No end in sight: Israel's perpetual war in Gaza
The war in Gaza is a perpetual war in the most Orwellian sense
There's an old apologue about a frog in boiling water.
If you throw it into a pot of boiling water, it jumps out immediately. But if you put it in lukewarm water and slowly turn up the heat, it will sit there—until it boils to death.
That's what this war in Gaza feels like.
Keep updated, follow The Business Standard's Google news channel
The world is watching, the death toll is rising, and human suffering is only getting worse.
But nothing really changes.
It's like we've all gone numb to the horror inflicted on Gazans — just watching the water boil, waiting for someone else to do something.
The war has been going on for nearly 18 months.
Let alone an end in sight, a solid ceasefire now seems elusive.
The shaky ceasefire that began on 19 January was effectively broken on 18 March as Israel resumed full-scale strikes across Gaza.
An endless war
The war in Gaza is a perpetual war in the most Orwellian sense. As George Orwell, in his dystopian novel '1984', wrote, "The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous."
The war in Gaza benefits certain political actors on both sides.
For Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu, it shifts attention away from his own political troubles. For Hamas, it reinforces its legitimacy by positioning itself as the only force standing up to Israel.
Global leaders make statements but do little to change the reality on the ground.
The West is entangled in its own moral contradictions. According to American-Palestinian journalist and writer Ramzy Baroud, the situation in Gaza embodies Orwell's concept of "doublethink"— the power of holding two contradictory opinions or beliefs in one's mind simultaneously and accepting both.
Western leaders claim to support human rights while simultaneously backing Israel's genocide operation in Gaza. In Orwell's '1984', "War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength." In Israel's case, the word "peace" is substituted with "security".
But there's still hope
If there is hope for an end to this war, it lies in the notion that at some point, the cost of war will become greater than the cost of peace. For now, Israel still believes it can eliminate Hamas. Hamas believes it can keep enduring the Israeli onslaught and thrive in Gaza.
Like in the classic prisoners' dilemma, if they don't cooperate, they will keep making choices that will ultimately leave them worse off.
Israel argues that stopping the war will allow Hamas to rebuild. Hamas fears that surrendering or negotiating without major concessions is unthinkable. Each side is acting rationally from its own perspective, but together, they're stuck in an endless path of war.
For Israel to change its track, the war has to become politically unsustainable. It can be through public protests against the government, end of foreign support, or military exhaustion. For Hamas, survival has to become more valuable than fighting. Until any such major shift is in place, Gazans will continue to endure suffering for years to come.
However, even if the war fully stops tomorrow, a new form of conflict in the near future cannot be ruled out. The history of Israel-Palestine conflict shows that the cycle of aggression never really stops. For breaking that cycle and a true ending to the war, Palestinians have to get a political solution that offers them a real future in their own land.
