WEST ASIA: A YEAR OF WAR WITHOUT END

Neither Israel nor the nations it is fighting can. aspire for total victory. Temporary positions of advantage are the most that any side can achieve

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THIS Monday was the first anniversary of the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel near the Gaza border on October 7, 2023-a dastardly event that saw 1,200 dead and over 250 innocents taken hostage. Taking Israel, a traditionally alert nation, by complete surprise, that event triggered one of the most intense conflicts of recent times anywhere in the world.

By West Asian norms, intense wars involving Israel have mostly been short, focused and result-driven. The war initiated by the October 7 attack, however, has witnessed an Israeli overkill campaign in Gaza as a response that has recently expanded to other borders and regions. It's one of those inexplicable campaigns where complete asymmetry exists, but final success for Israel is and will remain elusive.

The campaign has progressed only towards greater complexity with little chance of any eventual drawdown, stabilisation or outright victory. It's a strange war, essentially conventional by one side (Israel) but against a nonstate entity (Hamas) that does not fight by rules. As a result, Israel has also chosen to fight without international rules and norms of war.

Two factors have driven Israel's selection of its strategy. First, the status of its own leadership has been under severe political test even before the war. Hence, it considers the war a point of relief. An outright victory for Israel may have brought a reprieve for the leadership if an end state had been achieved in which the hostages had all been rescued or released, or Hamas had sued for a ceasefire.

Even if no solutions would have emerged or negotiations initiated, a kind of status quo ante would still have been restored.