Post Gaza Query: Israel In New World Order Minus The Hegemon?

Post Gaza Query: Israel In New World Order Minus The Hegemon?

                                                                                     Saeed Naqvi

When the dust settles on the Israel-Gaza war, Israel will be confronted with an existential question: should it redesign itself to harmonize with the region and beyond? Or continue in old, exceptional ways?

The exclusive Israeli-style vengeance witnessed in the 51 days of bombardment, a jaw for a tooth, was possible only with the US hegemon standing four square behind all of Israel’s actions.

The situation today is this: BRICS are standing firm while G7 are falling apart even the issue of the Israel-Gaza conflict. A target must quickly swim into their ken to keep the G7 in anxious huddle.

What might this target be? Who knows Islamic terror may well spiral upwards from the ashes of Gaza. This is a plausible line of speculation. An initiative to resurrect Islamic menace has already been taken by Noor Gilon, the Israeli Ambassador to New Delhi. With considerable alacrity, he has sought to enlist India’s support for the project by fulfilling his end of the bargain: Israel has recognized Lashkar-e-Taiba as a terrorist organization. It has thereby poked two fingers in Pakistan’s eye. This, the Israelis assume will please New Delhi so much that it may be moved, by way of reciprocation, to proscribe HAMAS as a terrorist organization.

In other words, Israel proscribes Pakistan based LET as terrorist but India shirks from casting HAMAS in similar terms. Some may not spot the non sequitur. The media, particularly in the West, in its current form must not be expected to insert the umpteen arguments New Delhi may have for its equivocation. Israeli ambassador’s initiative falls far short of the florid imagery employed by the Ukraine ambassador to describe Russian troops in Ukraine: “Like Moghul massacre of Rajputs.”

The Israeli initiative came at a time when HAMAS was more in the news than ever before but so was Gaza, with optics so horrible as to make the Israeli sales pitch unbelievably insensitive. Across the globe, television viewers in countless millions, see HAMAS and Palestinian resistance as one. It must all be extremely embarrassing for Mahmoud Abbas, the notional leader of the Palestinian authority whom US and Israel hope to foist as leader, quite incongruously, of men holding wounded babies in their arm, women carrying their meagre belongings to few know where, bombed hospitals and scenes of horror like Dresden in the movies. Those bearing the pain don’t know Abbas.

The idea to resurrect Islamic terror as the last ditch effort to patch up a crumbing world order has many takers but credit for its earliest authorship goes to former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair. He was fiercely opposed to picking quarrels with Russia because that would divide Europe, he argued. Islamic extremism attracts a wider coalition which, according to him would include Russia and China. After all, the last two countries had their own “Muslim” problems in the Caucasus and Xinxiang.

In disgrace for having fudged an official document to go to war in Iraq, Blair persisted nevertheless: the West will pay a heavy price for not entering the war in Syria, he warned.

Blair was a holdover from the George W. Bush era, the Sole Superpower moment. In fact the Anglo-saxon trio of Bush, Blair and Australian Prime Minister John Howard were in the vanguard promoting post 9/11 Islamic terror as a suitable substitute for the vanished Soviet Union cast as the enemy to sustain Western cohesion. AUKUS has the same three in concert. The concept seemed valid until the fall of Lehman Brothers in 2008. Francis Fukuyama’s End of History proved wrong.

Antecedents to the post 9/11 Islamophobia could be traced to 1973 Yom Kippur war when the Arabs did so well as to give the Gulf States the self confidence to quadruple the price of oil. Pockets bulging with petro-dollars, the Shaikhs of Araby turned up in London to see the rain. Savoy and Dorchester hotels had “full occupancy” notices hanging in the lobby, all booked by the Shaikhs. Marks and Spencer had signs in Arabic. Savile Row oversold. Anti Christ had entered the citadel. To get even, publishers gave hefty advances to V.S. Naipaul and Salman Rushdie for Among the Believers and Satanic Verses.

The booming economies of the Gulf States attracted Indian labour primarily from Kerala. The State’s neat, austere skyline began to be dotted with garish “Dubai houses”. Resentment at Muslims (mostly) acquiring new prosperity spilt over into communalism. This coincided with Gen. Zia ul Haq beaming Nizam e Mustafa from Pakistan, tremors from the Meenakshipuram conversions – all boosting communalism locally which was, in due course, to tie up with global Islamophobia, one reinforcing the other.

It was thick saffron on which Narendra Modi climbed to power in Gujarat in October 2001. On October 18 that year began US fireworks over Afghanistan. The media space was saturated with rocket attacks on Kabul, boosting Islamophobia sky high. Under this canopy, the Gujarat pogrom of February 2002 appeared to have international endorsement. Hindutva basked in the thought that the war on terror would help it prosper. But it was soon noticed that war on terror created more terror.

Egged on by the neo-cons seeking comprehensive global dominance, Washington’s lightening war on terrorism began with Afghanistan. It ended ignominiously with the messiest departure from a country the US had occupied for 20 years.

By now the decline of the US, rise of China, emergence of a multipolar world, weakening G7 and an expanding BRICS were all causing anxiety. After the Afghan debacle, westward expansion of NATO upto the Ukraine-Russia border became the provocation for another war. Russia would be brought down on its knees, Putin’s nose would be rubbed in the dust and, willy nilly, a victory would be manufactured to resurrect the hegemon. Alas, victory eluded the US once again.

All of this imbues the current round between Israel and Gaza with consequences way beyond the immediate. Either a beginning towards a two-state solution softens the Arab view of Israel. Or Israel continues looking for support for all its tantrums by a hegemon which is in retreat.

#          #          #          #

Decoding Nasrallah’s Speech And Blinken’s Frenetic Diplomacy

Decoding Nasrallah’s Speech And Blinken’s Frenetic Diplomacy

                                                                                      Saeed Naqvi

The speech last Friday by the Hezbollah Supremo, Hassan Nasrallah, arguably the most popular leader in the Arab street, has evoked mixed responses. The less familiar with the caverns of West Asian affairs expected the speech to be a precursor of greater fire power in support of Hamas to deter more Israeli barbarity being visited on the Palestinians in Gaza.

This view obscures the reality that more firepower will only aggravate the suffering of Gaza without promise of any alteration in the direction of events. It is the new direction that Nasrallah is interested in.

Nasrallah’s reputation is not built on his eloquence and rhetoric alone but on his credibility: he does what he says. He demanded an immediate ceasefire to end the unspeakable suffering of Palestinians. He talked of the “constructive ambiguity” embedded in his statement. What could that be? He was clear that all options, which presumably includes full scale war, were on the table.

Delay in ceasefire augments the ranks of martyrs and lights prairie fires of revulsion against Israeli barbarity encouraged by the US wherever people watch television. In other words, the publicity war has been lost – and losses will mount unless Israel cuts its losses. What will follow a ceasefire? All denominations involved have their preferred scenarios for the Day of Judgement.

Moves on the regional chessboard by the US have been reactive, not innovative at all. At the September G20 summit in New Delhi, the US launched the idea of a New Delhi, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Europe corridor modelled quite unabashedly on China’s Belt and Road initiative.

The initiative to be credible required a Riyadh-Jerusalem rapprochement. This was problematic because a completely contradictory rapprochement between Riyadh and Tehran had already been put in place under Chinese auspices. Saudi strongman Mohammad bin Salman would have to be unbelievably fickle to unclasp Tehran’s hand and, like a trapeze artist, clasp Tel Aviv’s.

This is not what was happening in any case. MBS, as the Saudi Crown Prince is called, has evolved impressively in statecraft from his earlier brash days. He was not in the deal at the behest of the US for a blind date with the Israelis. He would have spelt out conditions for normalization. In spelling out conditions he would have taken into account Iran’s firm stand on Palestine. The October 7 startling attack by Hamas and Israel’s horrendous retaliation has clearly ensured the closure of the America’s Saudi-Israel file – for the near future atleast.

With the expiry of the initiative, the post October 7 scenario with global public opinion ablaze against the Israeli-US duet, groups other than Hamas who are harvesting wide sympathy are all associated with Iran, Hezbollah, and a web of Popular Mobilization Fronts like Hashd al Shaabi in Iraq and their look-alikes across Syria, Yemen, Lebanon. These militias had been knit together by the late Iranian Commander Qasim Suleimani. Such a menace had these militias become that western intelligence had to eliminate Suleimani by a drone attack outside Baghdad airport in January 2020. Suleimani was the author of the kind of military preparedness which Hamas demonstrated in its attack. The secrecy and the professionalism are all derived from Suleimani’s book.

Since the success of the Islamic revolution in 1979, the West has harboured an interest in playing up the Shia-Sunni divide for its own and Israel’s advantage. At one stage even thinkers like Henry Kissinger advanced the thesis that the Arab world was exhausted with the Palestinian issue. It was much more focused on the Shia-Sunni divide. Without much attention to detail, the media propounded the idea of “a Shia arc” which encircled Israel – Iran, Lebanon (Hezbollah), Syria and, incongruously, Hamas which is anything but Shia.

Hamas is an extension of the Muslim Brotherhood. Mohammad Morsi of the Brothers was removed as Egypt’s Prime Minister by a coup in 2013 and General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi installed instead, after some wrangling between the State Department and the Pentagon. Morsi was removed for two reasons – Muslim Brotherhood’s continuity from Cairo to Gaza was a “threat to Israel’s Security.” Also, the Saudis were having kittens with the rise of the Brothers in the most powerful Arab country.

Egypt is not exempt from the unprecedented anger in the Arab street, and basement, at the inhuman pounding of Gaza by Israel. Sisi, therefore, must be an extremely anxious man today.

It is understandable that in an atmosphere of mass anger, meeting President Biden would have been the kiss of death for Arab leaders. Normally Secretaries of State paved the way for Presidential meetings. In a strange reversal of roles, Biden having drawn a blank with his favoured Arabs, Anthony Blinken is hopping from one Muslim capital to another to retrieve an irretrievably lost glory.

What is the theme of Blinken’s frenetic activity? Iran, Hezbollah and, indeed, the Shia arc will be cajoled and threatened not to expand the conflict. Nasrallah was specific that all scenarios are possible if the pummeling of Gaza does not stop. Expansion of the conflict will also draw in powers from outside the region.

The backdrop to Blinken’s diplomacy is the unannounced reversal in Ukraine. US’s continued role in Ukraine is more an evidence, of its deep pockets than its capacity to deliver victory to a demoralized Zelensky.

It is commonly accepted that the US will now onwards be one among equals in a multipolar world with a proviso – it remains militarily the world’s most powerful country.

One consequence of US’s new condition may well be isolationism. This would depend on the turn competition with China takes. Israel’s greatest worry is US isolationism, its attention focused elsewhere. Israel is secure so long as it continues to be Imperialism’s outpost in West Asia.

Clearly, Blinken would like to bring together Sunni Arab states into a responsible role in Gaza. But can these moves be in harmony with the outraged public opinion in the Arab world?

How can the present public mood be kept in alignment with the continuation of, say, Sisi and Mahmoud Abbas, two individuals on whose heads redundancy looms.

#          #          #          #