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The message cannot be louder
The over-whelming vote in the United Nations General Assembly calling upon Israel to immediately cease its operations in the Gaza is the biggest signal that the international community has run out of its patience.
That 153 nations, including India, rallied behind a non-binding Resolution is itself an indication to the Jewish state and its chief backer the United States that while the world has no use for terrorism, it cannot stand by idly to indiscriminate use of force and destruction rarely seen in conflicts in the name of achieving national interest objectives.
The support for the Palestinian people in the General Assembly came after Washington cast its expected veto at the Security Council on a similar measure stressing, among other things, that member states were out of touch with reality in that Israeli concerns would have to be addressed.
Practically speaking the Biden administration simply cannot be blind to the goings on in the Gaza strip. Close to 19,000 people have been killed, many more believed to be under the rubble and hundreds of thousands wounded and left to fend for themselves in the absence of medical facilities.
In Israel, the government of Benjamin Netanyahu is hanging on to a tough posturing saying repeatedly that the operations are not to close until such time the Hamas is wiped out.
Militarily and politically this is not going to take place all that easily as the Jewish state has had serious reverses on the combat front as also in realizing that support for Hamas is perhaps on an upswing and that of the current Palestinian Authority at pathetic lows.
President Joe Biden is finding that an increasing number of his own folks are appalled at the intransigence of a very close ally and in the inability of Washington to do some tough talking.
The catastrophe that has come about in the Gaza has come to politically hurt Biden’s re-election campaign where not just Arab Americans but Independents and young voters are quickly walking away from the Democrats pointing to the appalling lack of sensitivity to the goings on.
The world was outraged at the terror attack on Israel on October 7 where some 1400 Israeli civilians and military personnel were killed by the Hamas and another 240-odd taken as hostages.
But the systematic and brutal retaliation of the Jewish state throwing to winds all norms of international law and international humanitarian law has come as a disbelief-- Palestinians having to be constantly on the run and without the basic necessities like food, water, fuel and medical facilities.
The message from the United Nations General Assembly cannot be louder; and it is left to Israel’s principal ally, the United States, to step in forcefully to put an end to the outrage that is taking place.
Both Tel Aviv and Washington must realize that taking on the Hamas is far more sophisticated than filling tunnels with sea water. It requires a sophisticated political exercise and for this to start there has to be an immediate ceasefire.
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