GAZA

• Talleyrand was an archetypal exponent of realpolitik, and history provides numerous examples of the validity of his remark.
• One is the prolonged US bombing of North Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos during the Vietnam war in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
• Though the ministry is managed by Hamas, the World Health Organization describes its data collection as “credible and well developed”.
• Israel claims 13,000 of those killed were Hamas fighters, though it has not said how it calculated that figure.

Claims of poor coordination refuted

• The IDF and defence ministry claimed the strikes on the World Central Kitchen vehicles followed misidentification and poor coordination at night in complex war conditions because of suspicion an armed militant was travelling with them.
• The Israeli newspaper Haaretz, citing defence sources, has refuted these claims.
• The army’s killing of seven aid workers in the Gaza Strip on Monday night “stemmed from poor discipline among field commanders, not a lack of coordination between the army and aid organisations”.

How will this affect Australia’s position?

• Albanese said he expressed Australia’s outrage at Frankcom’s death and said he wanted “full accountability”.
• He added that he made clear Australia believes humanitarian assistance must reach people in Gaza unimpeded and in large quantities.
• It also suggested Netanyahu has a closer eye on his political standing in Israel than the international reaction to the deaths.

Don’t expect much change

• The reality is not much is likely to change in terms of Australia’s dealings with Israel.
• Foreign Minister Penny Wong has already made clear no Australian military equipment has been sold to Israel since the start of the Gaza war.
• Australia’s defence exports to Israel are in any case miniscule – A$13 million over the past five years.
• Wong has said many times Israel has the right to defend itself but the way it does so matters.

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.

• Once the fighting stops, the world’s attention will shift to tough “day after” negotiations, which would necessitate, among other things, painful and risky concessions from both sides.
• Given the vast deficits of trust and favour between Israelis and Palestinians, such concessions will be extremely difficult to achieve.
• And while learning about the tragedies of others can support healing and reconciliation processes, turning victimhood into a competition has produced polarisation and distrust.

How Israelis are viewing the war

• More than 28,000 Palestinians have been killed so far, and many more are still under the rubble.
• However, Israelis don’t see on their screens what the rest of the world sees.
• Read more:
  Reflections on hope during unprecedented violence in the Israel-Hamas war

A sense of betrayal

• In their worst nightmares, Israelis could not imagine or make sense of the support for the Hamas attack, or the widespread denial that atrocities had occurred at all.
• Some of the victims on October 7 had for years been active members of the peace movement.
• This has been more likely the case on the political left and in the centre, where many people have lost a sense of security and hope.
• The only thing animating some calls for a ceasefire deal now is the ongoing risk to the hostages and the sense of national responsibility for their fate.

The international campaign for Palestine

• For much of the world, the never-ending violations of Palestinians’ rights by Jewish settlers, the Israeli state and Israeli security forces have legitimised the struggle for a free Palestine, many times over.
• However, anger at injustices should not lead to support – or even acquiescence – for the killing of civilians, by either side.
• Not because this objective is more important than others, but because without it, there will be no end to the occupation.

The ‘day after’ solution

• Hate comes easily in the face of injustices, as does empathy for the suffering on one own’s side.
• It is much harder to empathise with the misfortunes of “others” who may or may not have brought their misery upon themselves.
• Those who have been severely aggrieved may struggle to apply the same yardstick to others, but the rest of us could and should.

Eyal Mayroz 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.

• The numbers involved are just as despairing.
• The world’s major authority on food insecurity, the IPC Famine Review Committee, estimates that 90% of Gazans – some 2.08 million people – are facing acute food insecurity.
• Indeed, of the people facing imminent starvation in the world today, an estimated 95% are in Gaza.
• As an expert in Palestinian public health, I fear the situation may not have hit its nadir.

Putting Palestinians ‘on a diet’

• But food insecurity in Gaza and the mechanisms that enable it did not start with Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 attack.
• Multiple factors contributed to this food insecurity, not least the blockade of Gaza imposed by Israel and enabled by Egypt since 2007.
• Basic foodstuff was allowed, but because of delays at the border, it can spoil before it enters Gaza.

• By placing restrictions on food imports, Israel seems to be trying to put pressure on Hamas by making life difficult for the people in Gaza.
• In the words of one Israeli government adviser in 2006, “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.” To enable this, the Israeli government commissioned a 2008 study to work out exactly how many calories Palestinians would need to avoid malnutrition.
• The blockade also increased food insecurity by preventing meaningful development of an economy in Gaza.

Hampering self-sufficency

• Gaza’s fishermen are regularly shot at by Israeli gunboats if they venture farther in the Mediterranean Sea than Israel permits.
• Because the fish closer to the shore are smaller and less plentiful, the average income of a fisherman in Gaza has more than halved since 2017.
• By early December 2023, an estimated 22% of agricultural land had been destroyed, along with factories, farms, and water and sanitation facilities.

Starvation as weapon of war

• The use of starvation is strictly forbidden under the Geneva Conventions, a set of statutes that govern the laws of warfare.
• Human Rights Watch has already accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war, and as such it accuses the Israeli government of a war crime.
• Yet untangling what Israel’s intentions may be – whether it is using starvation as a weapon of war, to force mass displacement, or if, as it claims, it is simply a byproduct of war – does little for the people on the ground in Gaza.

Yara M. Asi 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.

• Even before the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel by Hamas-led forces from Gaza, many analysts were already declaring the idea of a two-state solution dead.
• For example, the current Israeli government rejects the creation of a Palestinian state, and Hamas refuses to recognize Israel.
• Few, if any, historical conflicts neatly compare to the one between Israelis and Palestinians.

The fall of South African apartheid

• In 1948, the white-nationalist Afrikaner National Party was elected to run South Africa, a country that had already been controlled by a colonial white minority government.
• The National Party formalized racial segregation policies in a system known as apartheid, an Afrikaans word that means “apartness” or “separateness.” Apartheid ranked people by racial group, with white people at the top, Asian and people of mixed heritage lower, and Black people at the bottom with the most restrictions and fewest rights – for example, to live or work where they chose.

• Apartheid resulted in deep poverty and indignity for Black communities, quickly generating anti-apartheid social movements that South African police tried to violently suppress.
• The collapse of apartheid policies in the early 1990s is often attributed to a combination of South African resistance and the economic pressure brought by international anti-apartheid boycotts of South Africa.
• Since 1948, South Africa had imposed its apartheid policies over a neighboring region it occupied after World War II, then called South-West Africa, which is now Namibia.
• South Africa was forced to mobilize its reserve troops, and white South Africans began protesting at home.
• This stalemate pushed Cuba, Angola and South Africa to a peace deal in 1988, and South Africa withdrew its forces.

A way toward two states?

• Home to 5 million Palestinians, these areas exist in a kind of netherworld between being part of Israel and being separate, sovereign entities.
• It is a situation that many analysts have long understood is unsustainable, as it has repeatedly given way to extreme fighting between Israelis and Palestinians.
• Yet with the U.S. and other powers firmly backing Israel as a strategic ally, few could see realistic possibilities for change.
• And the Israeli government is increasingly divided over the war effort, with Netanyahu losing support in his own far-right party.
• There is also growing international consensus that a two-state solution is the only acceptable outcome of the current violence.

Benjamin Case 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.