Opinion: The bigger picture in the Middle East – where will this conflict end?
'We are in the midst of the blast and the shock waves continue to echo ever outwards,' says Richard Miron, a former BBC reporter who was based in Israel
In 1976, the Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai wrote ‘The Diameter of the Bomb’. The fifteen line composition sets out in verse the repercussions of a bomb from the dimensions of the device itself (‘thirty centimetres’), to its effects felt by those mourning the death of one its victims, ‘at the distant shores of a country far across the sea’.
On 7th October Hamas ignited a murderous blast in Southern Israel whose effects are continuing to reverberate around the world. The atrocity that Hamas committed that day was a deliberate attempt to upturn the politics of the region and beyond by what was – in effect – a suicide mission for the organization in Gaza.
Hamas has always used terror as a means to advance its aims. My journalistic career in Israel began in December 1995, just weeks prior to a suicide bombing campaign that killed numerous people in Israel.
My first major story was covering the attacks on the number 18 bus route in Jerusalem, when Hamas hit two buses a week apart killing 45 people. I vividly recall standing close to the twisted shell of the bus at one of the attacks and seeing pools of motor oil and blood mingling on the tarmac at my feet.
At that time, Hamas’s tactic succeeded in helping to destroy the Oslo Process, whose vision of a two-state solution directly contravened its belief in an Islamic State from the ‘River to the Sea’ and beyond. Its actions helped to usher in a right-wing government in Israel (with Bibi Netanyahu as Prime Minister) and weakened the Palestinian Authority.
On October 7th Hamas took its tactic of suicide bombing and magnified it many times. It has – thus far – succeeded in spreading instability and chaos in line with its aims on a regional and even global scale.
At the time of writing the conflict is intensifying in Gaza itself with Israeli ground forces making incursions into the North of the Strip. It’s estimated that at least one third to a half of Gaza’s population of 2.2 million have been displaced. At the same time approximately two hundred thousand Israelis have also been forced to move from their homes in the South as well as in the North following attacks by Hezbollah across the border.
In the past three weeks almost 50 Hebzollah fighters have been killed in the violence along with 5 Israelis (including 2 civilians). Iranian allies elsewhere have also added their weight to these efforts, with an attempted missile strike from Yemen towards Israel along with rocket and drone attacks upon American bases in Iraq and Syria.
Added to all this since October 7th there has been a considerable increase in violence in the West Bank. Approximately 100 Palestinians – including Hamas militants, have been killed in confrontations with the Israeli security forces, as well as several civilians killed by armed Jewish settlers, who have taken advantage of the situation to pursue their own agenda.
In a slightly wider circle outside of Israel’s immediate vicinity, the conflict is also being felt. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan caused the recall of Israeli diplomats from Ankara after he said at a rally in support of the Palestinians, that Hamas was not a terrorist organization and likened Israeli actions in Gaza to the Holocaust.
The reports of Palestinian deaths and a humanitarian crisis in Gaza are straining the recently established ties between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. They are also putting the leaders of Egypt and Jordan – both of which countries have long-standing peace agreements with Israeli – under considerable pressure as their restive populations rally in support of Palestinians and by inference Hamas.
In a further widening of the diameter of the blast global players are being drawn in. ‘The Gerald Ford’, the US navy’s largest aircraft carrier – is currently sitting in the Mediterranean within striking distance of Lebanon, while another carrier ‘The Eisenhower’ is reportedly en-route to the Gulf, close to Iran. America is doing this to warn both Iran and Hezbollah not to provoke regional conflict and if it comes, to provide further firepower to support Israel.
But as the Americans have backed Israel to the hilt, so other countries are placing themselves in the opposite position, generating even further ripples. In recent days the Russians hosted senior Hamas officials in Moscow, while the Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister was also in the Russian capital for talks. This all signals the Kremlin’s intent to counter any American moves and keep itself as a player in the region.
All of this speaks to the global nature of conflict between Israel and its adversaries. It is an issue that can exacerbate existing tensions and create new ones between the West and the Islamic world as well as within the Islamic world itself. It preoccupies strategists in Beijing, Brussels, and many places in between. It also ignites passions on the streets of cities from Sydney to Santiago.
Yehuda Amichai ends his poem, The Diameter of the Bomb’, by reminding readers of the human cost of the effects of the blast. He writes, ‘and I won’t even mention the crying of the orphans that reaches up to the throne of God and beyond, making a circle with no end and no God.’
So it is from our current vantage point, that we are unable to see how this conflict will develop and where it will end. We only know that we are in the midst of the blast and the shock waves continue to echo ever outwards.
- Richard Miron is a former BBC Reporter who was based in Israel. He was also the spokesman for the UN Secretary-General’s Middle Envoy in Jerusalem. He now runs a podcast consultancy in London.
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