THE international community has failed to end the nearly year-long Israel and Palestinian-Hamas war in Gaza, which left almost 42,000 dead, injured more than 100000 Gazans and displaced more than 2.1 million people. Bombs have been raining down on cemeteries, hospitals, schools, colleges and universities. Instead of using its influence to stop the genocide of the Palestinians by sealing a truce in Gaza and preventing the war escalation inside Lebanon, the Biden Administration sanctioned Israel’s aggressive approach by giving Tel Aviv a new $8.7 billion aid package. Indeed, the latest assistance package further intensifies the Israel Defence Force’s brutality in Gaza. It encourages Netanyahu to ramp up aggression in Lebanon and entangle Iran in the escalating warfare in the region.
Since October 2023, the United States’ continuous political and material support to Israel underlines its unwillingness to condemn Israel’s brutality against innocent Palestinians. Therefore, it vetoed the ceasefire resolutions tabled in the United Nations Security Council on various occasions. EU Foreign Affairs chief Josep Borrell admitted that no power, including the United States, can “stop” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He said, “What we do is to put all diplomatic pressure on a ceasefire, but nobody seems to be able to stop Netanyahu, neither in Gaza nor in the West Bank. However, on September 24, 2024, President Biden said, while addressing the United Nations General Assembly, that “As we look ahead, we must also address the rise of violence against innocent Palestinians on the West Bank and set the conditions for a better future, including a two-state solution. It generated optimism about America’s seriousness in restoring peace in Gaza. However, the announcement of the hefty package and Israel’s expansion of war theatre dashed hopes.
Currently, the war theatre has shifted towards the north. On September 23, 2024, Israel’s Minister of Defence, Yoav Gallant, stated: “We are deepening our attacks in Lebanon, the sequence of operations continues and will continue until we achieve our goal of returning the residents of the north” to their homes. The Israel Defence Forces have launched devastating airstrikes to assassinate the Hezbollah leaders in Lebanon. Besides, it is using modern technology to kill the Hezbollah leaders and terrorize the innocent Lebanese. On September 17, 2024, Israel’s Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations (known popularly as the Mossad) shocked the international community by exploding thousands of Hezbollah’s pagers and walkie-talkies, assassinating 12 leaders and injuring 27,000 Lebanese.
Israel’s aggressive actions have not weakened Hamas’s determination to persist in its struggle, nor have they succeeded in intimidating Hezbollah, which continues to assert its presence and capabilities in the region. Both groups remain undeterred in their responses. For instance, in retaliation, Hezbollah fired 300 rockets into northern Israel’s Haifa, Safed, Nazareth, Yokne’am, and Galilee regions on September 24, 2024. Realizing the dangers of the escalation of the Gaza war, the US, Australia, Canada, the EU, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, the UK, and Qatar jointly called for a “21-day ceasefire across the Lebanon-Israel border” between Israel and Hezbollah on September 25, 2024.
Rather than taking a constructive approach, Israel intensified its air raids at Beirut’s southern suburbs in Lebanon on September 27, 2024. These raids targeted the Hezbollah command centre to eliminate Hassan Nasrallah. Israeli media claimed the assassination of Nasrallah. Besides, Israel has been trying to engage Iran in an all-out war, because Israel considers Iran as a credible threat in the region. Tehran has constituted an axis of resistance to check Israel’s expansion in the region. Netanyahu said in his UNGA speech, “There is no place in Iran that the long arm of Israel cannot reach, and that is true of the entire Middle East.” Notably, it is a clear strategy of Netanyahu to drag the United States into the ongoing war physically. The UN Secretary-General António Guterres once again reminded the international community about the miseries of the Palestinians. He tweeted on September 27 that “two million Palestinians are in a living hell that somehow gets even worse by the day. Realistically, there has been no substantial response to the increasing Israel’s brutalities, except for delegations from Arab and Islamic countries, including Pakistan, walking out of the 79th Session of the United Nations General Assembly to snub Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his address.
To conclude, the international community’s inability to stop the war in Gaza and the ongoing escalation in Lebanon will have severe repercussions for the entire region. Netanyahu’s militaristic mindset might create short-term gains for Israel’s security but also deepen regional tensions and undermine long-term stability. Thus, prioritizing peace and dialogue to implement a two-state solution fosters prosperity and security for Israelis and contributes to a more stable region overall.
—The writer is Prof at the School of Politics and International Relations, Quaid-i-Azam University.
(jaspal_99@hotmail.com)
