According to media reports, US President Joe Biden will soon be visiting Israel to show support for its war on Hamas.

Israel has vowed to annihilate the Hamas movement. Israel has bombarded the Gaza Strip with air strikes that have killed more than 2,800 Palestinians, a quarter of them children, and driven around half of the 2.3 million Gazans from their homes.

It has imposed a total blockade on the enclave, halting food, fuel and medical supplies, which are rapidly running out. In my view, Karbala is now being enacted in Gaza. Killing people mercilessly day in, day out is what the Jewish state has been doing for over a week.

It has made every possible effort to create an unprecedented human misery for over 2 million people in Gaza. The growing belligerence of Benjamin Netanyahu-led government in Israel seems to have brought the region to the brink of a major war.

That is why perhaps Iran has warned both Israel and the US that a ground offensive on the besieged Gaza Strip would be met with a response from other fronts. Moreover, China and Russia have hardened their positions on Gaza as the conflict stirs geopolitical tensions.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, for example, has raised the possibility that an intensified siege of Gaza by Israel may resemble that of Leningrad by Hitler’s armies during Second World War.

Pakistan’s army, one of the best war-hardened armies of the world, has taken stock of the situation and expressed its concerns over the plight of the besieged Palestinians, demanding Israel lift Gaza blockade without any further loss of time.

To conclude, I must say that it would really serve Israel well to wake up and smell the coffee and begin to act rationally.

Hamid Nawaz

Lahore

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023