New Delhi: The world’s attention is on Gaza where there is finally a quantum of peace after seven weeks of indiscriminate and unrestrained bombardment that has killed thousands, levelled entire neighbourhoods and created a humanitarian disaster, but barely 100 km away, another conflict may be brewing amid heavy-handed Israeli repression.
In the occupied West Bank, life for Palestinians is virtually like being in a conflict zone, save for the absence of heavy artillery shelling and aerial attacks.
On one hand, the settlers freely don the mantle of the Israeli state, with the active support of its Army, to dispossess Palestinians of their land and livelihood, deprive them of resources and services, and sequester them into ghettos. On the other, the Israeli security forces have a free hand to conduct sweeping raids, widespread arrests, and destruction of public and private property with no bar on lethal force.
The death toll in battered Gaza has crossed 14,500 while there are 200 plus fatalities in the West Bank – where there is no similar conflict – and over 3,000 arrested, since October 7 when Hamas upended the uneasy situation in the Middle East with its unprecedented attack on Israel.
The police state-style repression in the West Bank, where Palestinians were even sternly warned against celebrating the release of the first batch of jailed women and children on Friday – the first day of the truce for release of the captives in Hamas’ hands and Palestinians in Israeli prisons – and tear-gassed as the process was delayed on Saturday, bodes ominous for both Israel and the Palestinian Authority in the future.
It also has some disturbing implications.
Even if the pent-up anger and frustration in the West Bank – which must be remembered was the centre of the Intifada, which convinced a more perceptive Israeli leadership that its Palestinian issue could not be wished away by disregarding and subjugating it, is discounted, there are the political imperatives that cannot be ignored any longer.
Israel is doing itself no favour by hanging on to occupied territory and expanding its settlements there by forcible land grab – a step that has drawn condemnation from most of the world, including by its closest and invaluable ally, the US, and well as European countries, though it may just be lip service for them.
However, the bulk of the countries, especially those of the Global South may not be amenable to letting this state of affairs continue, given the emphasis they see the Western powers put on territorial integrity, or rights of civilian non-combatants when it comes to, say, Ukraine.
Additionally, the Israeli policy of suppressing the aspirations or the very lives of Palestinians by the random arrests, imprisonments, vandalisation, restrictions and sundry other daily humiliations is spurring creation of a populace that will not be amenable to negotiations for a settlement – that may be delayed but is inevitable – and rather, take recourse to violent counter-measures.
Hence, the support that Hamas and others like it enjoy.
This development will also impact the rather moribund Palestinian Authority, under President Mahmoud Abbas, which has shown itself powerless to forge towards statehood, or for that matter, deal with the security and rights of the people it is responsible for.
It was rather telling that the Palestinian Authority’s offer to take over post-conflict Gaza – where it was trounced in the last-ever Palestinian elections held in 2006 – was met by outright rejection by hapless inhabitants of the enclave.
Furthermore, the truce led to release of Palestinian prisoners – significantly, all from West Bank and East Jerusalem, not Gaza, thus, shoring up the prowess of Hamas and showing the abject powerlessness of the Abbas administration.
Hamas does have a presence in West Bank too and this too, will earn its credits to the detriment of its PLO-led counterpart there. Thus, there was talk of including Hamas in the PLO, led by Abbas’ Fatah.
Even, the sidelined and exiled ex-Fatah strongman Mohmmad Dahlan, who was a staunch and rather ruthless opponent of Hamas during his stint in Gaza, also acknowledged that Hamas would still have a role in future Palestinian politics – a prospect that will be most unpalatable to Israel and its prime supporters, but not so easily brushed away.
Finally, there remains the argument that how justified is Israel in terming itself as the sole “democracy” and “bastion of civilisation” in the region, if it continues to imprison teenagers – one of the women released on Friday was a 23-year-old, in jail since she was 16 – without trial or charges in the garb of the encompassing “administrative detention”?
And, if Israel did, belatedly, agree to a prisoner/hostage exchange – as Hamas was demanding from the beginning, did it have to kill over 14,500 people before this fructified?
(Vikas Datta can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in)
–IANS