For another day, Senator after Senator kept taking the floor from both sides of the aisle to deliver passionate speeches for displaying sympathy and solidarity with Palestinians, the Zionist had recently targeted for ruthless bombing. The senators also prepared a ‘consensus resolution’ to communicate our collective anguish that had further been deepened due to recent events in Jerusalem and Gaza. Hardly a person cared to seriously ponder over the question, however, whether the so-called international community would ever care considering our concerns.
There is a thing called ‘leverage,’ which actually helps any state to promote its cause of utmost national and public concern.
Pakistan’s hand on this front is pretty weak. If we really had any substantive leverage, Modi government would not have gotten away with unilateral scrapping of Article 370 of its constitution, which symbolically acknowledged Kashmir as a grave issue deserving resolution through negotiations between India and Pakistan. We failed to mobilize the Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC) as well to build pressure on India.
In such a hopeless environment only an incurably naïve person would dare to imagine that Pakistan can persuade if not all but important Muslim countries to join hands to furnish solid help and assistance to Palestinians. Perhaps for being tired or hoping against hope, most Senator delivered speeches that sounded like a cathartic exercise. In utter frustration, they also took on the indifference of “Arab world” with contempt and anger regarding the unbearable events in Gaza.
Senators like Raza Rabbani were also very critical of the “Islamic force” claiming to be representing the collective military strength of 41 Muslim countries. This force had been established with much pomp and fury and is being headed by a former Chief of the Pak Army. But the same force surely seemed ‘non-existing,’ when the Zionist State was ceaselessly bombing an already besieged Gaza. Agitated senators equally condemned the US patronage of Israel.
While our senators were still groping for a workable strategy for helping Palestinians, the US Secretary of State had already landed in Israel. Biden administration had indeed persuaded the Zionist State to cease bombing of Gaza, but in a discreet manner. Israel agreed to it, but only after assuming that it had significantly ‘degraded’ the military capacity of Hamas for many years to come.
In the name of “targeted and precise” bombing, Israel has certainly not ‘degraded’ the capacity of Hamas only. The narrow and congested strip of Gaza has rather been turned into vast swaths of ruins. And overwhelming number of non-combatant civilians were callously treated like the ‘collateral damage.’
Gaza is now a hugely destroyed place without electricity and drinkable water. Even the critically wounded could not get sufficient care and medicines. Humanitarian aid is urgently required for hapless Palestinians stranded in long but narrow strip of Gaza and “Muslim Ummah” could yet not devise any mechanism to reach them.
Eventually, billions of US dollars would also be required to rebuild Gaza and oil rich states do not seem moving to establish any institutional framework for it. The US Secretary of State, on the other hand, has announced to take the initiative on this highly crucial and important issue. After grabbing the initiative by fast movement, the US will obviously want to execute its own ‘script’ on Gaza from now on.
Throwing dollars and humanitarian aid to Gaza like a generous Santa Clause, the US is all set to cunningly suggest to Palestinians stranded in a desolate strip that it is not Israel but Hamas that brings trouble and destruction to them. The leaders of Hamas ‘foolishly provokes’ Israel by sending the barrages of missiles, 90 percent of which are intercepted and destroyed in the air, thanks to the latest technology of ‘iron dome.’ The Zionist State had developed it through active and massive technological input by the US.
Whenever some Hamas-sent bombs succeed in eluding ‘the dome’, Israel responded with far more brute strikes, which destroyed the homes and businesses of thousands of non-combatants. People of Gaza should, therefore, reconsider its reliance and association with Hamas. The Fatah-led Palestinian Authority had already lost its appeal and control in Gaza since 2007. Without Hamas, the Palestinians living there will feel doubly abandoned and orphaned.
Although suppressed and facing a peculiar version of apartheid, the Arabs living in formal Israel were still enjoying some rights and the possibilities of upward mobility. After the fourth election in two years, they were also able to elect 12 of their representatives to Israeli parliament some weeks ago. That created the hope that anti-Netanyahu parties might feel the need of co-opting them in a coalition government replacing the incumbent ruling alliance. The recent events have ruined this chance as well.
Some Israeli cities and towns also have huge pockets of “Arab quarters.” The gangs of bigots viciously targeted them for mob attacks. Arabs felt forced to react and mass scale communal riots looked imminent. These riots also helped the extremist political parties and group to plead and promote the dream of having Israeli cities ‘without Arabs.’ The said obsession surely has a strong potential for igniting the series of pogroms resembling the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims in Burma.
Our Senators appeared completely oblivious to this side of the story. But the same story has genuinely shocked humane and left-liberals sections, both in Israel and the US. We certainly need to build bridges with them to preempt mass scale massacre and human displacement. Empty rhetoric, projecting all Jews as ‘the other,’ would not help here. It may rather equip the bigot Zionists with more excuses, justifying the race and religion driven hate.
Delivering passionate speeches on Palestine, many of our senators sounded as if desperately waiting for the resurrection of Salahuddin Ayubi from among the Muslims of 2021. Doing this, they disregarded the fact that Ayubi was not an icon of raw courage. Even his diehard critics acknowledge his strategic and diplomatic wisdom and he also led a technically more savvy and equipped army.
Technological edge wins in modern wars and collectively the present day Muslims don’t seem too motivated to get it. Our whole energies are rather consumed in blaming others and imagining conspiracy theories. The two-day long round of bombastic speeches in the Senate of Pakistan primarily reflected the same trend. And I did feel extremely uncomfortable and at time hugely embarrassed about it.