Conflict in Gaza and Kashmir on a parallel track

There is a striking parallel between the 20-month war in the Gaza Strip and the week-old not-yet-war between India and Pakistan. Both confrontations were set off by horrendously cruel mass murders by terrorists whose goal was obviously to start a war that drew the attention of the world back to their own goals and grievances.

- Gwynne Dyer

Hamas, in the Gaza Strip, was keenly aware that the Palestinian cause was gradually fading from the international agenda. Seventy-five years of failure to push back successfully against Israeli control of the disputed territory of former Palestine had left the rest of the Arab world keen to change the subject.

The “Abraham accords” were the last straw from the perspective of the Palestinians: an Israeli-Saudi peace deal would be the death knell for their hopes of building a state on the land they claimed, or at least part of it.

Only a big war could reawaken Arab and Muslim concern for the plight of the Palestinians, so Hamas chose to start one. It began with as big an atrocity as possible: more than 1,200 Israelis killed, many of them in their beds. Israel took the bait, but under Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s hard-right coalition its response far exceeded Hamas’ expectations.

More than 50,000 dead Palestinians later, 2 million survivors in Gaza await expulsion and exile. Hamas' strategy was absolutely standard for nationalist guerrillas fighting foreign rule, but the brutal truth is that most such wars end in failure.