“VICTORY “ SPEECH IN ISRAEL’S KNESSET RAISE QUESTIONS – By N.S.Venkataraman
The world has felt a sigh of relief , when Israel and Hamas arrived at a settlement to stop the war. The exchange of hostages between both the sides is a positive move after two years of bitter conflict and the event has the potential to pave way for future peace.
It is true that Hamas started this war by killing hundreds of innocent Israeli citizens in a surprise raid and taking large number of hostages. When this happened , Israel had no alternative other than retaliating . Obviously, Israel’s retaliation was brutal and fierce, resulting in death of more than 70,000 innocent citizens , living in Gaza and nearby region and causing injuries to several more people , forcing people to run away from war zones and causing huge shortage of food items even leading to starvation conditions.
While the world felt aghast at the brutality of Hamas when it killed innocent Israeli citizens , the world was equally aghast at the brutality of Israel in killing thousands of innocent people in Gaza region.
In such tit for tat scenario for around two years, people in Israel and Gaza region wanted this war and conflict to stop and the Israel leadership and Hamas leadership too wanted to find some face saving formula to end this war.
The fact is when the time is ripe for peace initiative, President Trump made some efforts to facilitate peace, giving an impression that he is the architect of peace move in the Gaza Israel war. This is not to belittle Trump’s efforts for peace at the present time. However, the fact is that USA has not been entirely neutral in the two years of conflict and has actually helped Israel in various ways to sustain the war , which is well known fact. While Netanyahu praised Trump sky high and called him as the greatest friend of Israel and recommended that he should be awarded Nobel Prize for peace , one cannot ignore that Hamas has not praised President Trump in any recognisable way.
In any case, conflict has now ended and citizens in both Gaza region and Israel as well as rest of the world desire that this conflict should end once for all.
In such circumstances, the victory speech of Netanyahu in Knesset does not look like facilitating a climate for future peace between the regions but seem to be sowing the seed of conflict . One cannot be sure whether it is intentional or slip of the tongue. He has said, in effect , that Israel has virtually destroyed Hamas and his speech was marked by subtle hate pronouncement against Hamas. There is no glimpse of reconciliation with Hamas in his speech , though Netanyahu claim that Israel is committed to peace.
Certainly, this statement would cause annoyance amongst Hamas and its supporters and it appears that climate of hate would prevail. This speech would make Hamas to think and act like a wounded tiger in future.
Peace would be meaningful, only in a climate of mutual goodwill and expression of genuine regret from both sides about the miseries caused to thousands of innocent people and those who have lost their lives.
This speech of Netanyahu has caused suspicion amongst people everywhere that the conflict between Hamas and Israel is only a pause and the seeds of conflict still remain undiminished.
Netanyahu seems to have lost an opportunity to build a base for peace in future between Hamas and Palestinians by not delivering a positive speech of love , harmony towards those against whom Israel fought for last two years.
Further, President Trump has said in his Knesset speech that Israel has won all that it can by “force of arms”. “You have won. I mean you have won” , he said. Certainly, when peace is sought to be aimed at , talking about winning or losing in the war cannot be a helpful statement. Such observation of peace facilitator is strange.
