The images of Gaza shown around the clock on cable television reflect a dystopian landscape. Buildings that only recently housed families, schools that educated children, hospitals and strips of commerce, spartan as they were, yet still conducted business, are all gone. Suddenly. Violently. Nightmarishly.
The destruction of Gaza, once called the ‘most populous place on earth,’ for the estimated 2.5 million people who once lived there, is the promise made to Israelis by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the October 7th surprise attack by the Palestinian group Hamas that killed more than a thousand Israelis and resulted in more than 230 others taken as hostage.
As the week began, a phalanx of Israeli tanks along with ground troops had methodically begun their descent on Gaza as they try and root out the militant Muslim soldiers, many of whom are scattered out of sight or underground in the serpentine complex of tunnels built by Hamas to ferry weapons along with anything else smuggled in from across the Middle East. From above, drones and jet fighters pepper what remains of the Gaza infrastructure with rockets. Death tolls on the ground spin like an out-of-control odometer.
Tensions between Jews and Palestinians stretch generations, but rarely have they been this high. And rarely has there been the kind of carnage carried out since October 7th. Palestinians have accused Israel of sophisticated and indiscriminate killing. Israel simply points to the end of its holiday season as the starting point to the everyday horror now visiting Gaza.
Richard Moeller, Metropolitan State University-Denver Professor of Political Science, said the conflict can be reduced to “culture, religion or deep-seeded allegiances to the Holy Land.” It’s an intractable violence that results when leadership on either side has no interest in understanding or compromising with the other.
The intransigence has brought on a near holy war with both Palestinians and Israelis paying a horrific price. For Palestinians, though, the cost is having to lose their homes, businesses and any semblance of security that comes from living in a place where necessities—food, fuel, water and medicine—are subject to the political winds that sometimes land with little notice.
At press time, the Palestinian death toll since October 7th was nearing 10,000. While most deaths have come from air strikes and ground fire, an unspecified number has also died from lack of medicine, food and water—all cut off by Israel—and the absence of hospitals, many of which have been destroyed by air strikes. The Israeli death toll at press time is closing in on 1,500.
The on-going battle over a 25-mile stretch of land on the other side of the world has also opened up deep divisions across the United States. Protests, including a pro-Palestinian one last week at MSU-Denver, others at the state capitol as well as scores others on college campuses across the country have become ubiquitous. There have also been an equal number of protests in full support of Israel.
In addition to the protests, tempers have risen among business leaders, some even threatening the withholding of donations to colleges and universities. In Congress, Democratic members, especially progressive members voicing full support for Palestinians, have been threatened with censure by pro-Israeli voices.
The fighting has also put the U.S. on a political tightrope. While President Biden has expressed the country’s full support for Israel—he even made a quick one-day trip to stand with the Prime Minister—he has also expressed sympathy for Palestinian victims of the conflict, as well as reaffirming their “right to dignity and to self-determination.”
In addition, the President has ordered two aircraft carriers to be stationed off the coast of Israel, a show of support that goes beyond symbolic. He has also ordered airstrikes in several locations in Syria, a country long suspected of aiding Hamas. He has also asked Congress for $106 billion in aid for Israel, Ukraine and the border.
In Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu, mostly silent about the huge Israeli intelligence failure over the Hamas attack, directed blame for October 7th on the military and security establishments on “X,” formerly Twitter. Within hours of his post and after an almost immediate outcry within his own war cabinet, he posted again. “I was wrong,” it said.
The colossal intelligence failure of October 7th, for now, sits on the backburner as the government closes ranks while war is waged on Gaza and Hamas. But once things settle down, Netanyahu, who has held the office more than 16 years, faces the political reality that happened on his watch.
While the bloodiest part of the conflict has only been on going for three weeks, Professor Moeller sees no quick end to it. “I would say that we’re looking at two years,” he said, “before a desired resolution comes about.” He predicts the U.S. president will have to play a major role in any de-escalation but wonders the turns things will take if in two years we’ll have a different president.
Meanwhile, with Israel’s Netanyahu declaring “war” over October 7th, the future of Palestinians in the region remains the biggest concern and mystery. Critics of Israel have not been reluctant to call the country’s aerial and ground campaign nothing short of “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing.”
Gaza, sometimes called ‘the world’s largest open-air prison,’ also has one of the world’s youngest populations, said MSU-Denver’s Professor Alex Boodrookas. They stand to be the biggest losers in what today appears to be an open-ended war. “A peaceful solution,” he said, “has never looked farther away than today.”.
