It remains an embarrassment to witness so many lives perished in the Gaza war but Israel seems to have not reversed its stand thoughtfully for arriving at what the US has so regularly been emphasizing to follow. And there will undoubtedly be no likelihood to bring due improvement in Netanyahu’s designs. The war on Gaza is at its essence retributive. It is a feat of collective penalty.
Like all punishment, to ask whether or not it ‘works’ misses the point that punishment is often an end in itself. But the conduct of the war also has an orgiastic quality.
Antony Blinken vehemently emphasizes peace in his discussions with Israeli leaders but the results are yet to be materialised herewith. That’s why the Israel-Hamas war has also become a political albatross for US elderly President Joe Biden, who anyway encounters shoutings of “Genocide Joe” from the aggrieved protesters at the US presidential election campaign events.
The White House categorically said it would not lend its support to any strategies by Israel for a major military operation in the southern Gazan city of Rafah. Such a harsh move would only spell catastrophe for the poor Palestinian civilians seeking shelter for saving their lives there.
Israeli tactics have nominal in common with definitive counter-insurgency philosophy or decrees of engagement. The public figures signing bombs to be dropped on what has been left of Gaza. The cheerful recordings made by individual soldiers all join with malice and mirth.
In the meantime, the US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby spoke out Secretary of State Antony Blinken made US concerns about such operations seemingly clear during meetings with Israeli officials. As many as five tours by Blinken have so far been undertaken in the Middle East since the flare-up of the Gaza war.
From the very beginning, Operation Iron Swords has been, from the very start, has been an all-out onslaught on a captive and overwhelmingly civilian inhabitants. The celebrations of the killing by Israel’s political leaders reportedly look like the great strategies for the eviction of Palestinians to Sinai, or Europe, or Congo.
Why does it appear that political leaders had dropped off their mental capabilities to reach at an amicable stage? Why are they looking so much frustrated with situation that grows to be uncontrollable from their grip? Why did they not do enough to rein in a particularly refined statesmanship?