US AIR raids against militias in Syria and Iraq, like the despatch of two aircraft carrier strike groups to the eastern Mediterranean, suggest Washington expects Israel’s feared ground invasion of Gaza may ignite a much bigger conflict.
For more than two million Palestinians, the nightmare is worsening as what the UN has long described as the world’s biggest “open-air prison” becomes a death trap.
Over 7,000 Palestinians have now been killed in bombing, more than 2,000 of them children. Popular anger has forced some politicians to moderate their blanket backing for Israeli war crimes, with calls for “humanitarian pauses” that stop short of a ceasefire.
Yet Israel bombs aid shipments and distribution centres: “humanitarian pauses” without a ceasefire are meaningless. Gaza, as UN officials warned today, is “being strangled.”
On top of the daily agony is anxiety over what’s coming. Will Israel flood Gaza’s tunnels with nerve gas, as sources told the Middle East Eye? Is a ground invasion being delayed because of the mounting international clamour against it, or simply to buy time while the US ships in enough force to shield Israel from the consequences?
This weekend’s march in London must be the biggest yet as we mobilise everyone possible to stop this impending war.
Claims that Israel will confine itself to defeating Hamas cannot stand scrutiny: not only is Israel killing hundreds of civilians a day already, its government of extremists is open about its contempt for Palestinian lives.
Nor can we rule out Washington’s readiness to use the crisis to reassert its dominance in the region. Neocon magazine The Economist openly pitches this war as a test of US strength in a part of the world where it has been losing ground.
Iran’s China-brokered rapprochement with Saudi Arabia was a serious setback to US policy. Five of the six countries announced as joining the Brics alliance of developing countries over the summer are in or border the Middle East: Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Ethiopia.
Joining the Brics — itself a loose group bringing together nations with serious differences — is not so much a move from the US to a Chinese “camp” in world politics as a declaration of autonomy.
But even that is unwelcome to a superpower whose military strategy rests on “global power parity” — the notion that the United States is the only non-regional power, pre-eminent simultaneously in all parts of the world.
Despite diplomatic reverses that is clearly still true in military terms. Across the Middle East the US maintains dozens of bases and a permanent troop presence of thousands.
Washington claims strikes on opponents in Syria and Iraq are “defensive,” retaliation for attacks on its own soldiers there. But its soldiers shouldn’t be there at all: Syria strongly objects to their presence, pointing to their role in illegally exporting most of the country’s oil output, while Iraq’s parliament voted three years ago to expel them all, a decision ignored by the so-called “indispensable nation” — a US that respects no country’s sovereignty except its own.
The shifting geopolitics holds out hope for Palestine — an end to Saudi-Iranian enmity leaves Israel entirely isolated — but also increases the danger. For Israel’s ultras intent on colonising what remains of Palestine, the motive is to act while the US is still strong enough to protect them.
The apocalyptic language from Israeli ministers, the think tanks with ties to top politicians publishing costed studies of how to expel the whole population of Gaza, show that this deadly gamble is a risk we cannot rule out.
The results could range from genocide and ethnic cleansing in Palestine to both coupled with a devastating regional war bringing in Lebanon, Syria, even Iran. Millions would die. The stakes could hardly be higher: Israel’s ground invasion must be stopped, before the situation spirals out of control.
