Time for unaligned nations to take a stand on outright militant incursions

OTTAWA—Large-scale military incursions or politically motivated attacks were subject, for the most part, to international condemnation in the decades after the slaughter of the Second World War. But the censure of this kind of organized violence seems to be weakening, most recently of course in the world’s half-hearted reaction to Russia’s bloody, unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. According to the Armed Conflict and Event Data Project, a United States-based non-profit that measures political violence globally, the 50 countries with the highest levels of conflict have experienced sustained or escalating levels of conflict over the past five years. And in the past 12 months alone, political violence incidents went up 27 per cent. The war in the Middle East that erupted in recent days is the latest turmoil in a conflict stretching back decades. At the same time, there is little doubt that this latest upsurge, at least in part, reflects the trend toward overt armed action in the deepening clash with the western alliance being orchestrated by Russia and its allies. Iran, which by most accounts played a role in putting the Hamas attack on Israel in motion, has strengthened its ties with Moscow during President Vladimir Putin’s long-bogged-down war against Ukraine. While Putin is unlikely to have had direct responsibility for the new assault on Israel, Hamas’ action has to be seen in this wider geo-political context. “There's another question about whether Russia’s role matters indirectly here,” Hanna Notte, a Berlin-based analyst with the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies and an expert on Russia’s Middle East policy, told Radio Free Europe. “I would argue that because of the war in Ukraine, because of the severe deterioration in Russia-West relations, and therefore, the changing geopolitics of the Russia-Iran relationship, Russia is, broadly speaking, enabling Iran more in the region. So, Iran feels more emboldened. Iran gives drones and other support to Russia. It is probably getting some sort of support from Russia in return.” Without discounting the long-standing and recent causes of Israeli-Palestinian conflict (the latter including rising violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and a dispute over the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City), changing regional political-diplomatic factors have certainly played into the latest fighting. The assault by Hamas comes during a U.S.-backed move to pressure Saudi Arabia towards normalizing ties with Israel in return for a defence agreement between Washington and Riyadh, a development that would be unsettling for Tehran. A regional source with ties to Iran and the Iranian-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah told Reuters: “This is a message to Saudi Arabia, which is crawling towards Israel, and to the Americans who are supporting normalisation and supporting Israel. There is no security in the whole region as long as Palestinians are left outside of the equation.” The renewed Hamas-Israel clash followed similar remarks a few days previously by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who said “countries that make the gamble of normalization with Israel will lose; they are betting on a losing horse.” On Oct. 7, Iran applauded the Hamas attack. The attack, with its real potential for prompting a full-scale regional war, has raised alarms around the world. But, as with the response to the invasion of Ukraine, the United Nations remained divided over what to do about it last weekend. The 15-member UN Security Council held an emergency meeting behind closed doors on Oct. 8, but took no immediate action. U.S. deputy ambassador Robert Wood told reporters later that “a good number of countries” did condemn the Hamas assault—but not all council members. He indicated that a key country resisting U.S. calls to strongly criticize Hamas was Russia. On Oct. 9, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy denounced Hamas for its surprise assault on Israel, and said it poised the same danger to global order as Russia’s invasion of his own country. Hamas and Moscow are “the same evil, and the only difference is that there is a terrorist organization that attacked Israel, and here is a terrorist state that attacked Ukraine,” Zelenskyy said. “If the world unites whenever someone takes women hostage and condemns the children of another nation, terror will have no allies,” he said in videoed remarks to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. While the world needs to pursue a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with a great deal more commitment, global leaders at the same time must take a stand against blatant militant incursions—for whatever reason. Otherwise, unaligned nations will find themselves caught up in the very widening conflicts they were hoping to dodge. Les Whittington is a regular columnist for The Hill Times. The Hill Times

Time for unaligned nations to take a stand on outright militant incursions

There is little doubt this latest Israel-Hamas upsurge partly reflects the trend toward overt armed action in the deepening clash with the western alliance being orchestrated by Russia and its allies.

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Time for unaligned nations to take a stand on outright militant incursions

There is little doubt this latest Israel-Hamas upsurge partly reflects the trend toward overt armed action in the deepening clash with the western alliance being orchestrated by Russia and its allies.

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