Synopsis: Those in authority today organize war in different ways – conventionally, and with guerrilla tactics.
Israeli military might is pitted against scattered Hamas guerrilla fighters appears a very uneven contest in Western Asia. But really, it just shows change in the nature of warfare.
The win-lose game
Battles are being fought on urban terrain, and waged through civilians. The Gaza strip is now a killing field. On either side, the justification seems the same – eyes for eyes, teeth for teeth - as Muslim and Jewish casualties pile up.
The guerrilla fighters are swift, agile and extremely mobile. Hand-held rocket launchers and homemade detonating devices are designed for widespread shrapnel damage impacting settlements in residential southern Israel. They arrive at a street corner or rooftop, assemble and fire weapons, and depart, all within five minutes. They’ve changed location before the rockets or mortar shells hit 7, 12 or 25 miles away.
The Israeli defence forces, IDF, mete out collective punishment in turn. Areas identified as the rocket source are bombed, even if they’re heavily populated, keeping mortuaries and hospitals overflowing with the hapless - old people, women and children.
The army loses if it doesn’t win and the guerrillas win if they don’t lose, said Kissinger. So neither side will stop the violence until international outcry pressures their doing so, or nobody is left standing.
Not accidental
In the unrelenting drive to win, both sides control the media and humanitarian aid groups, stopping them at the borders for ‘security reasons’, or severely constraining their movements otherwise. In under a fortnight, hundreds have died and thousands more wounded, besides buildings and other infrastructure being demolished. In the context, these aren’t accidental.
Israel allows pictures/videos reporting what Hamas rockets have done to families; Hamas lets out images of what Israeli bombings have done to the Palestinian population. But the world knows little of what exactly the Hamas fighters and the Israeli army personnel themselves are doing on the ground. In fact, Human Rights Watch has raised concerns that, in the absence of media and international monitors, laws of war are breached with impunity.
Where’s accountability?
This is a war of attrition. The intensifying animosity could even develop into genocide with homes and families being deliberately erased. International diplomacy makes little headway calling upon both sides to exercise restraint or to " take concrete steps to minimize the fighting's impact on civilians", because these words fall on deaf ears.
Fact is those in authority organize war in differing ways today – conventionally, and with guerrilla tactics, with “catastrophic results” in human terms the covert objective. Each side displays to world media the toll on their own people to brand the other as the perpetrator/aggressor in the violence, thus deviating attention from their own culpability.
So who’s to blame in Gaza? Hamas and IDF are both are well-organized systems that have preferred human sacrifice to peaceful political dialogue. The objective being the same, not one or other but both equally are accountable for this war of attrition.
Next…who's really to blame?
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