The unending tragedy in the Middle East

It’s unclear what the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which had governed Gaza under a precarious truce with Israel, hoped to achieve with its coordinated attack on Oct. 7, 2023. Were they hoping to stoke a smoldering internal crisis in Israel’s leadership? Were they seeking to ignite another Arab-Israeli war? Or was their goal simply to refocus the world’s attention on the plight of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation?

On that day, thousands of Hamas militants, along with other Palestinian armed groups, launched an unprecedented assault on southern Israel. The attack began with a barrage of rockets aimed at communities near Gaza, followed by armed militants infiltrating Israeli territory. They targeted civilians, including concertgoers at the Nova Music Festival, killing hundreds and taking hostages. The assault claimed the lives of approximately 1,200 people, the deadliest day in Israel’s history since its founding in 1948.

Israel’s defense forces were evidently caught off guard, and it took them nearly 24 hours to regain control of the attacked areas. The brutality of the incident, including the abduction of around 250 hostages, stunned the Jewish nation and shocked the whole world. Far from breaking apart, however, Israel united in mourning and reflection, with little inclination at that precise moment to assign blame or dismantle its government.

While the motivations behind the Hamas attack continue to be debated, the consequences are tragically clear. What began as an assault on Israeli civilians and security forces has escalated into a war that has devastated Gaza, exposing the recklessness of Hamas’ leadership. No amount of context could give this unprovoked attack the justification it so ardently sought. Instead of highlighting Palestinian suffering, the attack brought about severe Israeli retaliation, with airstrikes and ground assaults that continued for months. Gaza City has been reduced to rubble, and over 41,000 Palestinians have been killed, many of them women and children.

Israeli ground forces have pushed deeper into Gaza, forcing civilians to flee their homes in search of safety, even though refuge is hard to find. There were international efforts to open a refugee corridor on the Egyptian border in the early days of the conflict. But Israeli forces bombed this prospective route before it could be utilized. Despite global criticism of the disproportionate scale of its retaliation, Israel has remained focused on its objective to eliminate Hamas and free the hostages. The situation is compounded by Hezbollah in Lebanon launching missiles into Israel in solidarity with the Palestinians, and Israel responding with airstrikes on Hezbollah strongholds.

The conflict has also drawn in Iran, a key supporter of both Hamas and Hezbollah. After the targeted killing of Hezbollah leader and Lebanese cleric Hassan Nasrallah, Iran retaliated by launching a missile barrage at Israel. Most of these missiles were intercepted, causing minimal damage, but Israel has vowed to respond. Tensions have further intensified in the wake of Iran’s missile attack, with concerns that Israeli retaliatory strikes on Iranian targets—such as oil and nuclear facilities—could further escalate the war.

The ripple effects of this war extend beyond the immediate conflict zone, affecting thousands of foreign workers, including many Filipinos. The Philippine Embassy in Lebanon is already preparing to evacuate its citizens due to Israeli bombings near Beirut. Mercifully, Saudi Arabia, which has the largest concentration of overseas Filipino workers in the Middle East, has—for reasons of its own—shown no interest in getting enmeshed in a far-reaching regional war.

As the conflict continues, the plight of Palestinians trapped in Gaza grows more desperate. With no ceasefire in sight, no chance for peace, and no prospects for reconstruction in the immediate future, their humanitarian crisis is slowly fading from international focus. The solidarity they once garnered from the international community is dissipating as the world turns its attention to the looming risk of a broader war, leaving behind a people with nowhere to turn.

All this makes one wonder whether the era of diplomacy and international mediation under a regime of global norms and universal values has come to an end, and we are back to an age where military might dictates what is right. United Nations Day used to be grandly celebrated on Oct. 24, the day the UN Charter, its founding document, entered into force. It is a sad commentary on the state of the world today that almost 80 years after its founding, the UN’s collective voice is routinely ignored. Nowhere has this been more glaring than in Gaza itself, where hundreds of UN workers have perished, alongside the population they were meant to serve.

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