THE unyielding barbarity of Israel is continuing in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and so is the case with the equally unbending from its backers, led by the United States and the United Kingdom. Despite repeated calls by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the verdict handed out by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Israel and its supporters are just not bothered.

This attitude by Israel and the US takes one back to 1945, when Nazi Germany and Italy had ceased fire and surren-dered to US-led allied forces, but Japan took a little more time to announce its surrender. Although intelligence reports were quite hopeful, US president Harry Truman thought it wise to expedite the surrender, decided to give a ‘final solution’, and ordered the dropping of nuclear bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the two industrial cities of Japan.

In the present scenario, Israel is not giving any indications to stop its madness. Now the only solution left by the sympa- thisers of Gaza’s Palestinians is to make their own efforts. In any such efforts, Syria and Egypt can play the main role.

For Syria, it is an ideal situation to retake its lost territory of Golan Heights. Egypt can create a situation to force Israel to safeguard its common borders with it. If such an effort is made, the US will surely continue its help to Israel, but that will be at a certain cost to the US. Thus, Syria and Egypt will be able to force Israel to retract back to 1967 borders. All this may happen only ‘if’, and it is not such a big ‘if’.

Abid Mahmud Ansari
Islamabad

Published in Dawn, February 12th, 2024