Amid the preparations for the festive season this month, many of us would have forgotten a dark day on the calendar that has just passed. October 7, 2023, will forever remain a day when a mix of pent-up anger, desperation and foolhardiness sparked off events that changed the rules of the game – indeed, the game itself – in West Asia. On that fateful day, Palestinian Hamas militants launched a coordinated attack on Israel by crossing the border, targeting military bases, and killing Israeli citizens indiscriminately. By the time the Israeli military responded, over 1,200 of their countrymen had been killed and 250-plus had been taken across the border as hostages.
A year on, the war that the terrorist attack sparked has probably escalated beyond the dreams of even the most battle-hardened military veterans on both sides of the conflict. In its quest to get back the hostages and seek revenge for the attack, Israel has opened battlefronts all across the region in the past year. It has bombed Gaza so badly that much of it is uninhabitable, especially in the north. The refugee crisis, scarcity of food, medicines and humanitarian aid, families torn apart and scarred by the war – taking stock of the scale of this tragedy will take years, if not decades.
On the second front, Israel has taken on Hezbollah, backed by the Iranian government, in Lebanon. That war now threatens to go the way of Gaza, with Israel unleashing its superior firepower on areas that they say are Hezbollah hideouts, which local reports claim are civilian residential buildings. Its latest attack has caught UN peacekeepers in the crossfire and threatens to draw in the Lebanese military, which has so far stayed away from the conflict.
Iran, a much larger country with nuclear capability, is a different problem for Israel altogether. It has backed Hezbollah in its proxy war against Israel so far, but stayed away from deploying its military power directly. But now, as the conflict escalates across borders, Iran may get drawn into the war. It fired a barrage of missiles at Israel a few days back, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to give a fitting reply. On Saturday, Iran’s nuclear facilities and government faced a coordinated cyber-attack that reportedly disabled power plants, telecom networks, government websites and transport. This could be the ominous beginning of Israel’s response to the missiles – its third front in the war.
Amidst all this carnage and the resultant human tragedy, what of the hostages who were taken by Hamas a year back, kicking off the chain of domino events that has led West Asia to where it is today? Reports show that of the 250-odd hostages, about 117 have been freed and 70 have died during the conflict. Around 64 of the hostages are still under Hamas control. On the other side, Israel’s war has killed nearly 42,000 Palestinians, and by some accounts, about two out of three dead are women and children. There are about 10,000 people unaccounted for under the rubble of concrete that the war has left in Gaza. The dead in Lebanon already number in the hundreds, the count rising every day of the war.
Much of the world has reacted with shock and anger to the numbers. There have been protests across borders, as peace activists and regular citizens have marched together, urging for the killings to stop. World leaders, as usual, are divided. Some have spoken vociferously against Israel’s merciless pummelling of Gaza. South Africa, for example, has recently filed a case of genocide against Israel in the International Court of Justice. But Israel’s biggest western allies, the chief among them the US, have hunkered down and stood by Netanyahu. President Joe Biden has made noises about Israel’s indiscriminate use of force and the attacks on UN peacekeepers, but has consistently expressed support for what it calls Israel’s right to defend its own borders.
After a year of gunfire, airstrikes and bloodshed, what happens now? The grief of the losses from the October 7 terrorist attack simmers silently in Israel, but under Netanyahu, Israel is a country that will not back down – at least for now. Gaza will never be the same again; probably Lebanon will also suffer irreparable damage. The dark clouds of war looming over Iran are a palpable reality. If Israel engages with Iran, the conflict could quickly spiral into a nuclear confrontation, something that the world, including US and Israel’s other allies would not want. For now, it’s a tightrope walk for all players involved in the conflict. If there are answers that open up roads to de-escalation and eventual peace, those are right now blowing in the war-swept winds of West Asia.