When elections lead to war

The new Palestinian-Israeli war, which does not speak its name, shows the horrors of fanaticism and the inability of the international community to resolve a conflict in which two peoples are fighting for the empowerment of the land: one, the Palestinians, living on the land of their ancestors from which they want to expel them; the other, the Jews, overwhelmingly from old Europe and North Africa from where imperial wars and Nazism expelled the survivors of the genocide perpetrated against Jews, homosexuals, gypsies and communist affiliates. Extremism, Zionist for some and jihadist for others, makes cohabitation impossible.

But who has unleashed this new war and why? The flame that ignited the spiral of war was caused by the hordes of new Jewish settlers, supported by the state, who drove dozens of Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem; this, together with the provocative parade through the city's Arab neighbourhoods and the repression of Muslim worshippers on the esplanade of the Omar Mosque in the holy month of Ramadan, was enough to send young Palestinians onto the streets in protest, violently repressed by the Israeli police. The spiral continued with the solidarity response of the Hamas movement from Gaza firing rockets at Israel and the Israeli reaction of launching its war machine against the population and the overcrowded neighbourhoods of the strip, causing dozens of deaths and hundreds of wounded. An increasingly open war.

The dominant forces on both sides want the war to drag on. The forces of dialogue and peace are in full retreat.

Having established the primary responsibility of the Israeli state for this new wave of war against the Palestinian people, the question must be asked: what does this war have to do with the political situation on either side? The issue is presented as follows.

Israel. Since 23 March, when Benjamin Netanyahu's Likoud won the elections, it has been unable to form a government. President Reuven Livlin has tasked the leader of the second most voted party, Yair Lapid of the "There is a Future" formation, to form the government within 28 days. Nentanyahu is still in office, but his days are numbered, unless he decrees a "state of war" or a "state of emergency". So this war against the Palestinians suits him just fine. From there to thinking that Benjamin Netanyahu has used Jewish extremists to organise provocations against the Palestinians in Jerusalem as a prelude to war is a step.

The idea that Israel is the only democratic state in the Middle East is shown to be false by the current situation. Israel is 80 per cent Jewish and 20 per cent Palestinian Arab. The latter will never be able to decide the political future of the state, even if they enter into confused coalitions with Labour and the liberals. The levers of power are held by the Jews. But it is not even the secular, modern, Westernised Jews; it is the orthodox Jews, the religious fundamentalists, who hold the essential levers: the Ministry of the Interior, the defence forces, the Tsahal army, the Ministry of Housing, which controls and decides the settlements by dispossessing the Palestinians of their land, and the secret services of MOSAD.  These are the real levers of power, which are in the hands of the ultra-orthodox Jewish supporters of Heretz Israel and Jerusalem as the eternal capital of the Jewish state.

Palestine. In the current crisis, the Hamas movement appears to be the only one capable of defending the Palestinian population, the only one with the will and the means to confront Israel militarily. Not to defeat it, because that is not possible today, but to confront it with weapons. The rivalry between Hamas and Fatah is in favour of the former.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had promised to hold elections, the first in 15 years. But then he went back on his word and cancelled the elections. Clearly, as of today, political elections in Palestine, the West Bank and Gaza would give a clear victory to the Hamas movement, whose leaders Khaled Meshaal and Ismail Haniyeh have been strengthened by this crisis. In Gaza, Hamas has no competitor, but even the current war may push important Fatah leaders in the West Bank, such as Mohamed Dahlan, Merwan Barghouti and Nasser Kidwa, into a tactical alliance with Hamas, thus dooming Abbas's political future.

Iran. It is the third main factor in the war equation. Not because of its direct involvement on the front lines, but because it is the main supplier of arms to the Palestinian Hamas movement, and a major strategic backer for the Syrian regime of Bashar el Assad, for Hassan Nasrallah's Lebanese Hezbollah movement, for the Lebanese Amal movement led by Nabih Berri, and for the Iraqi Shiites, the majority of the population of the country of the Euphrates and Tigris.

Both the US and Israel are aware that they cannot defeat Iran militarily, because in addition to possessing a modern and technologically advanced military, it is suspected of possessing atomic weapons, which makes open warfare against Iran unfeasible. Israel's war rampage against the civilian population of the Gaza strip is in some ways a message to Iran to withdraw from the scene. But Tehran will not leave the field.

One of the reasons for this is that the June presidential elections are once again putting a strain on the political situation in the country. The candidacy of former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with the support of ultraconservatives and a strong advocate of Iran's rearmament and nuclear programme, forces Tehran to maintain its support for the Palestinian Hamas and pro-Iranian movements in the Middle East. Should the Guardian Council allow former president Ahmadinejad to enter the electoral fray, strong popular support is expected that could jeopardise the open process of negotiations between Iran, the EU and the US.

The new Israeli-Palestinian war has unleashed a wave of worldwide solidarity with the martyred victims. This is expressed by the Algerian writer and poet Souad Mouhoub, in her verses For Palestine:

Eviction
Hanging from the olive tree you will see me, when you come to evict me from my house.
Planted in the middle of your courtyard
I'll be hugging my tree as part of its trunk.
My blood will run in its veins,
mixed with its sap, I will water my land.
From it will be born my orange trees, my grapes and my figs, 
and if I cease to be, 
its fruits will feed the ants, the worms and those insects that will reproduce endlessly to remember that this is my home. 
to remember that this is my abode.
I will be the ghost of its days and nights, 
the shadow that will inhabit its walls, the tattoo embedded in the garden.
I will be the dove that will flutter its wings over the roof of my home. 
Burn me with my tree if you will, 
tear it up and throw it away; 
its roots know the way back, 
They will creep into the courtyard of my house and plant new olive trees, a whole olive grove. 
Green and sunny, it will flood with the gold of its juice 
the garden of my house and of my land.