Four aspects that need to be analyzed.

Article by Enrico Molinaro, PhD

1. Shaking emotions prevail over the possibility to analyse events and predict scenarios

In the last ten days, images and news from Israel and Gaza area are flooding the eyes and minds of the world, temporarily replacing the horrors and the cruel violence from Ukraine, or from any other tragic conflict.

Even people who usually do not follow foreign politics are now getting involved in discussions about graphic videos, details of terrible sufference inflicted to hundreds of innocent children, women, elderly, while trying to figure out any logic explanations, or simply expressing regret, mourning, and human empathy.

This explains why - even more than on the occasion of the last outbreak of war exploded in and around Gaza on May 10, 2021 – now it is extremely difficult to elaborate accurate analysis on driving forces, hidden strategies, long-term motivations, and especially predictable outcomes within calculated scenarios.

In these extraordinary circumstances the functions of our emotional right brain prevail over our rational left brain. Human beings, as mammals, developed this instinctive phylogenetic reaction, which unfortunately terror strategists manipulate.

A paradox of war in general is that it can open the way, after deep suffering, to the kind of fundamental realignment that can bring a durable peace. We need to temporarily overcome our ocean of deep emotions, taking a temporary distance from such dramatic events, if we intend to avoid their tragic repetition.

2. A new interpretation for a balanced analysis on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

A new epistemological perspective can provide us with a radical innovative way to interpret the political reality around us, allowing us to see the dramatic and tragic events occurring in Israel and Gaza under a different unbiased light, in view of a broader geopolitical context.

International relations and geopolitics represent the utmost ideal horizon where scholars, journalists or politicians have always wished to exercise predicting abilities of prophetcy. In fact, nobody can foresee in detail the future, but a correct analysis may help to understand general trends in our extremely intertwined planet.

An understanding of the two competing collective identity models – the Glocalist Abrahamitic perspective versus the Westfalian State-border vision, corresponding to their two respective élites - provides us with heuristic tools to interpret and predict their cyclical trends in international relations and geopolitics by using suitable comparative approaches.

• Westphalian State-border model:  symbolically related to the so-called Westphalia Peace (1648) concluding the religious-driven Thirty-Years War. Collective identity develops through the presumed unconscious originality of the State frontiers for ethno-linguistic communities composed of citizens belonging to a single exclusive country, within clear-cut borders. Last cyclical peak: the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Leaders: late Israel’s Prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, Israeli PLO leader Marwan Bargouti, US President Joe Biden.
• Glocalist trans-boundary model: developed historically after the Middle Age in the political-cultural context of the British and Dutch Empires. Virtual communities perceive their position in the world in light of either supra-national (or intra-national) abstract values’ following ideological, economic, theological or spiritual boundaries, overcrossing physical State borders and challenging State citizenships. Last cyclical peak: the terror attacks in US on 11.9.2001. Leaders: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu, Palestinian President Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas), former US President Donald Trump.

3.    The interests at stake: what’s the difference with the previous Gaza war?

Hamas is the militant Islamist group  ruling the Gaza Strip for the last 16 years. Like on May 10, 2021, the last Hamas’ tragic attacks woke up Israel and the world about the risk of having Netanyahu in power. The most likely outcome will be a repetition to what happened then, but now Marwan Bargouti may replace Abu Mazen:

1. Timing: For the second time since Israel’s Prime minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination in 1995, the Middle East region seems to have a new little window of opportunity for a strategic deep change, despite all odds and challenges on the road.
2. Perspective: Whatever will be the final outcome of the ongoing war, it will directly affect any possible Israeli Parliamentary coalition replacing Netanyahu and its government.
3. Awareness: Marwan Barghouti, the most representative Palestinian leader, was well aware of the long-term strategic issues at stake and, most likely, did coordinate with his Palestinian fellows in the Israeli prisons for common goals.
4. The events’ nature: The horrific Hamas’ Al-Aqsa Flood Operation gets its name from the conflict on the Jerusalem’s Haram Al-Sharif/Har ha Bait Compound, but in fact it did not break up  for religious reasons, rather for territorial, secular ones.
5. The Israeli Arabs: Whatever coalition may emerge after the  Gaza war  (or from new Israeli Knesset elections), it will likely include the Israeli Arab support.

4.    Biden’s winning leadership

Should Israel initiate a ground operation, on what scale, committing how much firepower and for how long? Is the aim “Eradicating Hamas” or “Demilitarizing Gaza”? These are not identical.

Any attempt to understand the situation must start from an overview of the geopolitical context, namely the enormous impact of Biden’s USA presidency on the region and beyond, which may allow us to predict  its consistently guided strategic way out.

In light of the US president's determination, it is possible to  foresee that Biden will eventually lead to a positive outcome this horrible war, ending the tragic violence in the area, while giving new perspectives to fruitful cooperation in the region, with new Palestinian and Israeli leaders.