Saturday 20th April, 2024

The Gaza conflict shows signs of spiralling into a much broader war, which is likely to threaten world peace and destabilise the global economy. Friday’s Israeli missile and drone strikes on the Iranian city of Isfahan, which is said to be home to several nuclear facilities, has pushed the Middle East closer to a devastating regional war. One dreads to think what the situation would be in case of the Iranian nuclear facilities coming under attack. The economic fallout of Friday’s attacks was immediately felt across the globe. World oil prices rallied significantly. So did the gold prices.

The UN has been rendered impotent and the US, together with its western allies, has sided with Israel. So, it is not possible to prevent an escalation of the Israel-Iran conflict; the two belligerent nations are bent on fighting it out.

Washington raises hell if China ever so much as sends a fighter jet over Taiwan, and condemns Beijing in the strongest possible terms for doing so, but it has chosen to remain silent on the Israeli missile attacks on Iran. True, Iran should not have carried out as many as 300 missile and drone attacks on Israel on Sunday. Similarly, Tel Aviv should not have provoked Tehran by attacking the Iranian consulate in Damascus on Sunday. Hamas, which invaded a part of Israel, in October 2023, triggering the ongoing conflict, is now playing the victim card. It is also responsible for the suffering of the Palestinians, whose rights it claims to champion.

Calling for de-escalation of the Middle East conflict, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has stressed that Washington was not involved in Friday’s attacks on Iran. But he has stopped short of commenting thereon. It may be true that the US had no direct involvement in them, but there is no way Washington can absolve itself of responsibility for what Israel is doing in Gaza as well as elsewhere.

Israel is dependent on Washington to sustain its military operations. The US not only provides military aid to Israel but also defends it at the UN, vetoing as it does the Security Council resolutions calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. It was only after seven World Central Kitchen workers had been killed in an Israel attack, two weeks ago, that US President Joe Biden felt the need to have a ‘come-to-Jesus’ telephone conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who however has not heeded Washington’s concerns.

Worse, the world powers that have taken upon themselves the task of maintaining global peace and protecting human rights, have ignored the ground-breaking International Court of Justice (ICJ) decision in South Africa’s genocide case against Israel, in January. According to experts on international law, the ICJ ruling has formalised legal obligations of all nations that are party to the UN Genocide Convention. But it has apparently had no impact on the US, Canada, etc. There have been no restrictions on arms sales to Israel. The western nations have made a mockery of their commitment to protecting human rights.

The biggest danger to global peace is that the UN has been reduced to a scarecrow, and no powerful nation takes it seriously. The US, Israel and their allies are free to unleash violence to protect their interests. The same goes for Russia. There is no international organisation capable of preventing another world war, which the Gaza conflict might lead to—absit omen.

The western-dominated UNHRC (UN Human Rights Council) demonstrates its selective efficiency. It takes on the nations that the West does not favour but cringes and crawls before the powerful countries and their allies. The UN has outlived its usefulness to all intents and purposes. One can only hope that sanity will prevail, and the world powers will realise the danger of allowing the Gaza conflict to spin out of control, and do everything in their power to rein in Israel and Hamas and eliminate the root causes of the Israel-Palestine conflict.