Israel-Palestine conflict - an eye-opener
World
Israel-Palestine conflict - an eye-opener
By Ahad Khan
Fifty years have passed since the Arab-Israel war ended through an armistice. Sadly, animosities have once again taken a bloodletting route.
This past Saturday, Hamas, the Palestinian group which rules blood-soaked Gaza, barged into Israel with a surprise full-scale blitz that turned into an absolutely bloody confrontation between the Israeli forces and Palestinian fighters.
Death roll has since risen to over 1,000 on both sides, with thousands being critically injured. One can imagine the magnitude of destruction if the fight persists without timely restraint.
As this unprecedented escalation took place, various countries started to condemn the attack by taking sides according to their inclination. As always, western countries poured in their support for Israel by issuing their ever conventional sanctimonious statements.
They openly defended Israel’s retaliation as its right to self-defence against a terror group. West has a habit of being shamelessly hypocritical when it comes to actual defence of human rights in those parts of the world where it has little to gain commercially or politically.
West polices everyone in the world about standing for human rights and urging people to support those who are left behind in any aspect of life but this lesson of moral policing is nothing more than shedding crocodile tears. Time and again, western countries conveniently distanced themselves from supporting genuine causes across the globe.
That said, attitude of some powerful Muslim countries is no different in this regard. Ever since Saudia Arabia has been on the path of normalising its relationship with Israel on directives of the US, it has only paid lip service when it comes to atrocities in Palestine.
The UAE and the KSA are to each other what the UK and the US are i.e taking similar stances on every possible issue of this planet. Both the KSA and the UAE have either remained tight-lipped or reluctantly spoken about the treatment meted out to the Palestinians.
At the same time they have also been convincing other Muslim countries like Bahrain to follow the suit as well. There is no problem in normalising relationship with erstwhile nemesis but one should never do it by ignoring those weaker sections who look up to you against those nemesis.
But sadly this is what has been happening with Palestinians for a long period of time. Had these powerful leaders of ‘Muslim Ummah’ thrown their weight behind weaker Muslim states during testing times, many hitherto unresolved conflicts would have been resolved.
This ongoing conflagration between Israel and Palestine has laid bare some extremely inconvenient truths but accept it or not, this is how the world works. This is how economic interests are prioritised over human miseries. Economic interests are always put on the driving seat and emotions are thrown to the backburner.
This is a lesson for countries which rely more on emotions and seeks support from those who can actually support them but their cries for support are brushed under the carpet.
We sincerely hope for a viable and just two-state solution whenever this decades-long armed confrontation ends.
