West Asia stands on the brink again

Since Israeli planes began pounding the tiny Palestinian territory of the Gaza Strip last Tuesday, about 120 civilians — including a large number of women and children — have been killed and hundreds injured. A mosque was hit from the air on Saturday, lending an edge to retaliatory sentiments among Palestinian Muslims.

The Hamas which controls Gaza has fired hundreds of rockets into Israel. These haven’t caused much damage on account of Israel’s “Iron Dome” missile shield. The political and military situation is extremely tense, overall. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened a ground assault into Gaza. If this happens, a dramatic escalation of violence is certain to follow. And yet, there appears little urgency in world capitals, especially Washington, to get the fighting to stop and to re-cast the environment for a resumption of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian leadership that broke down in April when Mr Netanyahu pulled back in the face of attempted reconciliation between the Mahmoud Abbas-led moderate Fatah faction, which runs the administration in the West Bank, and the Hamas extremists controlling Gaza.

It would almost seem that nations which can influence political positions in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict wouldn’t be unduly troubled if the Israeli troops went in and tried to dismantle the Hamas, widely viewed as a terrorist outfit but which received widespread electoral endorsement in the 2006 election. This duality about the Hamas bothers the West and Israel greatly. Israel now appears keen to ensure that Hamas cannot participate in the Palestinian election due in 2015. However, if Tel Aviv’s ground forces went into Gaza to destroy Hamas’ fighting machine, it is more than likely that extremist and Salafist groups across the West Asian theatre and beyond, not excluding Pakistan, would receive a boost. It would be wise for India to remain alive to this possibility.

The present round of violence began with the kidnap and murder of three Israeli youths, by Hamas operatives, last month. In retaliation, ultra-orthodox Jewish extremist gangs known as shababnikkim that typically come out of yeshivas or institutions of religious instruction — akin to madrasas in some Islamic countries that disseminate extremist interpretations of Islam — are thought to have murdered a Palestinian teenager in cold blood. The yeshiva was linked to the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 and to other ghastly anti-Arab crimes. The latest action of this fringe phenomenon has caused some reflection in Israeli society, but Mr Netanyahu may have set his heart on militarily destroying Hamas and not on resuming peace negotiations with Palestine.