Israel-Gaza Conflict : Indian Perspective

These days  Social Sites are full of Israel-Gaza Conflict and like all other issues we can see many misinformed,wrong and fake things being shared and distributed by its users to fulfill their psychic malnutrition.From last few days, some of them  Honourable MPs of Rajya Sabha (many of them came by bribing the various Political Parties)disrupted  the proceedings to such an extent   that the House had to be repeatedly adjourned. 

                                                                  

Just in case you think they had been raising an issue of the greatest national importance — such as safety of women or prices of essential goods or farmer suicides, do stand corrected. No that was not the case.The purpose, believe it or not, was the attack by Israeli forces on terror outfit Hamas, which manoeuvres from Gaza. The MPs actually demanded that the House pass a resolution condemning Israel for the offensive which had claimed the lives of hundred of innocent citizens of Gaza. The Government rightly dismissed the silly proposition as it amounted to condemning a friend. Moreover, the Indian Parliament does not ordinarily pass resolutions castigating another country. (It did that to Pakistan in recent months only as a tit-for-tat measure, which in my view was wrong too.) Then, the MPs gridlocked the Rajya Sabha from functioning, seeking an immediate discussion on the conflict.

The demands cannot have been triggered by their concern for the loss of innocent lives in Gaza. ISIS militants have been causing mayhem in Iraq for months now; Boko Haram has been looting, plundering, killing and raping for years; Shias and Sunnis have been at each other's throats in Pakistan for a while, leading to large-scale killings. And interestingly yet, none of these incidents ever prompted the Honourable MPs to call for a House resolution. Neither did the recent thinly veiled threat by Jammu & Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah of secession if Article 370 was abrogated. The Rajya Sabha MPs who called for a resolution against Israel were driven by crass vote-bank politics, to appease the Muslim community by running down ‘Zionist’ Israel. It's not a coincidence that these demands have largely come from either the Leftists, or politicians from Jammu & Kashmir who are competing with one another in jingoism, keeping in mind the Assembly election ahead.

Funnily enough, they do not seem to realise that they ought to be actually condemning the militant organisation Hamas for targeting Israel, which has led to the escalation of attacks. They ought to have been criticising Hamas for having rejected a ceasefire that Egypt brokered and Israel accepted. They should be pulling up Hamas for endangering the lives of innocent citizens of Gaza by their misadventure. They must understand that the attacks by Israel are not on the people of Palestine, (though civilians — men, women and children have unfortunately become the victims); they are on Hamas. By seeking to project the conflict into one between the people of Palestine and Israel, which it is not, these MPs are doing great injury to the cause of objectivity.

Hamas believes that this supremacy of Islam obligates it to literally exterminate millions of people who hold different beliefs than Islam

It is unfortunate that even the Congress has got into the act of scoring petty political points on the important issue of the country's foreign policy. Its leader Saifuddin Soz questioned the “silence” of the Government over Israeli attacks on “unarmed Palestinians”. But in early 2009, when Israeli forces had launched an offensive, including ground invasion, in Gaza, to counter rockets that were being fired from there into Israel, the then Congress-led UPA had not rushed to pass resolutions in Parliament condemning one side or the other. That confrontation had left, according to reports, around 1,400 people dead. Then, as now, Israel had done what it considered was appropriate for its security.

Our lawmakers have pointed out that the larger number of deaths has been on the side of Palestinians. It’s because Israel does its best not to expose its civilians to enemy attacks, while Hamas uses innocent citizens as human shields. Here is an irony that many anti-Israeli elements in India have glossed over: Israel has been issuing warnings to the people of Gaza, through public broadcasts and pamphlets, to leave the strife-torn region and move into relatively safer areas. On the other hand, Hamas has shown little concern for the safety of Palestinians.

HAMAS : Childs are Bombs for them

Child as Suicide attacker

The MPs, who were in the forefront of the demand for a resolution condemning Israel and expressing solidarity with the Palestinians, have conveniently forgotten that Hamas is not interested in the peace and prosperity of the citizens of Gaza. Designated  a “foreign terrorist organisation” by the United States in 1997, Hamas's stated goal is not the well-being and development of the Palestinians, but the destruction of Israel. Ever since it managed to overshadow the relatively moderate Fatah and its leader Mahmoud Abbas and establish its rule in Gaza in 2007, Hamas has been getting increasingly virulent and combative towards Israel. After the latter blockaded Gaza, the terror organisation's military supply began coming from Egypt, especially after Hosni Mubarak's fall and the coming to power of Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi. With Morsi too gone, Hamas is feeling the squeeze and is upping the ante in the hope of attracting renewed patronage from similar-minded elements in the Muslim world.

Part of the reason for the rise of Hamas is the Fatah's governance failure in West Bank and its spiralling impact on Gaza. Fatah leader and Palestine President Mahmoud Abbas and his regime have proved largely ineffective in improving the lot of their people, and the generous international aid that has been coming has not made enough impact on lay lives. This has bred popular discontent with what political observers term as Abbas's “moderate politics” and heightened interest in Hamas's brand of aggression. It is not surprising that Abbas and the Fatah seem entirely sidelined even as Hamas continues with its belligerence. This underlines what some of our misguided MPs seem to have missed: The present confrontation is not to address a political wrong; it is an act by a globally dreaded terror outfit to beat Israel into submission.

The peace which held its ground throughout much of last year, between the extremist Palestinian factions and Israel, had come after then Egyptian President Morsi had played the broker — which the US had virtually coaxed him into doing. What is more important to understand is that Hamas fell in line not so much because of the Brotherhood's presence in crafting the agreement but due to the grim realisation that Israel had been just hours away from launching an unprecedented, massive ground invasion of Gaza and delivering to Hamas one of its worst drubbings. 

President Barack Obama has now offered to mediate. Other nations have called for restraint. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains determined. It's a resolve that New Delhi should adopt in letter and spirit when it deals with terror elements in and outside the country. 

                                   But this is not the Question of Hour for us, Indians, The question is : Are we going to hurt interests of India just because few radical & extremist communals of this country seeing it as an opportunity to score over other side. Are we again prove ourselves as a very Soft nation who even can't stand in support of a nation fighting for Lives of its people against terrorism. Are we ?