COUNTY VIEW: Israel, Gaza and the Third World War

FOR more than ten years, seasoned geo-political observers have predicted that, when it comes, the next World War will have its origins in the fractious hostilities which are endemic to the Middle East. Whether the current upsurge in violence represents the fulfilment of that ominous prophecy should set the rest of the world to worry.
Ironically, the conflict has broken out just at a time when it seemed that peaceful co-existence had seemed a possibility.
The Hamas attack on Israel was as notable for its ferocity as it was for its unexpectedness. Women and children were butchered in their homes, murdered on the streets, or ruthlessly gunned down at a music festival. Frantic Israeli villagers barricaded themselves in their homes while Palestinian gunmen roamed the streets, the villagers calling TV stations to ask where was the army and security forces on which they relied with such confidence.
For the Israeli government, the attack came as a crushing blow to a military dominance that prided itself on its proven invincibility. The question of how the country came to be caught so much off guard remains to be addressed, but when it does, the reckoning will be merciless.
Israel has long enjoyed – or so it believed – unrivalled supremacy in terms of national security and protection from attack. Every phone call made in Gaza is routed through Israeli networks, meaning that monitoring of any sort of illicit planning should be a given; its network of informers inside Gaza means, in theory, that the most minute of rebel sentiment is fed back to the authorities; constant drone surveillance should mean that anything untoward is quickly identified and clamped down on.
Just before the Hamas attack, Israel was a sundered country in governance terms. It was riven with acrimony, anti-government street protests were commonplace, army reservists had threatened to defy any order to report for duty. With the attack, all that has changed. Grief and anger have brought all factions together, and the country has gone back to survival mode. A unity government has been formed, the better to cement national solidarity and give expression to the communal unity that must come before all else.
But the unity government will only last until the fighting stops, by which time the Prime Minister, Mr Netanyahu will be brought to account for the lapses that gave way to the Hamas butchery. He will know that his days are numbered as Prime Minister, which in turn suggests the terrible prospect that he will allow the war to continue without end, since it will be his only chance to cling to power.
There have, quite rightly, been worldwide protests in support of the Palestinian people. It degrades humanity that an enclave of 2 million impoverished people, with nowhere to flee, should be subjected to the retribution of an angered Israel. But equally it should be said that Hamas apologists need to be called out in their readiness to conflate an explanation of the cause of the attack with its justification.
If the Arab Israeli conflict is to upset the world order, as it threatens to do, it might be worth reflecting on what a fragile construct the European Union has shown itself to be. Faced with the imminent crisis, Brussels responded with utter confusion. The EU Enlargement Commissioner announced that aid to the Palestinian Authority would be cut off, only to be promptly countermanded by his superior. Ms Von den Leyen rushed out a ham-fisted partisan pronouncement that led to an abrupt about turn when the extent of her overstepping the boundary was revealed.
Coming at a time when the first chinks in European solidarity over support for Ukraine are beginning to appear, the Middle East conflict does not augur well for the cohesion of Europe.