The World Today for October 11, 2023

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Goodbye, Status Quo

ISRAEL/ GAZA

Thousands of young people were dancing at an outdoor music festival near the Gaza border in southern Israel on Friday when rockets started flying overhead and gunshots sounded, bringing the party – and a threadbare peace – to an abrupt end.

Palestinian militants affiliated with Hamas, a terrorist group and political party that controls Gaza, had broken through the region’s border fence. They killed at least 260 revelers – in what is the worst civilian massacre in Israeli history – to kick off the violence now raging in the region. “We were hiding and running, hiding and running, in an open field, the worst place you could possibly be in that situation,” Arik Nani, an attendee who was celebrating his 26th birthday, told the Associated Press.

On Monday, Israel announced a siege of Gaza as the country mobilized to counter Hamas’ surprise attack, cutting off food, fuel, or electricity to the tiny, war-torn region between Israel and Egypt. To date, the militants have killed more than 1,200 Israelis and abducted at least 150 people including foreign citizens, reported the Guardian, though those numbers are likely low as the fighting is ongoing. The losses on the Palestinian side top 900 to date, the Associated Press wrote.

Thousands on both sides are injured and even more have been displaced.

The timing of the attack was telling, noted the Conversation, occurring on the day after the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, when Egypt, Syria, and other Arab countries launched a coordinated surprise attack on the country.

As the world watches for Israel’s potentially devastating response against Hamas, two questions are dominating discussions about the crisis. First, why has Hamas chosen to attack now? Second, why didn’t Israel know the attack was coming?

An Israel divided, weakened and distracted by internal politics over a judicial reform is the quick answer to both those questions, many analysts believe.

Still, geopolitics certainly plays into the first question.

The attack comes as Israel was reportedly negotiating to normalize relations with Saudi Arabia, the preeminent Arab power. As columnist Max Boot argued in the Washington Post, Hamas is Iran’s proxy. It’s likely Iran, through Hamas, wants to destabilize the region. It certainly doesn’t benefit from a détente between Israel and Saudia Arabia. And now, Saudi leaders likely can’t sign a deal with Israel if television newscasts are replaying Israeli attacks on Palestinian neighborhoods in Gaza – even if those attacks are a response to Saturday’s massacre.

Rockets have been Hamas’ most deadly weapon, for example. Iran supplies Hamas with missiles, the Council on Foreign Relations explained. Iran has denied involvement but the Wall Street Journal reported Monday that the country helped plot the attacks and then gave to go-ahead.

Israel’s intelligence failures before the fighting are also under scrutiny, and there will be hand-wringing over these for months to come. Egyptian officials warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that “something big” was brewing, reported the Times of Israel, even as Israeli officials apparently ignored them. Netanyahu’s political fortunes depend on Israeli settlers in the West Bank, for instance. He has been focusing on their security, not sentiments in Hamas-controlled Gaza.

Netanyahu might also have assumed that Hamas wouldn’t attack because spilling Israeli blood would trigger a massive response, leading Hamas to lose the support of ordinary Palestinians in Gaza, Foreign Affairs added.

But that’s yesterday’s calculation, wrote Daoud Kuttab, a Palestinian journalist and former Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University who condemned the attacks while adding that they “should not have surprised anyone.”

Palestinian officials had repeatedly spoken of an explosion if there was no political progress on alleviating their people’s suffering, he wrote.

Last month, for example, Jordanian King Abdullah II told the UN General Assembly: “Without clarity on where the Palestinians’ future lies, it will be impossible to converge on a political solution to this conflict. Five million Palestinians live under occupation – no civil rights; no freedom of mobility; no say in their lives.”

Combine that with an expansion of settlements, increasing violence between Israeli security forces and Palestinians and rising religious tensions as the right-wing coalition in Israel, since it took power late last year, has been “upending a carefully orchestrated status quo agreement on Muslim holy sites,” said Kuttab.

As a result, defenders of the Palestinians say Gazans were simply engaged in a fight for their freedom and their future, pointing to how the West is now supporting the Ukrainians against Russians who occupy their territory, Al Jazeera wrote.

As the Economist noted, it’s too soon to know how all this plays out. Will Israel destroy Hamas? Will a divided Israel come together politically and if so, which way will it turn? Will an agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia move forward or will the violence spread to the West Bank and Lebanon? Is the two-state solution decisively dead? What will happen to the Israeli hostages? Or to the millions of Gazans stuck in a tiny, explosive enclave caught in between Hamas and Israel with nowhere to go?

Even though the Israelis and Palestinians have gone these rounds before, the magazine added: “It is not too soon to be clear that this attack marks the end of a decades-old belief in Israel that Palestinian aspirations for sovereignty could be indefinitely put aside while the rest of the Middle East forged ahead.”

In other words, the status quo is over.

THE WORLD, BRIEFLY

No Refuge

MYANMAR

At least 29 people died at a refugee camp in northern Myanmar this week in an artillery strike that critics blamed on the country’s ruling junta, as the military battles various ethnic resistance movements following a coup more than two years ago, Sky News reported.

The strike hit a camp three miles from the town of Laiza in Kachin State, which borders China. Laiza is run by the Kachin Independence Army, a rebel group that has been fighting against Myanmar’s military government for years.

Local civil rights groups said the death toll included women and children, adding that 59 others were injured.

The shadow National Unity Government – made up of former officials and lawmakers ousted by the junta – blamed the military for the attack and described it as a “war crime and (a) crime against humanity.” It urged the international community to take action and prosecute army leaders.

But the junta rejected the allegations and said it was investigating the matter. Officials suggested that the explosion may have involved an ethnic rebel group’s own munitions.

Myanmar’s military leaders have been embroiled in numerous conflicts in various regions across the country following its February 2021 coup. At the time, the army ousted and arrested the democratically-elected government of civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Mass protests erupted soon after the coup, with the junta launching a brutal crackdown on protesters. Meanwhile, ethnic minority militias and a resistance movement continue to try to destabilize the military regime.

These conflicts have resulted in more than a million people being displaced, according to the United Nations.

A Growing Malignancy

IRAN

A recent incident that left a teenage girl in a coma following a confrontation with Iran’s morality police is creating new outrage against the government, a little more than a year after the country was swept by mass demonstrations sparked by the death of another young woman who allegedly violated the country’s strict dress codes, the Washington Post reported.

Earlier this month, morality police officials stopped 16-year-old Armita Geravand and her friends for failing to properly follow the rules that require women to cover their hair.

But footage from the surveillance videos and various statements, including from Geravand’s family and Iranian officials, have prompted questions about what led the girl to fall into a coma.

Authorities claimed that the girl fainted from low blood pressure. In an interview, her parents said that video footage didn’t depict anything controversial, adding that she “fell on the floor and her head hit the edge of the metro.”

But many activists criticized the interview and the official announcement, countering that the teenager was assaulted by authorities.

They urged officials to release more footage while comparing the incident to the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini last year.

Amini was arrested last September by the morality police for alleged dress code violations. She later died in their custody, which prompted months-long protests against Iran’s strict hijab rules and its ruling clerics.

The demonstrations saw many women defying the rules and removing their headscarves, sometimes burning them at protests.

While the Iranian government initially appeared to have dissolved the police unit, their patrols resumed this year as the country took new steps to tighten dress code enforcement.

The recent incident with Geravand also drew criticism from Western officials, but Iranian authorities called these comments “interventionist and biased remarks.”

Helping Fido and Friends

SPAIN

An ambitious new animal welfare law in Spain promises to crack down on animal abuse and forbids the sale of pets even as it makes exceptions for bullfights and hunts with dogs, both longtime Spanish traditions, the Associated Press reported.

The new legislation is the first specific animal rights bill that will outlaw the use of animals for recreational activities that cause them pain and suffering. Individuals violating these rules could face fines of up to $212,000.

Such bans include the use of wild animals at circuses and the sale of pets in stores or online. The law allows circuses and stores a grace period to find homes for their animals.

Future pet owners will only be allowed to buy animals from registered breeders. At the same time, the new rules also allow pets into most establishments, including restaurants and bars.

However, the new rules permit bullfighting, a practice that is regarded as part of Spain’s cultural heritage. The government had also proposed to ban the use of hunting dogs but relented after pushback from rural communities.

There are around 29 million pets in Spain, according to government statistics. Data also shows that around 300,000 of them are abandoned each year and about one-third are put down.

DISCOVERIES

Tracking the Trackers

Stone Age hunter-gatherers who lived thousands of years ago in what is now Namibia put a lot of detail into their rock art and engravings.

Case in point, engravings found in Doro Nawas Mountains in the west include depictions of a variety of subjects, particularly animal tracks and human footprints.

The remarkable aspect of these engravings is their level of detail, which has allowed modern Indigenous trackers to not only identify the species of animals but also make educated guesses about their age and gender, Newsweek reported.

For their study, scientists cooperated with modern-day Indigenous tracking experts from the Kalahari Desert to thoroughly analyze the ancient artworks. Researchers showed the trackers a total of 513 engravings, a majority them of consisting of tracks and prints.

Their findings not only revealed the meticulous detail ancient artists employed, but also the pivotal role of traditional Indigenous knowledge.

The trackers were able to decipher more than 90 percent of the engravings and precisely describe the species depicted, including its age, gender and leg used.

This analysis also sheds light on the preferences of the ancient artists, such as their choice of certain animal species and their preference for adult animals over juveniles.

However, the true meanings and contexts of these engravings remain enigmatic. The team acknowledged that the symbolism and cultural significance of these prehistoric artworks are not easily decrypted.

Even so, they emphasized the importance of involving Indigenous knowledge in archaeological research, recognizing their capacity to significantly advance our understanding of ancient cultures and their practices.

“In the future, it will be difficult not to involve track experts in the study of Stone Age track depictions,” said co-author Andreas Pastoors.

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