What Will Israel Do Next?

In days of smart, networked technology and no shame over collateral damage, what will blow up next -- cars, mobile phones, TV sets, refrigerators? And where?, asks Shyam G Menon.

Back in time, one couldn't forget Moshe Dayan.

He was Israel's chief of general staff from 1953 to 1958, its defence minister from 1967 to 1974 and foreign minister from 1977 to 1979.

Dayan stood out among international personalities for the eye-patch he sported.

Israel's existence surrounded by an Arab world and the sparks that flew when the two sides collided made the Levant a frequent fixture in daily news.

The Levant made headlines when the sides clashed; it made headlines when the two sides explored potential for peace.

Dayan's photo appeared often in the newspapers, making his country a periodic subject of discussion at the family dining table.

Those days, as a matter of both principled and practical policy, India stood with the Palestinians.

The most visible leader from the Levant therefore, was Yasser Arafat, chief of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). But there was respect for Israel.

To begin with, the Jews -- like the Muslims -- had old connections with India. Both Israel and Palestine were small in size. But as a Muslim majority entity, Palestine was seen as a part of the larger Arab world.

Besides, the 1970s, when Dayan's photo was often seen in the media, was yet only three decades since World War II.

The Holocaust was still a very real tragedy remembered by all; its memory kept alive by numerous books and films on the great war.

Many novels by western authors mentioned the Zionist movement and the kibbutz culture. Alongside the regular reports appearing in the print media, one lapped up this post-world war perspective of Israel.

The narrative of a long-displaced people returning to their 'rightful homeland'. Competing narrative from the Palestinian side wasn't as glossily marketed or embedded in popular western literature.

In the Levant, Israel appeared the underdog. Even heroic, for despite its perilous existence and location, it had defeated the Arabs in a couple of earlier wars.

I suspect, instances like the attack on the Israeli Olympic contingent at Munich in 1972, may have added to the general sympathy.

Then there was the Israeli Defence Forces and the Mossad, referred to as top dogs in their respective fields.

Together, they ensured the Israelis an upper hand in the David versus Goliath scheme of things, in itself a case of flawed perception because the militants among the Palestinians were no comparison to Israel's military capabilities or the armament-support it received from the West, especially the US.

Contributing flair to how Israel's military was seen by the world was its military victories and incidents like the July 1976 counter terrorism mission at the Entebbe international airport in Uganda, wherein the Israelis rescued 102 hostages held there following the hijack of an Air France plane flying between Tel Aviv and Paris.

Later the subject of books and films, the operation made Israel seem one plucky country, determined to exist and look after its own.

Notwithstanding consistent support from the Muslim world and the Socialist bloc, the relevance of the Palestinian struggle was often overshadowed by Israel's striking military operations. This was the case in the 1970s.

By the 1980s and 1990s, discussions at the family dining table had been usurped by other conflicts.

In 1979, Iran witnessed an Islamic revolution, which replaced the monarchy it was till then, with a theocratic government headed by Ayatollah Khomeini.

There was the hostage crisis in Iran, involving 53 American diplomats and citizens; it lasted 444 days over 1979-1981.

In September 1980, war broke out between Iraq and Iran; it would go on till August 1988.

In February 1989, the decade-old Soviet presence in Afghanistan came to an end with the complete withdrawal of Soviet troops from that country.

In November 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. In August 1990, Iraq, then under the presidency of Saddam Hussain, invaded Kuwait.

After a military build-up spanning several months, in January 1991, a western coalition military force lead by the US, first bombarded Iraq and then liberated Kuwait from Iraqi occupation.

Embedded media brought the Gulf War home to millions around the world. The following months and years saw the formal dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the return of Russia to the global stage, the assassination of Najibullah, once president of Afghanistan and the descent of that country into a tussle for power between various Afghan factions, including the Taliban.

1991 was also the year, the Yugoslav Wars commenced; they would last till 2001.

Meanwhile, following Kuwait's liberation, the US got progressively embroiled in Iraq, reduced to civil strife following the end of Saddam Hussain's dictatorship.

In 1996, the Taliban, which had been gaining ground, took control of Kabul and established an Islamic emirate in Afghanistan.

On September 11, 2001, the infamous 9/11 terrorist attacks happened. Close to 3,000 people died in that attack by al-Qaeda.

In October 2001, the US invaded Afghanistan after the Taliban declined to hand over al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who was operating from Afghanistan.

The US engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan were lengthy ones. Both these chapters dominated the imagination of the world as regards conflict and the consequences of conflict. There were also other important chapters in history that unfolded.

In 2011, the long reign of Libyan dictator, Muammar al-Gaddafi, was formally ended; he was killed following the outbreak of civil war and military operations by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Away from all this, the Levant simmered as usual but in terms of making it to the front page of newspapers, was often muscled out by developments elsewhere. Still there were things happening.

The Palestinian National Council declared a state of Palestine in 1988 and even as its physical shape was drawn and demarcated, the land concerned remained under Israeli control and the contentious influx of Israeli settlers with state support, continued.

In the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections, the militant group, Hamas, secured a majority.

In subsequent developments, the Gaza Strip and The West Bank -- the two Palestinian territories, came to be separately governed; Hamas controlled Gaza while the Fatah-controlled Palestinian National Authority (PNA) governed The West Bank (Fatah is a Palestinian nationalist and social democratic political party. It is the largest faction of the confederated multi-party PLO). Hamas and PNA didn't see eye to eye.

For the Palestinians, life in Palestine came with plenty of restrictions imposed by the Israelis. Gaza has sometimes been described as the world's biggest open-air prison.

In 2021, the US withdrew its military from Afghanistan, an exit that saw dramatic scenes of Afghans trying to flee (as the Taliban once again moved in to assume charge in Kabul).

In February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine triggering off the worst military crisis in Europe since World War II.

Even as the conflict in Ukraine was going on, in October 2023, the Levant forced its way back to global attention as Hamas militants crossing over from Gaza into Israel proper, left over 1000 Israelis and foreign nationals dead. In retaliation, the IDF invaded Gaza.

This operation has left thousands of Palestinians dead, many, many more than the number of Israelis killed in the original attack on Israel by the Hamas.

As news of Gaza's suffering spread, the world protested. People marched in many countries, including in the US (longtime supporter of Israel), calling for an end to hostilities.

Notably, cracks showed up in US officialdom's defence of Israel with some politicians openly questioning Israel's policy.

Meanwhile the conflict in the Levant developed a second theatre as Hezbollah, militants based in Lebanon and backed by Iran, got involved.

Adding another angle to the mess was the Houthis, militants from Yemen, who made sure that shipping through the Red Sea and Suez Canal got disrupted.

By now, those of school going age at the family dining table in the 1970s -- the ones who used to see Moshe Dayan's photos in the media -- were nearing retirement at their jobs.

They were close to entering the evening of their lives and had been mute witness to not just continued unrest in the Levant but conflict erupting at various times across a wider geography spanning the Levant to Afghanistan.

Besides the poor understanding of Zionism -- even indifference to it -- which may have spurred fascination for Israel in India's Right-Wing, it was also clear that world over there are people who bay for blood and groups of mercenaries and weapons manufacturers of various nationalities who profit from conflict.

It is an industry. For example, war is great proving ground for new weapons and new applications for existing weaponry. War is big business.

In end-July 2024, the political leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed in Iran where he had gone to attend the inauguration of the new Iranian president.

On September 21, 2024, Hezbollah confirmed that its senior commander Ibrahim Aqil had been killed in an Israeli air strike in Beirut, Lebanon.

With economies overall not doing well and regressive, incendiary right-wing politics on the rise, nobody wants a whirlpool of a conflict anywhere; one that sucks in more actors and increases the scale of the conflict.

Yet as the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the conflict in the Levant show, once begun, the stubborn architects of war appear to only make things more widespread and complicated than at start.

When alarmed others step in to broker peace, the main protagonists of conflict are spared hurt to their egos. Yes, egos. But what if there is no genuine effort to find peace? What if the world is uninterested in brokering peace or has learnt to profit from the re-engineering of trade lanes and realignment of supply lines that war forces? That's the worry on the minds of some at the family dining table these days.

It's why there was nobody applauding as they did for Entebbe, when pagers and walkie talkies exploded in Lebanon in September 2024, an act some allege was orchestrated by Israel.

The two incidents, reportedly targeting the Hezbollah, killed several people and left hundreds injured.

It not only signified the continuation of an existing conflict, it also spread worry on what it means to have such powers of subversion available along with the willingness to act on them, just when global lifestyle stands addicted to devices of many sorts.

In days of smart, networked technology and no shame over collateral damage, what will blow up next – cars, mobile phones, TV sets, refrigerators? And where?

One can sense both alarm and fatigue creeping into the conversation at the family dining table. Too much of déjà vu, as regards human behaviour.

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Shyam G Menon is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai.

Feature Presentation: Rajesh Alva/Rediff.com