The march of madness
The first example is Bibi Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, who does not want to see that the Palestinians exist, that their legitimate aspirations must be met, and that there will be no security for Israel without a minimum of justice for them. He believes that by "mowing the grass" and giving them a couple of capons every few years he has the problem under control, and Gaza has shown him how wrong he is.
He prioritises the unrealistic goal of wiping out Hamas over the immediate goal of freeing the hostages still held by Hamas who must survive, if they still do, in appalling conditions.
Netanyahu seems to want the continuation of the conflict in order to postpone as long as possible the calling of elections, the creation of a commission to investigate the security lapses of 7 October that allowed Hamas a far greater victory than it could ever have hoped for and, last but not least, he wants to postpone the time when he will have to sit in court to answer serious charges of corruption. So his interests and Israel's may not coincide.
The Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ali Khamenei, has also erred in responding to popular pressure to respond to the Israeli provocation (in grave breach of international law) of bombing a diplomatic building in Damascus in which senior Iranian military officers were killed. It measured its response to the millimetre so as not to cause casualties (it even warned of the time of the attack) and not to give excuses to the many who want them, and its drones took hours to reach their destination, thus facilitating their destruction (reminiscent of the TV series The Three Body Problem in which the earthlings prepare for an invasion of aliens that will take 400 years to arrive), but Iran has made a mistake because it has done Israel a great favour by diverting world attention from the humanitarian disaster it has caused in Gaza, where it now leaves Israel's hands free; because it has turned Israel from attacker to attacked and regained much of the international sympathy it had squandered; because it has made it more difficult for Washington to continue to consider reducing arms deliveries that allow Israel to continue bombing Gaza mercilessly; and because it has strengthened Israel's relationship with some Arab countries such as Jordan (which has allowed it to fight Iranian drones in its airspace) and Saudi Arabia which, between two enemies, Israel and Iran, prefers the former.
Tehran will now face new international sanctions, whereas the policy it has pursued to date with the help of its Houthi allies, Hezbollah and like-minded militias in Syria and Iraq has allowed it to harass Israel by throwing a stone while hiding its hand. One might conclude, then, that Iran has also been wrong.
But since the Middle East is the land of the Bible, an eye for an eye prevails there, and we are in a situation reminiscent of Goya's image of the two men buried knee-deep in the ground as they club each other. Although Iran considered the matter settled, as Khamenei would say, Netanyahu has responded to the Iranian attack by sending a few missiles and drones against a couple of military bases in Isfahan and Tabriz without apparently causing any appreciable damage. It would seem that both, having shown how macho they are, are trying to prevent the conflict from boiling over, Israel because its priority is to intervene militarily in Rafah in southern Gaza, where 1.7 million exhausted and starving Gazans are crowded together with nowhere else to flee, and the ayatollahs' regime because what it really wants is to persecute the poor women who do not dress the way they want to dress.
And so we go. The March of Folly.
Jorge Dezcallar, Ambassador of Spain
Published in Diario de Mallorca, El Periódico de Catalunya and Cadena de Prensa Ibérica on Sunday 21 April 2024.