There is more to the Hamas-Israel conflict than meets the eye; it could be part of a larger gameplan of either side

West Asia has been an enigma for many years, especially after the Balfour  Declaration of 1917, when the then British Foreign Secretary Lord Arthur Balfour promised the Jews a homeland of their own in the territory of Palestine. Missing in the Balfour Declaration was the timeline by which this was to be brought about.

All three Abrahamic religions have a claim on the region centred around Jerusalem, considered one of the world’s holiest cities. The Jews hailed from there; Jesus Christ preached there and his miracles were performed in this area. He was crucified on Calvary Hill and was buried nearby. Jesus was born a Jew, some miles away at Bethlehem.

Islam’s claim to Jerusalem and its territory is based on the belief that Prophet Mohammad’s favourite horse Barack took him to meet Allah from the centre of what today is Jerusalem. The spot from where the Prophet is said to have ascended to heaven is marked as the Al Aqsa mosque.

In 1948, the region was divided into the Jewish part called Israel and the dominantly Muslim part called Palestine, which however, failed to become a proper country. It exists as a crowd, vaguely ruled by a terrorist organization called Hamas. Ever since the rule of the Ayatollahs began in Iran in 1979, that country has patronized Hezbollah, a terrorist group based in Lebanon, apart from also siding with Hamas (although the latter is a Sunni terrorist group). Whether this policy and measures thereof are meant to keep Israel on the boil, or are intended to engage in geopolitical manoeuvring in the West Asian theatre is a matter of debate.

As is well known, the Arab sheikhdoms of the region have largely been indifferent to Israel despite the latter’s declared Jewish identity. Curiously, it is the non-monarchical countries like Egypt, Iraq, Iran and Syria that have been stridently anti-Israel. Since the coming to power of Gemal Abd El Nasser in Egypt in the early 1950s, the Arab monarchies, i.e., the sheikhdoms have been more wary of the threat of Arab socialism than Jewish nationalism. This must have been likely to keep their people loyal or subservient to their monarchies rather than any entity outside. In the process, the Palestinian issue fell into neglect. On the rebound, they have been dependent on terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah. The current war between these outfits and Israel has indeed come as a rude surprise. It is a desperate attempt on their part, to wipe out the existence of the Jewish country.

There are widespread allegations that the latest terrorist attack on Israel cannot be an independent act but has the guidance and support of some other country, possibly Iran. The Ayatollah’s regime of Tehran has been apprehensive of Israel attacking or even destroying its nuclear programme. Israel’s great ally the United States of America certainly does not approve of what it calls nuclear proliferation, and Iran’s nuclear programme, although claimed by Teheran to be of only a peaceful nature, has been a hugely contentious issue of American administrations of both of the country’s political parties, Republican and Democrat, for a considerably long time.

The question, therefore, arises: could this explosive war be an attempted pre-emptive strike by Iran to keep Israel or the US from attacking its nuclear sites? Alternatively, could it be a precursor for armed action by Israel and the US to knock out Iran’s nuclear programme, which according to Israeli and American allegations, is just a couple of steps away from building a bomb?

This is no mere speculation. The late Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s military dictator for three-and-a-half decades, was pursuing a similar nuclear program of an ostensibly peaceful nature. Saddam, though, was a self-declared enemy of the Jews; in 1981, without warning, Israeli F-16 and F-15 warplanes burst into Iraqi airspace without warning and in a matter of a few minutes, totally bombed the Iraqi Osirak nuclear reactor to ashes, completely ending Iraq’s nuclear ambitions and wiping out an existential threat to Israel.

A third possibility is that this is Iran’s bold gamble to grab for itself the dominant position of leadership in the politics of West Asia, although, for a Shia nation, such a role might be difficult to achieve and sustain in a Muslim world dominated by Sunni Islam. Whatever Tehran’s aim, the attacks by Hamas have undoubtedly been on a large scale. Conversely, Israel might also look at this temporary rude military setback as an opportunity to not only obliterate Hamas but also wipe out Iran’s nuclear programme for good, which the Jewish nation sees as an existential threat to itself; indeed, many of Israel’s politicians and military leaders have often said so, publicly.

Jerusalem would also want to reshape the politics of West Asia to its advantage in the decades to come. This is one objective which Israel’s foremost ally the United States would be unambiguously aligned with.

Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, even while launching a retaliatory war against the Hamas holed up in Gaza, has publicly declared his intention to do so, saying “We will change the Middle East”. Given the history of Jewish resolve, it shouldn’t surprise us if this happens to be the beginning of that event.

(The writer is a well-known columnist, an author and a former member of the Rajya Sabha. The views expressed are personal)