Netanyahu is using Gaza carnage to portray himself as a national hero

Palestinian boys salvage belongings from a home which police said was targeted in an Israeli air strike, in Gaza last week. Finbarr O'Reilly / Reuters

As Israeli jets and tanks were committing a massacre in the Al Shujaieh district of Gaza this week, killing dozens of civilians and destroying hundreds of homes, US secretary of state John Kerry came out with statements blaming Hamas and other resistance movements because they rejected a proposed ceasefire. Meanwhile, Barack Obama continued to assert Israel’s right to self-defence, said Abdelbari Atwan, editor of the Rai Al Youm news website.

Hamas and other resistance movements asked for the lifting of the siege on Gaza, for the liberation of prisoners and for the implementation of past agreements with Israel. They demanded free movement and normal lives for citizens.

“It is shameful for Mr Obama and his secretary of state, whose peace initiative was all but shut down by the Israelis, to speak about Israel’s right to self-defence,” he wrote.

“And against whom? A group of unarmed, besieged and famished people.

“If this is the mindset that Mr Kerry is planning to come back with to the region with, he would be well advised to revise his voyage and his plans.

“The resistance isn’t going to relinquish its terms even it wanted to, to accept a truce that saves Israel’s face and acquits it of its massacres while the Palestinians in Gaza go back into slow-death mode.”

The campaign is still in its initial stage. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks of more than one stage to the ongoing offensive. The other camp, too, have their plans. They are patient and more prepared to make sacrifices.

This latest instalment of the decades-long conflict isn’t going to be the last, opined the columnist Abdullah Al Suwaiji in the Sharjah-based daily Al Khaleej.

The relationship between the Arabs and Israel and between the Palestinians and Israel isn’t a mere feud or a disagreement. It is one of historic confrontation that can’t be changed, not through all the treaties and agreements in the world.

“It is a survival and existence struggle,” he wrote.

“At the popular level, one could say the Arab-Israeli relationship is one of hatred. There is no way to use a more politically correct term in this case.

“It is never more clearly highlighted and put in focus than during Israeli attacks on Palestinians or other Arab territories,” he noted.

The Israelis are well aware of this fact, even if some Arab countries have signed peace agreements with them. They know that normalisation of relations with Arabs in general and especially with Palestinians would be out of the question.

This war that Israel is staging under the pretext of protecting its citizens from Hamas’s terrorism will not bring peace to any of the warring sides.

The Israeli prime minister is hoping this war will consecrate him as a national hero who put an end to Hamas’s and the Palestinian resistance’s missile attacks on Israel, suggested columnist Ali Barada in the Lebanese daily Annahar.

“He is also attempting to execute Israel’s strategy to establish a weaponless state of Palestine,” he suggested.

“If he failed to secure absolute victory, he would be vanquished and would set the stage for a third Palestinian intifada.”

Hamas, on the other hand, has been given an opportunity to present itself as the sole defender of what little remains of Palestinian and Arab dignity, he added.

What we are witnessing now in Gaza is one of the repercussions of the Obama administration’s failure – and principally the failure of Mr Kerry – to deal with the Palestinian issue at the roots, he concluded.

Translated by Racha Makarem