A New Chapter in the Arab-Israeli Conflict

A new chapter of the Arab-Israeli conflict is unfolding, and nuance is losing centre stage

On October 6th, 1973, Arab states led by Egypt and Syria launched surprise attacks in the Sinai and the Golan Heights, triggering the Yom Kippur War. Almost exactly 50 years on, on the 7th October 2023, a new war has broken out.

In the early hours of yesterday morning, over 5,000 rockets were launched into Israel and over 300 Hamas militants crossed the border. The core of their professed mission statement is to protect the Al-Aqsa Mosque, after the Knesset drafted new plans to divide the Mosque between Muslims and Jews. The sentiment caused outrage amongst the Palestinian community and the wider Islamic world, and comes only months after Israeli police used tear gas and stun grenades on Muslims worshipping in the Al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan in April.

Within a few hours, the IDF responded with a bombing campaign against Gaza.

The Western response

As one would expect in the early days of a new war, emotions are running high and many commentators have taken leave of nuance — in many cases, those trying to take a more balanced view have been completely shunned. For those who feel particularly impassioned, it seemingly isn’t enough to simply condemn Hamas: one must also condemn the Palestinian people, advocate for an aggressive response from the IDF, and not condemn any of Israel’s policies in the past that may have contributed to the present situation.

It was very similar when the Russia-Ukraine war broke out: for the first few weeks, the coverage on MSM was constant, and Twitter was littered with shocking and graphic videos, eliciting a strong emotional response and universal condemnation of the aggressors. The natural response was a widespread condemnation of Russia, Putin, and Russian imperialism historically. It wasn’t until several months had subsided that NATO’s expansion and provocations were widely discussed, and one would still be hard pressed to find a media outlet like the BBC discussing the contentious Azov Batallion, or Ukrainian bombing of the Donbas since 2014, for example.

Rishi Sunak and James Cleverly were quick to condemn the attack, and Biden also condemned it once he’d woken up. A plethora of other world leaders joined the condemnations, with the majority making claims along the lines of “Hamas are terrorists and Israel has the right to defend herself”.

With respect to Biden, he appears to have found himself in the line of culpability once more, with many taking the view that his incompetence has a large role to play in exacerbating US foreign policy. In the case of Afghanistan in 2021, Biden’s approach to withdrawing soldiers was so dizzyingly incompetent that one wonders whether or not he actually intended to make the situation worse. It shouldn’t take a genius to put a plan together in which you withdraw $82 billion of military equipment and non-military personnel before withdrawing your soldiers, lest you lose the equipment in a matter of days and leave in a total shambles. In the case of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there are many who believe that Russia never would have invaded had the Biden administration not demonstrated just how weak they were in terms of foreign policy (and with fresh allegations of corruption almost every day). This was exacerbated when the US was turned into a laughing stock for exchanging Brittney Griner for Viktor Bout: was it really a good idea to exchange a drugged up basketball player for one of the world’s largest and most prolific arms dealers? Now, with the attacks on Israel, further claims of incompetence are being levied at Biden, given that only weeks ago he unfroze $6 billion in assets for the Iranian government in exchange for five prisoners. Trump was quick to capitalise on Biden’s blunder, explaining that Iran’s funding of Hamas was now being directly facilitated by the Biden administration. The Taliban have now also stated that they are willing to march on Jerusalem, if their “Muslim neighbours” are willing to grant them safe passage to the Israeli border. The uncertainty currently unfolding in the Middle East is a far cry from the relative peace during the Trump administration, during which time the Abraham Accords were signed, and many Arab states began to extend olive branches to Israel.

Erdogan, by contrast, has been one of the few world leaders to bring up the possibility of a two-state solution, an idea that was largely abandoned after the 1948-1949 war and the Six Day War in 1967.

A strange start to war

In the Russia-Ukraine war, there were several weeks of warnings from intelligence agencies that Putin was planning an invasion. These weeks were crucial and allowed the Ukrainians to position themselves somewhat more effectively than if they’d had no warning whatsoever.

In this case, there was no such warning: on Friday Israeli citizens went to sleep thinking they were at peace, and at Saturday they awoke to the news that they were being bombed and many of them being taken hostage.

What’s stranger than the intelligence failure is the failure of the Israelis to adequately guard their border with Gaza, which is known to be the most secure in the world. At any one time, the border is protected by IDF soldiers who have been known to shoot Palestinians for coming too close. The idea that hundreds of Hamas militants could run across the border or fly over it with hang gliders seems extraordinary, and not entirely believable.

“I served in the IDF 25 years ago in the intelligence forces. There’s no way, in my view, Israel did not know of what’s coming. A cat moving alongside the fence is triggering all forces. So this? What happened to the strongest army in the world? How come border crossings were wide open? Something is very wrong here. Something is very strange. This train of events is very unusual and not typical for the Israeli defence system.”

— Efrat Fenigson

It’s possible that this was just a large blunder and there’s no reason to look into it further, but I find it to be extremely peculiar.

Within hours of the attack, Netanyahu declared that Israel was at war, and that he would “take mighty vengeance” against the people of Gaza. He added: “I say to the citizens of Gaza, you must leave now. We will target each and every corner of the strip.” Whilst some cheered on Netanyahu, believing a strong response to be the correct one, others are less convinced that the IDF’s retaliation will be proportionate. Firstly, his warning that Gaza’ans “must leave now” appears to have been made in bad faith, considering that there is no way for them to leave, and Israel makes sure of this — hence many branding Gaza an “open air prison”. It isn’t even possible to leave via the sea, given that Israeli warships patrol and stop any Gaza’an who finds themselves more than a few nautical miles from the shore.

Moreover, whilst the attacks of yesterday were shocking, Israel has gained a reputation for disproportionate retaliations over the past few decades. It seems particularly unlikely that the response will be proportionate this time, given statements coming from the Israeli Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant:

“We will change reality on the ground in Gaza for the next 50 years. What was before, will be no more. We will operate at full force.”

Perhaps most concerning is the possibility that this war could become yet another proxy war between the West and her enemies. Largely unconfirmed (thus far) speculation about Russia’s potential involvement in the conflict, could give rise to a further escalation. The Russian hacker group, Killnet, just claimed responsibility for taking down the Israeli government website as a punishment for Israel’s support of Ukraine.

The lack of nuance is frustrating

It’s only to be expected in the first few days of a war that nuance will be ignored: the dramatic scenes playing out across social media almost completely prohibit it. There are some diamonds in the rough (Nawfal’s Twitter Spaces have provided near 24/7 coverage from journalists and political analysts, and Nawfal has done a good job of removing bias from the discussions where possible), but for the most part the emotional response has been all-consuming. To say that “any degree of retaliation is justified”, a sentiment widely echoed across social media at the moment, appears to offer a carte blanche justification for all manner of heinous abuse.

Many supporters of Palestine have taken to the streets of London to express solidarity with the suffering of the Palestinian people. Unfortunately, public figures such as Rachel Riley have seemingly conflated Palestinian nationality with membership of Hamas. In Germany, Hamas flags are now banned, but this does not mean it is appropriate to ban Palestine flags. One would hope that the emotional fervour and lack of nuance would calm down over time, as its completely unfair to conflate Hamas with Palestinians, and expressing affinity with the plight of a particular people isn’t an endorsement of everything their people do. In particular, there appears to be a widespread lack of acceptance of the fact that Israel now has a long history of oppressing those who live in the occupied territories.

In the UK, the issue of supporting Palestine versus Israel has become a largely partisan one: many on the left wing of politics campaign against occupation of the Gaza Strip and West Bank, and against the abuses that the IDF inflicts against the Palestinian people. The right wing of politics tends to be concerned with preserving the state of Israel and protecting the status quo from those they perceive to be terrorists. In 99% of televised debates on the matter, there is almost no debate, no nuance, and no veneration of historical accuracy. There is no room to condemn both sides, lest you be accused of sitting on the fence or being a “terrorist apologist”.

Who wins from this war?

Obviously, neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis are going to come out well from this. Both have already had to contend with hundreds of deaths and thousands of hospitalisations, and this number will likely continue to rise in the coming months (Netanyahu has already warned that this will be a long war, not a short one).

Seemingly, the only party destined to do well out of this is the military industrial complex. Arms manufacturers haven’t been faring too well as of late, as interest in funding the war in Ukraine has begun to dwindle. An interesting metric for measuring this phenomenon is the Lockheed Martin stock price. In the two months before Russia invaded Ukraine, the price per share began to rally from circa $330, to a high of over $500 in April of this year. In the last six months, as war fatigue has begun to set in and as Kevin McCarthy is replaced as House Speaker (jeopardising future funding for Ukraine), Lockheed’s stock price has fallen by ~20% to around $400. The story is almost completely the same for Raytheon (down ~30% in six months), Northrop Grumman (down ~11%), and Boeing (down ~12%).

With Biden promising to defend Israel’s sovereignty, and a much greater consensus in the US for supporting Israel than many other Western countries, it will be interesting to see how the aforementioned stocks perform in the coming months. Biden will, inevitably, be forced to defend the US’s number one ally by printing billions of dollars to subsidise weapons manufacturers — it is highly unlikely that he would adopt a completely different strategy from his approach to Ukraine.