></p>Blaming an entire nation for the actions of some of its people is unfair, unproductive and will perpetuate the hatred and suffering.Ilan Zvi Baron, Professor of International Political Theory, Durham UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2169412023-11-03T14:19:45Z2023-11-03T14:19:45ZBBC’s emergency Gaza radio broadcasts show why World Service mustn’t rely on digital technology<p>The BBC has just announced that it will start an <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2023/bbc-world-service-announces-emergency-radio-service-for-gaza">emergency radio service</a> for listeners in Gaza. Daily news bulletins will be produced in London and Cairo by BBC News Arabic, the corporation’s Arabic-language television service. </p>
<p>The radio service will broadcast on medium wave, initially with a single afternoon programme from November 3, and an additional morning programme from November 10. The BBC’s stated aim is to provide <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2023/bbc-world-service-announces-emergency-radio-service-for-gaza">“vital news daily to the people of Gaza during this time of urgent need”</a>, including practical information about where to access shelter, food and water supplies.</p>
<p>Why would people in Gaza want to listen to the BBC? Partly because of the BBC’s reputation for providing trustworthy <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/this-is-the-bbc-9780192898524?cc=gb&lang=en&">news for a global audience</a>. Reuters Institute research suggests that the BBC remains the <a href="https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-report/2022/united-kingdom">most trusted news source</a> in the UK itself, and that in the US the BBC is <a href="https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-report/2022/united-states">trusted more</a> than any domestic national media network. But this analysis does not extend to cover the views of audiences in the Middle East. </p>
<p>Probably more important is the desire for news and information after disruption to local radio services after transmitters were destroyed, through targeted strikes or <a href="https://rsf.org/en/five-journalists-killed-media-premises-destroyed-gaza-strip">collateral damage</a>. Digital information services are also <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/1/israel-imposes-communication-blackout-on-gaza-second-time-in-five-days">liable to shutdowns</a>, due to damage and the strategic closing of internet and phone networks by the Israeli military. </p>
<p>The BBC’s News Arabic television service is also vulnerable to these threats. Information blockades are a big part of the <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/israel-hamas-war-gaza-conflict-has-sparked-an-information-war-and-both-sides-know-how-important-it-is-12997568">information war</a> that is currently being waged.</p>
<p>The BBC has turned to old-fashioned medium wave as the best means to provide civilians in Gaza with news and information. All that is required to listen is a cheap analogue radio set. These can be battery powered and operate even without mains electricity, another crucial consideration in a warzone in which many people have been displaced. This method of delivering radio is therefore much more resilient than digital audio broadcasts.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/bbc-at-100-the-future-for-global-news-and-challenges-facing-the-world-service-192296">BBC at 100: the future for global news and challenges facing the World Service</a>
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<p>To deliver its emergency radio service the BBC will use transmitters already operating in the region, broadcasting material produced in London and Cairo. Medium-wave signals (AM) <a href="https://mwcircle.org/most-powerful-mw-am-stations/">can travel for hundreds of miles</a>, so the BBC does not need access to a transmitter in Gaza itself (this is why the BBC is not broadcasting on FM, which has a much shorter range). The BBC will probably use a transmitter <a href="https://twitter.com/ChrisGreenwayUK/status/1719750761108602926">near Limassol, Cyprus</a>, which it has been used to relay services to the Middle East before. </p>
<h2>What works in wartime</h2>
<p>Traditionally, international broadcasters such as the BBC have used short-wave radio to reach listeners. The BBC reactivated its historic cold war short-wave radio services <a href="https://theconversation.com/shortwave-radio-in-ukraine-why-revisiting-old-school-technology-makes-sense-in-a-war-178575#:%7E:text=There%20are%20a%20number%20of,kilometres%20or%20tens%20of%20kilometres">to Russia and Ukraine</a> in 2022, to overcome wartime disruption and Russian restrictions placed on digital content. Establishing a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/mediacentre/2023/bbc-world-service-launches-emergency-radio-service-for-sudan">“pop-up” service for listeners in Sudan</a> in early 2023, as that country teetered on the edge of civil war, the BBC used short-wave as well as digital and social media platforms. </p>
<p>However, short-wave listeners need more specialist radio sets. These are probably harder to come by in Gaza. Since the beginning of the cold war, the BBC has often secured time on local medium-wave transmitters to relay its programmes to distant audiences, a crucial way of supplementing short-wave services.</p>
<p>The return to medium wave underlines the dangers of the recent move by many international broadcasters <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-wireless-world-9780192864987?prevSortField=8&resultsPerPage=100&sortField=8&type=listing&facet_narrowbytype_facet=Academic%20Research&lang=en&cc=uk">away from radio and towards digital platforms</a>. The internet is a great way to reach audiences in peacetime, or those living in places where the state and the military are not attempting to restrict internet access and content. But in times of crisis, digital connections are easily severed. Analogue radio is not an obsolete technology.</p>
<p>All this offers the BBC and the UK government a number of lessons. In the case of the BBC, the move to digital has in part been driven by a desire to innovate and harness new technologies. The transition has helped the World Service reach an unprecedented number of people, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/aboutthebbc/whatwedo/worldservice">an estimated audience of 364m each week</a>. But the move to digital has also been motivated by severe cuts to BBC funding. It has been accompanied by the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/sep/29/hundreds-of-jobs-to-go-as-bbc-announces-world-service-cutbacks">closing down of foreign-language radio services</a>, even though these still had audiences – particularly in times of crisis or government-imposed media crackdowns. As a result, while the BBC’s global audience may have grown, it may have lost key <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/jan/28/bbc-world-service-cuts-response">listeners in certain parts</a> of the world, particularly among those who do not speak English, or have digital access. </p>
<p>The BBC’s commitment to broadcasting in Arabic stretches back some 85 years. It launched a short-wave BBC Arabic Service <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5826668-arab-voices">as early as 1938</a>. This was the first ever regular BBC foreign-language radio service, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4282642">established to counter anti-British propaganda</a> broadcast in Arabic from Mussolini’s Italy. The BBC Arabic Service was <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/wireless-internationalism-and-distant-listening-9780198800231?cc=uk&lang=en&">conceived of as a tool of persuasion</a>, subtly serving British foreign policy interests. During and after the second world war, it played a crucial role in presenting news and comment on international affairs, from a British perspective, to listeners across the Middle East.</p>
<p>The BBC Arabic Service survived until January 2023. It was then closed down in the face of severe government-imposed restrictions on BBC revenues. Unpredictable <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-funding-agreed-to-keep-bbc-world-service-on-air">top-up grants</a> from the government have kept some BBC foreign-language services going on digital platforms, but radio services for international listeners – not just those in the Middle East – have been dramatically pruned.</p>
<p>All this now looks extremely short-sighted, <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/western-europe/bbc-and-decline-british-soft-power">a self-inflicted diminution of British overseas influence</a>, resulting from the more <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/feb/01/bbc-attack-politicians-new-technology-survival-strategy">general hostility</a> of the Conservative government and its supporters towards the BBC. </p>
<p>Why does the BBC need to establish emergency stations for listeners in Sudan and Gaza at short notice? Because its peacetime ability to broadcast in Arabic, and in other languages, has been drastically reduced. The Gaza radio service may not be a triumph for <a href="https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/bbc-world-service-soft-power-and-funding-challenges/">British “soft power”</a>, but rather a sign of the hollowing out of the BBC’s capacity to speak to the world on Britain’s behalf.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216941/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Potter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Old-fashioned radio signals offer a way to broadcast news to war-torn areas.Simon Potter, Professor of Modern History, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2168502023-11-02T17:23:29Z2023-11-02T17:23:29ZIsrael-Hamas war: Lebanese peace plan reflects country’s lack of appetite for more conflict<p>As the Lebanese prime minister, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/najib-mikati/">Najib Mikati</a>, outlined a three-step peace plan for the conflict in Gaza on October 31, he made a statement which may seem ordinary to a western audience: “We will consider the right of Israel and the right of the Palestinians.”</p>
<p>But his words had the potential to spark outrage in a country that has yet to recognise Israel, let alone entertain the idea of peace talks.</p>
<p>Speaking to <a href="https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2023/10/31/lebanons-prime-minister-najib-mikati-has-a-peace-plan-for-gaza">The Economist</a>, Mikati outlined his initiative. His plan calls for a five-day ceasefire followed by a permanent cessation of hostilities. </p>
<p>Then, an international conference should convene to finally resolve the issue by implementing the ever-elusive <a href="https://theconversation.com/oslo-accords-30-years-on-the-dream-of-a-two-state-solution-seems-further-away-than-ever-213003">two-state solution</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/oslo-accords-30-years-on-the-dream-of-a-two-state-solution-seems-further-away-than-ever-213003">Oslo accords: 30 years on, the dream of a two-state solution seems further away than ever</a>
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<p>There is no doubt that Mikati’s plan expresses the more moderate wishes of the majority in the Middle East. Most people not directly involved in the conflict want to see an immediate end to what is widely seen as a disproportionate and collective punishment of Gaza. They also want an increase in international diplomatic efforts to tackle the underlying issues. </p>
<p>It’s clear that many in the Arab world don’t consider the attacks on October 7 as isolated incidents. And that some responsibility should be shared by Israel and the west, who they consider to have failed to seriously pursue the two-state solution, at the expense of Palestinian dignity and political expression.</p>
<p>Yet Mikati’s plan itself is hardly original. It echoes the <a href="https://www.kas.de/c/document_library/get_file?uuid=a5dab26d-a2fe-dc66-8910-a13730828279&groupId=268421">Arab peace initiative</a> called for by the much more influential Saudi Arabia in 2002. </p>
<p>So why is a caretaker prime minister (only a president, which Lebanon has not had for two years, can appoint a prime minister) spearheading a seemingly hopeless peace plan, when his country has yet to settle its own matters with Israel? </p>
<h2>No appetite for war</h2>
<p>The first and immediate reason for Mikati’s initiative is the rising worry in Lebanon that the country will be dragged into a war it simply cannot afford to participate in. </p>
<p>The Lebanese state has been effectively bankrupt since 2019, and the country has been mired with one crisis after another ever since. Its economy has contracted by 39.9% of GDP since 2018 while the Lebanese Pound has lost more than 98% of its value in that time, according to <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2023/05/16/lebanon-normalization-of-crisis-is-no-road-to-stabilization">World Bank estimates</a>.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, average inflation in 2022 <a href="https://today.lorientlejour.com/article/1325612/lebanon-sees-triple-digit-average-inflation-for-second-year-in-a-row.html">reached 171%</a>) and the government dept-to-GDP ratio was <a href="https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/profile/LBN">listed at 283.2%</a>.</p>
<p>This financial hole, compounded by the extraordinary <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-beiruts-port-explosion-exacerbates-lebanons-economic-crisis-144040">explosion at Beirut’s port in August 2020</a> and subsequent energy and wheat crises, has left Lebanon in one of the worst socioeconomic situations in the country’s history. So, it’s hardly surprising that the appetite for war is not exactly surging.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-beiruts-port-explosion-exacerbates-lebanons-economic-crisis-144040">How Beirut's port explosion exacerbates Lebanon's economic crisis</a>
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<p>The second impetus for Mikati is political. Lebanon has always had a peculiar position within the Arab-Israeli conflict. Parts of the country see it as an existential issue amid fears of Israeli aggression, while others have developed a more ambivalent attitude. </p>
<p>Since a brief involvement in the Arab war against Israel in 1948, the Lebanese military has avoided getting involved in any military action against Israel. </p>
<p>Hezbollah’s success in pushing Israel out of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/may/24/israelandthepalestinians.lebanon">south of Lebanon in 2000</a> and its brief campaign against Israel <a href="https://casebook.icrc.org/case-study/israellebanonhezbollah-conflict-2006">in 2006</a> have led many to associate the Iran-sponsored “Party of God” with resistance against Israel. Meanwhile, many Lebanese leaders have done their best to distance themselves from Hezbollah, and the military has played a minimal role in stopping Israeli encroachments and attacks on Lebanese infrastructure.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557265/original/file-20231102-21-i09b0s.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Map of disputed SHebaa Farms area." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557265/original/file-20231102-21-i09b0s.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557265/original/file-20231102-21-i09b0s.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557265/original/file-20231102-21-i09b0s.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557265/original/file-20231102-21-i09b0s.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557265/original/file-20231102-21-i09b0s.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557265/original/file-20231102-21-i09b0s.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557265/original/file-20231102-21-i09b0s.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Israel has occupied a small section of territory on the Lebanon-Syrian border since 1967.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sanjay Rao/WIkimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>Hezbollah continues to gain much of its <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-hezbollah">legitimacy in Lebanon</a> as a resistance movement, often using as an official raison d’être Israel’s <a href="https://kroc.nd.edu/assets/227136/israel_hezbollah.pdf">continued occupation of the Shebaa Farms</a>. This is a small area of 16 square miles claimed by Lebanon that contains a few settlements. It sits on Lebanon’s border with Syria, which also runs through the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.</p>
<p>A 2022 survey conducted by the <a href="https://www.arabbarometer.org/wp-content/uploads/ABVII_Lebanon_Country_Report-ENG.pdf">Arab Barometer</a> showed that 17% of respondents in Lebanon said they “strongly favour or favour” normalisation between Arab states and Israel. </p>
<p>This ranked Lebanon third among countries surveyed. And the two above it, Sudan (39%) and Morocco (31%), are both parties to the controversial <a href="https://www.state.gov/the-abraham-accords/">Abraham Accords</a>, the bilateral agreements signed in 2020 and 2021 between Israel and various Arab states. For comparison, only 5% of Egyptians and Jordanians responded in the same manner.</p>
<p>Even for those Lebanese that are more openly aggressive to Israel, it seems that certain engagement rules (including restricting attacks to military outposts and surveillance equipment, and refraining from targeting civilians) – developed over the years between Hezbollah and the Israeli military – have served to bring a more satisfactory status quo. </p>
<p>In fact, another survey conducted this week by Lebanese newspaper <a href="https://www.al-akhbar.com/Home_Page/372304/_______-___-__________-___-_____-______">Al Akhbar</a> – which is often seen as supportive of Hezbollah – showed that 68% of respondents are against direct engagement, while only 52% supported limited “operations” to keep pressure on Israeli forces. </p>
<h2>Anger at Israel</h2>
<p>That said, one shouldn’t confuse a lack of appetite for war with support, or even tolerance, of Israeli internal and regional activity, not least in the latest conflict with Hamas. Protests have been taking place across Lebanon and the wider region over the past couple of weeks expressing solidarity with Palestinians, while also <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCvcAxoAS48">condemning the west’s seemingly unconditional support</a> of Israel. </p>
<p>What’s more, 80% of respondents in Al Akhbar’s survey expressed support for Hamas’s operations and 73% were against a neutral Lebanese position in the conflict. This chimes with the views of many others in the Arab world and across a range of developing countries, that Israel is either a guilty party or has gone too far in its retaliation in Gaza. </p>
<p>Such are the delicate balances that Mikati is trying to hold with his new initiative for peace. While his plan will likely fall on deaf ears, the rest of Lebanon will be watching with bated breath as the country’s (and the region’s) fate plays out over coming weeks and months.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216850/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tarek Abou Jaoude does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Lebanon has problems enough of its own without a major conflict on its border.Tarek Abou Jaoude, Teaching Fellow in Politics and International Relations, University of PortsmouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2168442023-11-01T17:04:53Z2023-11-01T17:04:53ZBenjamin Netanyahu’s leadership is questioned even as Israelis rally round the flag<p>Over the past year, Israel has witnessed an extraordinary wave of <a href="https://theconversation.com/israelis-protest-netanyahu-governments-brutality-and-plans-to-undermine-rule-of-law-201220">non-violent protests</a>, involving hundreds of thousands of activists from across society. The extensive demonstrations were triggered by a judicial overhaul announced by the Israeli government in early 2023. </p>
<p>The government <a href="https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-752225">passed into law in July 2023</a> the first planned change of the overhaul – a so-called “reasonableness” bill. This removed the power of the country’s supreme court (and lower courts) to cancel government decisions deemed “extremely unreasonable”. </p>
<p>The proposed judicial overhaul, which was designed to weaken the judicial branch, plunged Israel into one of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/israel-protests-netanyahu-delays-judicial-reforms-over-fears-of-civil-war-but-deep-fault-lines-threaten-future-of-democracy-202787">most serious internal crises in its history</a>. An unprecedented pro-democracy civil movement mounted an extensive anti-government campaign aimed at stopping the judicial overhaul. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/israel-protests-netanyahu-delays-judicial-reforms-over-fears-of-civil-war-but-deep-fault-lines-threaten-future-of-democracy-202787">Israel protests: Netanyahu delays judicial reforms over fears of 'civil war' – but deep fault-lines threaten future of democracy</a>
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<p>Each week, hundreds of thousands of Israelis demonstrated. These included several groups of reservists serving in the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) – including pilots and combat units – who refused to report to duty unless the government scrapped the judicial overall. </p>
<p>Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, presided over this internal turmoil. Yet rather than seeking a political compromise, his strategy was to sow political and social division. </p>
<p>Netanyahu and his ministers <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2023/0310/Israeli-protesters-Traitors-and-anarchists-or-best-and-brightest">denounced the pro-democracy demonstrators</a> as “traitors”, “anarchists”, and the “privileged elite”. In fact the protesters came from all walks of life: tech workers, lawyers, teachers, professionals, as well as members of the security services.</p>
<p>The pro-democracy campaigners, in turn, have referred to Netanyahu as the “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/03/world/middleeast/netanyahu-corruption-charges-israel.html">crime minister</a>”. This aims to highlight that the prime minister’s newfound impetus to weaken Israel’s judiciary arose after he became embroiled in a criminal trial. He faces multiple corruption charges: bribery, fraud and breach of trust, stemming from three separate cases. </p>
<p>Campaigners also repeatedly charged the government with violating the social contract with its citizens. They accuse the ultra-orthodox bloc, which Netanyahu relies on to hold on to power as part of his coalition, of using the judicial overhaul to preserve its economic interests and political influence and of permanently exempting ultra-orthodox males from serving in the IDF.</p>
<h2>Social resilience and political strains</h2>
<p>The murderous attacks launched by Hamas on October 7, which triggered the Israel-Hamas 2023 war, have had a unifying effect on Israeli society. The social divisions that marked the confrontations over the judicial overhaul have given way to a rare moment of social unity and rallying around the flag.</p>
<p>One of the key organisations opposing Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/29/world/europe/israel-reservists-hamas-war.html#:%7E:text=Made%20up%20largely%20of%20veterans,of%20Prime%20Minister%20Benjamin%20Netanyahu.">Brothers in Arms</a>, has now turned its entire logistical, financial and human effort to support the war effort. It is also helping the communities that were devastated after more than 1,300 Israelis were murdered by Hamas terrorists and more than 230 kidnapped. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, several religious Jews volunteered with the ultra-orthodox <a href="https://zakaworld.org/">Zaka organisation</a>, which retrieves bodies and body parts after terror attacks. They have been tasked with the terrible duty of identifying victims. </p>
<p>But while Israeli society has pulled together, the country’s leadership has not risen to the occasion. Given the monumental military and intelligence failure Israel experienced on October 7, the Netanyahu government entered the war with a severe legitimacy deficit. And yet it took the prime minister five days to form an emergency government. This brought in Benny Ganz, former defence minister and the leader of the National Unity party.</p>
<p>Gantz will serve alongside Netanyahu and defence minister Yoav Gallant in the “war management cabinet”. Former chief of staff with the IDF, <a href="https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/experts/gadi-eisenkot">Gadi Eisenkot</a> (National Unity Party), and <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/ron-dermer">Ron Dermer</a>, Israel’s minister for strategic affairs – and a close Netanyahu ally – will sit as observers. </p>
<p>The formation of the emergency government does not amount to a National Unity Government, which many Israelis had hoped for. Yair Lapid, the leader of the main opposition party, Yesh Atid, has so far opted not to join the government. He has justified his decision on two grounds: Netanyahu’s insistence on keeping the extreme right parties in the government and the proposal to form a double security cabinet without establishing clear lines of authority. </p>
<h2>Netanyahu’s day of reckoning?</h2>
<p>Whereas the ongoing political divide is significant, the more serious tension seems to be between Netanyahu and the security-military establishment. Since the October 7 attacks, heads of Israel’s key security organisations – the IDF and the intelligence service Shin Bet – have acknowledged their responsibility for the multilayered system failure that enabled the Hamas offensive. </p>
<p>In fact, Netanyahu has refused to assume any responsibility. Worse still, as the Israeli ground invasion into Gaza deepened, Netanyahu <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/netanyahu-blames-army-as-public-support-drains-away-xzh0sswtg">wrote on Twitter</a> (now renamed X) at 0100 on October 29: </p>
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<p>In contradiction to the lying claims: Under no circumstances and at no stage was Prime Minister Netanyahu warned about Hamas intending to go to war … Every defence official, including the heads of military intelligence and the Shin Bet [Israel’s security agency], believed Hamas was deterred and sought accommodation. This was the assessment that was presented time and time again to the prime minister and the cabinet by all defence officials and the intelligence community up to the outbreak of the war. </p>
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<p>The prime minister later deleted the message and apologised. But crucially, he did not say that what he tweeted was wrong. This leaves the strong impression that Netanyahu is still highly invested in passing the blame for Hamas’s attacks to secure his political and personal future. The fear is that this may affect his decisions in relation to the war. </p>
<p>This concern has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/31/netanyahus-political-future-looks-shakier-in-midst-of-israel-hamas-war">prompted calls</a> from business leaders, columnists, diplomats and former security personnel, to remove Netanyahu and replace the government, possibly through a <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/2023-10-30/ty-article-opinion/netanyahus-coalition-must-remove-him-immediately/0000018b-7cf1-d0f6-afeb-7ef5b1670000">constructive vote of no-confidence</a>. Netanyahu is hanging on, for now, but his day of reckoning will come, possibly even before the Israel-Hamas 2023 war is over.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216844/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amnon Aran does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Many Israelis think their prime minister is incapable of leading their country at a time of such severe crisis.Amnon Aran, Professor of International Relations, City, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2166292023-10-31T19:18:37Z2023-10-31T19:18:37ZAustralian MPs walk a difficult line on Israel-Hamas conflict<p>The failure of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/voice-referendum-results-point-to-shifting-faultlines-in-australian-politics-215673">Voice referendum</a> appeared to confirm Australians broadly reject propositions they believe to be characterised by divisiveness. There are few geopolitical circumstances more polarising than the drastic flaring of conflict between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza.</p>
<p>These moments resist the fast rhythm of modern political rhetoric. There is no doorstop interview, social media post or snappy campaign slogan that can convey the depth of suffering of Palestinians or Israelis. This deviation in political tempo exposes the shortcomings of <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-fast-politics-has-left-the-nsw-government-staring-into-the-electoral-abyss-188429">fast politics</a>, when careful, wider deliberation has historically proven more salient.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/six-former-prime-ministers-warn-against-letting-the-israel-gaza-conflict-divide-australians-216636">Six former prime ministers warn against letting the Israel-Gaza conflict divide Australians</a>
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<p>As the conflict reignited, symbolism was one of the first, and most strident, Australian political responses. The NSW government’s decision to project the image of the Israeli flag on the Sydney Opera House provoked “<a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/nsw-police-concerns-revealed-about-lighting-up-opera-house-for-israel-20231024-p5eem8.html">significant concern</a>” among authorities, and became a focal point for a pro-Palestinian protest.</p>
<p>Not so long ago, the Opera House’s iconic white sails were <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/so-close-to-the-action-but-missing-the-vibe-20181007-p5088w.html">used to promote gambling</a>. It’s hardly a sacrosanct canvas. And, for some, it’s a contentious platform for the expression of solidarity with the suffering. And the suffering is profound, for all concerned.</p>
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<p>Hamas’s attack on Israel, and Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, have resulted in the deaths of <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/10/1142952#:%7E:text=Over%207%2C700%20Palestinians%20have%20been,Ministry%20of%20Health%20in%20Gaza.">thousands of civilians</a>. It is likely many more will be killed based on <a href="https://www.idf.il/en/mini-sites/hamas-israel-war-articles-videos-and-more/general-articles/things-aren-t-always-as-they-seem-hamas-exploitation-of-civilians-in-gaza/">current strategic rationales</a>.</p>
<p>Contending with the human misery of the conflict has proven politically fraught at all levels. The Australian government joined with 43 other nations, including Canada, Germany, India and the UK, in abstaining from an amendment to a <a href="https://press.un.org/en/2023/ga12548.doc.htm">United Nations resolution</a> calling for the “protection of civilians and upholding legal and humanitarian obligations”. The political challenges appear similarly vexing domestically.</p>
<p>Prime Minister Anthony Albanese expressed early support for Israel, and has been <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/albanese-backs-israels-right-to-defend-itself-after-abhorrent-attacks/news-story/9734f1192d2ba62ef180a1ff78795890?amp">“unequivocal” in condemning</a> the Hamas attack. As the political tempo slows and the broader picture becomes more complicated, the tone can also shift.</p>
<p>Foreign Minister <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-25/extra-adf-personnel-sent-to-middle-east/103018022">Penny Wong has since qualified</a> that Australia’s support for Israel comes with an expectation it shows restraint. “Innocent Palestinian civilians”, she cautioned, “should not suffer because of the outrages perpetrated by Hamas”.</p>
<p>There has been no change in tempo from Opposition Leader Peter Dutton. As the current crisis began, he <a href="https://www.peterdutton.com.au/leader-of-the-opposition-transcript-statement-on-israel-parliament-house/">urged Israel to exercise “no restraint”</a> in doing “what is necessary […] to protect its people, and to thwart threats it now faces”. He has not wavered as the situation has deteriorated for civilians, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/article/103036442">describing</a> Australia’s UN vote abstention “an incredibly weak display of leadership from the prime minister”.</p>
<p>The Greens were scathing of the abstention <a href="https://greens.org.au/news/media-release/greens-condemn-israels-ground-invasion-gaza-condemn-labors-failure-vote">for different reasons</a>. “By failing to back a ceasefire and continuing to approve defence exports to Israel,” said Greens leader Adam Bandt, “Labor shares responsibility for the unfolding catastrophe in Gaza.”</p>
<p>The opportunity for a bipartisan position on the conflict in Israel and Gaza looks not only to have passed, but to have almost completely evaporated. <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/not-pulling-our-weight-bipartisanship-collapses-over-ukraine-support-20230607-p5derg.html">A similar collapse in bipartisanship</a> regarding Australia’s aid for Ukraine has occurred, but over a much longer period.</p>
<p>These distinct and firmly expressed political differences might suggest high levels of party unity on the stances respective leaders have adopted. But as the conflict continues, a diverse range of internal party opinions is also emerging.</p>
<p>National party whip Mark Coulton countered Dutton’s views, <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/you-can-t-unsee-it-why-this-nationals-mp-stands-alone-on-gaza-20231025-p5ef00.html">expressing concern</a> at the “whatever it takes to take out Hamas” language being used. “I didn’t want support for Palestinians just to be dismissed as something form the left”, he said. His call to “please respect civilian life”, noting Wong’s comments on restraint, is a point around which a degree of bipartisan support is emerging.</p>
<p>Labor MP Ed Husic <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/oct/19/australia-government-ministers-politicians-palestinians-punished-israel-hamas">said</a> Palestinians were being “collectively punished for Hamas’ barbarism”. His colleague, Anne Aly, backed Husic’s comments, saying it was “difficult to argue” that wasn’t the case in the face of rising civilian casualties. Other Labor MPs have since joined Husic and Aly in condemning the killing of civilians in the conflict.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/understanding-the-history-of-the-israeli-palestinian-conflict-in-5-charts-216165">Understanding the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 5 charts</a>
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<p>Former co-chair of the Parliamentary Friends of Palestine, Labor’s Maria Vamvakinou, <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Hansard/Hansard_Display?bid=chamber/hansardr/27173/&sid=0115">reminded her House of Representatives colleagues</a> that Albanese, former Treasurer Joe Hockey, and Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party Sussan Ley were once members of the group. </p>
<p>As civilian deaths mount and <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-iran-hezbollah-wider-conflict-middle-east-rcna122652">amid predictions the conflict may expand</a>, political dialogue in Australia will likely evolve in tempo and tone. On current trends, those shifts might prove most pronounced at the local level.</p>
<p>Questioned over a local council decision in his southwestern Sydney electorate to fly a Palestinian flag, senior Labor minister <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/oct/27/tony-burke-says-people-have-right-to-grieve-gaza-deaths-and-backs-flying-palestinian-flag-in-australia">Tony Burke pointed to diasporic links</a>. “In my part of Sydney”, he observed, “people are […] getting information directly from the ground in Gaza”. His community is communicating via WhatsApp groups, and, he said, “seeing horrific images updated every hour on their phones”.</p>
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<p>Burke warned against falling into an “immature debate” about blame and grief.
“People have a right to be able to grieve when innocent life is lost.” His stance is not new. Nor is it necessarily out of step with long-held parliamentary standards.</p>
<p>There is a Labor tradition - forged during a different time but in a similarly complex geopolitical crisis - that went on to substantially shape Australian politics for nearly a decade. When, in 1965, then-Prime Minister Robert Menzies committed Australian troops to the war in Vietnam, Labor leader <a href="https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/opinion/topic/2019/08/10/the-legacy-graham-freudenberg/15653592008579#hrd">Arthur Calwell went against the tide</a> and opposed the deployment.</p>
<p>In a speech prepared by his press secretary, Graham Freudenberg, Calwell outlined the strategic case for his decision, spelling out Labor’s discord with the national interest. But his rationale went further. Like Burke, Calwell’s primary concern was civilian life. Labor, he declared, does “not believe [war] will promote the welfare of the people of Vietnam. On the contrary, we believe it will prolong and deepen the suffering.” He was right.</p>
<p>Only time, and the shifting tempo of politics, will determine the prescience (or otherwise) of political views on the tragic events occurring in Israel and Gaza. Who is right and who is wrong is unlikely to matter to those affected.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216629/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andy Marks does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Contending with the human misery of the latest conflict has proven politically fraught at all levels.Andy Marks, Pro Vice-Chancellor, Strategy, Government and Alliances, Western Sydney UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.