Dying in Gaza

ISRAEL HAS JUSTIFIED its genocidal attack on Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip as retribution against Hamas for the October 7 massacre of 1,400 Israelis.

For Israel, retribution always comes on a 10:1 scale. For every Israeli killed by Hamas, 10 Arabs must die. It doesn’t matter if nine of those 10 are Palestinian civilians. Women, children and babies are not exempt. The 10:1 kill ratio is sacrosanct. It underscores Israel’s psychological need for absolute military dominance in the Middle East.

Israel is now approaching its 10:1 kill ratio. Nearly 14,000 Palestinians have been killed in the assault on Gaza. Israel will agree to a short “humanitari­an” ceasefire in exchange for a few hos­tages held by Hamas once the retribu­tion ratio is reached.

For the first time since the Yom Kippur war in 1973, which Israel won against the armies of Egypt and Syria, it feels acutely vulnerable. Global public opinion has turned against it. Sensible people have condemned the Hamas assault on Israeli civilians on October 7. But Israel’s unrelenting assault on Gaza has more than matched Hamas in savagery.

The Israel-Hamas war will achieve two unintended outcomes. First, it will revive the US-backed move for a separate Palestinian state living in peace alongside Israel. This is what the 1993 and 1995 Oslo Accords had mandated. The two accords fell by the wayside as Israel began illegal settlements in the West Bank.

The second outcome of the genocidal Israel-Hamas war is a realignment of power in the Middle East. The Abraham Accords, signed in Washington in 2020 between Israel, the UAE and Bahrain, accepted Israel’s right to sovereignty and peaceful co-existence.

Israel’s brutal war in Gaza, enraging the Muslim world, will put the Abraham Accords in cold storage. But make no mistake. The Sunni Gulf Arabs are fully committed to a US-choreographed Middle East. The Abraham Accords will be dusted down and revived once tempers have cooled across the Middle East.

Riyadh and Abu Dhabi know where their interests lie. They don’t intersect with the interests of ordinary Arabs. That does not worry them. What worries them is the emer­gence of a new political Muslim Brotherhood that can spark a popular uprising, endangering their oil-rich sheikhdoms. The lessons of the failed Arab Spring have not been forgotten.

Rich Arab rulers believe their future lies with the rich West, led by the US. Co-existence with Israel is part of the bargain. At the Saudi-organised summit of Muslim leaders recently, lip-service was paid to “our Palestinian brothers”. No aid, financial or military, was pledged. The Muslim and Arab world’s impotence was on full display.

While the Israeli assault on Palestinians in Gaza raged, and days after the Muslim world’s leadership summit in Riyadh to condemn the West-backed war, the UAE was busy at the Dubai Air Show placing a $52 billion order with Virginia-based Boeing for 90 of the US company’s biggest ever passenger jet, the 777X.

The total population of Jews in Israel is just over seven million. Most are white Europeans from Russia, Ukraine, Germany, Poland, and several East European countries. In 2022, the highest number of Jews migrating to Israel were from Russia and Ukraine. But for every Russian and Ukrainian Jew migrating to Israel a greater number of Israeli Jews are migrating to the US and Europe.

The net outward migration of European Jews from Israel is a long-term worry for Tel Aviv. According to Jewish News Syndicate (JNS), net migration of Jews from Israel was 3 per cent of the total Jewish population over the last 10 years. JNS report­ed: “A recent surge in legal immigration has led to a decrease in Israel’s Jewish majority, according to an analysis of data from Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). The Israeli Immigration Policy Center, established to promote immigra­tion policy which serves Israel’s strategic interests, found a 30-year trend, with the country’s Jewish majority having de­clined by a total of about 10% over that span, losing about one percent every three years on average.”

The war with Hamas and fear of future hostilities with Shia Muslim states opposed to the Oslo and Abraham Accords—Iran, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq—are expected to increase the rate of Jewish migration out of Israel.

The minority Arab population numbering two million that today lives in Israel has a higher birth rate than Israel’s European Jews. For Israeli leaders, that is a ticking demographic time bomb.

Central Bureau of StatisticsdeathshostagesIsrael-HamasIsrael-Palestine conflictrefugeesTel Aviv