The US Fifth Fleet patrols the waters of the Arabian Gulf, Red Sea, Gulf of Oman and parts of the western Indian Ocean and now the US has roped in Japan, Australia and India in QUAD to counter the threat of China in every way. Israel is emboldened by unconditional Indian, US and Western state support and feeble Arab condemnations.
Israel’s end game is to drive out Palestinians from Gaza, into Egypt. Egypt spends half its budget on interest payments and is reliant on loans from the IMF and wealthy Arab states. Egypt’s weak economy is close to default.
According to the Israeli Ynet website Israel proposed writing off a significant chunk of Egypt’s international debts through the World Bank in exchange for taking in the Palestinians of Gaza. Debt write-offs were previously done in 1991 to enlist Egypt in an anti-Iraq coalition. However, Egypt is not prepared to accommodate 2.5 million Gaza residents. Israel with IMEC also poses a risk to its Suez Canal revenues, crucial for its economy.
The countries that buy Israeli military hardware and surveillance technology end up becoming tacit supporters of Israel at best or accomplices at worst with their actions.
The Israel-Egypt reconciliation achieved by Israeli PM Begin and the Egyptian President Sadaat in 1979, is now getting strained. Israeli economy is USD 500 billion strong. Although it relies on cutting-edge US military hardware and financial aid, Israel is a superior surveillance software and weapons supplier in its own right, for nations across the globe. Israel’s military industrial complex uses Palestinian territories as a testing ground for weaponry and surveillance technology. Israel uses the sales pitch of being battle tested by showing footage of use in Palestinian territory on civilian targets.
Israel has a long history of selling weapons to despots in Romania, Chile, Nicaragua, Guatemala, South Africa South Sudan etc. From Rwanda to Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and India, Israeli spyware and surveillance technology is the best in the world and used by countless democracies and dictatorships alike.
In recent history, Israeli weapons enabled the Myanmar army to murder thousands of Rohingyas. Israeli Heron drones fly over Kashmir, as they do over Palestine. Tanvi Madan, the director of the India Project at the Brookings Institution said that Indian elites have organisational envy of Israel since India cannot retaliate against Pakistan similar to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, due to Pakistan’s nuclear capability. Israeli drones are used by the European Union to monitor refugee boats in the Mediterranean, which are drowned. A recent tragedy of over two hundred Pakistanis drowning off the shores of Greece is one such example. The countries that buy Israeli military hardware and surveillance technology end up becoming tacit supporters of Israel at best or accomplices at worst with their actions.
Europe carries the guilt of the holocaust. Franz Josef Strauss, a veteran of the Wehrmacht in the “bloodlands” of Eastern Europe thought that the task of leaving the past behind us was best accomplished by defence deals with Israel. Germany had banned public recognition of the 1948 Nakba and criminalized any solidarity with the Palestinian people and it has now approached the ICJ to join the Israeli genocide case as a third party supporting Israel.
This is not the first time Germany has supported Israel at the ICJ. In 2021, for example, while pursuing defence deals with Israel, Germany challenged the right of the International Criminal Court to investigate war crimes in the Occupied Territories. German journalist Ralf Vogel famously said that the Uzi (an Israeli submachine gun) in the hand of the German soldier is better than any brochure against anti-semitism.
Muslim states have only issued verbal condemnations of Israel, except for Yemen. The Islamic Republic of Iran, the state which often engages in realpolitik about Israel, chose to attack Syria, Iraq and Pakistan with missile strikes.
Indonesia and Slovenia (an Eastern European state) will join proceedings that seek an advisory opinion from the ICJ on Israel’s control of and policies on Palestine. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, Jordan, Malaysia and Morocco have voiced support for the South African case.
The writer is an independent researcher, author and columnist. She can be reached at aliya1924@gmail.com