The past year has shown once again that the global community is least bothered by the human dimension, i.e. the loss of human lives in any military conflict. Further, the arms industry’s greed to earn huge profits is also overlooked
Asad Mirza
OCTOBER 7, 2024 marks one year of the Israeli aggression against the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Meanwhile, during the last year, many other nations like the regional powers Iran and Israel also got entangled in a conflict, due to the latter’s operations to eliminate the entire top leadership of Hezbollah and Hamas, and to render them completely dismembered.
To achieve its objectives, Israel mounted ferocious attacks on targets in Lebanon, Syria, and even Yemen with full impunity. It acted as if it had the task of eliminating the maximum population in these countries.
Iran’s actions against Israel were termed as a response to the ‘Axis of Resistance’, but who gave the right to Israel to act in this savage manner? It claims to have taken these actions against Iran, the latter’s actions against it are termed as aggression.
Further, the question of who is the aggressor dominated the narrative last year completely ignoring and asking who is the intruder or usurper, hell-bent on kicking the Palestinians out of their own homeland.
The reality is that Israel has morphed from being an aggressor state to one of the world’s largest arms manufacturers and exporters. While this human tragedy was unfolding in the region, profits of Israel’s arms manufacturers were going through the roof.
Turkey’s news outlet Anadolu Agency explored this hidden aspect of the current war. As part of its series marking one year of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, the agency spoke to Antony Loewenstein, author of The Palestine Laboratory, on how Israel uses Palestine as a tool to boost its defence industry exports by marking them as ‘field tested’.
Loewenstein said the war on Gaza, which has claimed about 42,000 lives seems to be a testing ground for Israel’s new weaponry.
“Israel has been testing and using new weapons and technology in its wars. And already, it has been trying to sell those tools and technologies at various global arms fairs since October 7,” the Sydney-based author told Anadolu. He said Israeli exports reached a record $13.1 billion in 2023.
Here we should be aware of the fact that what Israel sells in the global armament market is described as ‘field tested’. Now in the post-WW II and Cold War, with no access to human guinea pigs available to the arms and armaments manufacturers, Israel has found them in the West Bank. At its own sweet will, Israel launches attacks on Palestinians in their homes and later sells the same weapons labelled as ‘field tested’.
The irony is further compounded by the fact that most of these weapons are purchased by the neighbouring Arab states, most of whom profess to support the Palestinian cause, but to pursue their regional ambitions, they purchase arms from their supposedly arch-foe Israel.
As per a report of the Middle East Eye think-tank, Arab states which normalised ties with Israel under the Abraham Accords accounted for about 25 percent of Israel’s record $12.5 billion in defence exports in 2022, signalling their deepening economic and defence links with the Jewish state.
The 2022 price tag marked a 50 percent jump from the previous three years and a doubling in volume over the previous decade, according to Israel’s defence ministry. Drones accounted for 25 percent of the 2022 exports, while missiles, rockets or air defence systems amounted to 19 percent, a Reuters report said.
Additionally, at another level, another pressing issue which must be handled by the international community at the earliest is the human angle of the current conflict.
As per UN reports, the conflict so far has claimed at least 41,800 lives, another 95,818 injured, and 1.9 million displaced out of the estimated 2.2 million population.
A satellite imagery survey in July 2024 estimated that 63 percent of Gaza’s buildings had been damaged, including 215,137 housing units The UN Office of the Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs reported in September that 46 percent of aid deliveries were impeded or denied outright to Palestinians in need.
As bombing and ground operations spread, 86 percent of Gaza was under mandatory evacuation orders by August, leaving al-Masawi, a sliver of sand already crowded with tents in the south, the only declared safe haven. The same month, the area was struck with a polio outbreak, 25 years after its eradication.
Amid the worsening situation, with no ceasefire in sight, aid organisations revived earlier warnings of impending famine. The humanitarian organisation Refugees International warned in September of increasing famine risk due to continued disruptions in aid delivery, bombing, and dislocations.
Further, more than 700 Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have been killed since the war broke out, according to the Palestinian Authority Health Ministry in Ramallah. Since October 7, 2023, according to the UNOCHA report on September 25, 2024, Israeli authorities demolished 1,725 structures and displaced 4,450 Palestinians – double the rate of displacement in the preceding nearly one-year period.
Even before the September escalation of conflict across the Lebanon-Israel border, nearly 100,000 Lebanese had been displaced from their homes in the country’s south due to Israeli shelling. Meanwhile, approximately 63,000 Israelis were internally displaced from the country’s north due to Hezbollah’s rocket attacks.
But starting in late September 2024, Israeli strikes on Hezbollah and Palestinian targets in Beirut and across Lebanon killed hundreds of civilians and exponentially increased internal and cross-border displacement. More than a million Lebanese have now fled their homes in a matter of days amid Israel’s invasion and bombardment.
In addition, Syrian refugees and the large migrant worker population in Lebanon were also displaced, with many sleeping on the streets or in makeshift tents, unable to access buildings that were converted into shelters for the Lebanese.
In a separate stark example of reverse migration, about 230,000 people – both Lebanese and Syrians – have fled across the border into Syria. Bringing the recent regional conflicts full circle with post-2011 Arab uprising displacement and crisis, returning home is an unsafe option for many Syrians who still fear repression under the government of President Bashar al-Assad.
Over several decades, the Middle East has experienced many large-scale, cross-border displacements for myriad reasons. The original forced displacement of Palestinians surrounding the creation of Israel in 1948 and subsequent conflicts created the world’s longest-standing refugee situation, with approximately six million Palestinians living across the Levant. Sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s and the 2003 US invasion of Iraq produced millions of refugees, with long-standing political repercussions for the region.
More recently, the 2011 Arab uprisings and the wars that followed in Syria, Yemen and Libya created millions of refugees, as well as internally displaced peoples, with nearly six million Syrians still living in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan and another six million displaced inside Syria.
New layers of displacement in Lebanon – nationals, refugees, and migrant workers – as well as cross-border movement into Syria will put further strain on the underfunded system of humanitarian assistance.
To eliminate the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, Israel invaded Lebanon in 1978 and again in 1982. Israel’s 1982 invasion led to the Sabra and Shatila massacres of between 1,500-3,000 Palestinian civilians – carried out by Israel’s Lebanese Christian allies – showing that military operations which do not distinguish between militants and civilians can lead to devastating impacts for displaced populations.
It is high time that various international organisations particularly the UN and nations like the US and UK, must step up their efforts to get a ceasefire implemented in the region. The next step obviously should be to get Israel out of all occupied or annexed territories and then handle the issue of Israel’s burgeoning arms industry, but for that the West will have to curtail its own arms manufacturing and buying, thereby putting a stop to the maddening arms race.
___________
Asad Mirza is a New Delhi-based senior journalist and a media consultant. He writes on national, international and strategic affairs. The views expressed here are the author’s personal and Clarion India does not necessarily share or subscribe to them. He can be contacted at: asad.mirza.nd@gmail.com
