Gaza conflict

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Explainer: Could Israel’s war in Gaza reshape the Middle East?

November 8, 2023

AuthorsLachlan Guselli
360info, Sydney Commissioning Editor

EditorsMichael Joiner
Multimedia Editor, 360info

ContributorsAnas Iqtait
The Australian National University

Martin Kear
University of Sydney

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00:00:02:08 - 00:00:07:18
Chris Bartlett
The war in Gaza between Hamas and Israel is the extension of a long and complicated situation.
00:00:07:20 - 00:00:20:18
Anas Iqtait
Without addressing the context, we lose sight of the bigger picture, which is Palestinians have been living under a military occupation which has ruled every facet of their life since 1967.
00:00:20:20 - 00:00:42:06
Chris Bartlett
Is peace an actual possibility or is the suffering set to continue as opportunists take advantage of the crisis? To untangle the complexities? We will show you who is involved and why. As the cycle of violence threatens to spill out across the region. This is a series of maps of the state of Israel and the dispossession of Palestinian lands.
00:00:42:07 - 00:00:50:12
Chris Bartlett
Following the United Nations mandate of 1947, which gave the Jewish people a homeland after the horrors of the Holocaust in Europe.
00:00:50:14 - 00:01:00:02
Anas Iqtait
So this is 100 year struggle that has shaped much of the discourse across both Arab and Muslim societies.
00:01:00:04 - 00:01:14:13
Chris Bartlett
This is the map of 1948, following the first Israeli Arab war after Israel had declared itself a sovereign state. In Arabic, this is known as the Nakba or catastrophe. Israel's right to exist has been challenged by its neighbours ever since.
00:01:14:14 - 00:01:19:04
Archival footage
Despite two reported air raid attempts, Jerusalem is relatively calm.
00:01:19:06 - 00:01:32:15
Chris Bartlett
At the end of the Six-Day War of June 1967, Israel took considerable territory from its neighbours the Golan Heights from Syria, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, from Jordan and the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt.
00:01:32:17 - 00:01:47:24
Martin Kear
That's when Israel occupied East Jerusalem and that's when I would argue that the two state solution ceased to being a viable prospect because there's no Jerusalem, there's no Palestine. Palestinians simply will not accept not having East Jerusalem as the capital.
00:01:48:01 - 00:02:11:23
Chris Bartlett
Those gains have held firm since outside of the return of Sinai to Egypt in 1982. These new borders place Palestinian territories under Israeli control. Since 1967, the extension of Israeli settlements in occupied lands has increased. More than 450,000 Israeli settlers have moved to the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, setting up fortified communities in breach of international law.
00:02:12:00 - 00:02:24:24
Martin Kear
In many respects. The settler movement is about more Jewish nationalism and these Jewish settlers, increasingly, they're more radical. They're more militant.
00:02:25:01 - 00:02:52:12
Chris Bartlett
The result has been more violence between settlers and Palestinians. The Palestinian territories consist of two areas Gaza, a strip of land on the Mediterranean coast, 41 kilometres long and 13 kilometres wide at its largest points, and the West Bank taking in East Jerusalem and one of Islam's holiest sites, the Al-Aqsa mosque. It is split into zones controlled by Israeli forces and those controlled by the Palestinian authorities.
00:02:52:14 - 00:02:57:13
Chris Bartlett
Also splitting the territory is a nine metre high, three metre thick concrete barrier.
00:02:57:15 - 00:03:12:23
Anas Iqtait
I was raised up in the West Bank. I spent the vast majority of my life actually in the West Bank and I can tell you that there isn't a single empty piece of land that has not been expropriated by the Israeli military or completely prohibits Palestinians from accessing.
00:03:13:00 - 00:03:22:03
Chris Bartlett
The West Bank is controlled by Fatah, the group once led by Yasser Arafat. Hamas has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007.
00:03:22:05 - 00:03:41:22
Archival footage
Fatah is an Arab nationalist movement, broadly speaking, and Hamas is an Islamist movement. So it's really a reflection of the two big ideological currents in the Arab world. Do we unite under language, which is the Arab nationalist, or do we unite as a people under religion?
00:03:41:24 - 00:03:59:11
Chris Bartlett
Hamas developed out of what is known as the First Intifada, a civil uprising against Israeli occupation in the 1980s, launched as the armed wing of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas has two goals: to resist Israeli occupation and to resist Fatah's control of the Palestinian resistance narrative.
00:03:59:13 - 00:04:11:24
Martin Kear
Hamas was there living the day to day life. There's Fatah driving around in their in their Mercedes, living the high life, travelling around European capitals they had. That was a big criticism of Fatah.
00:04:12:01 - 00:04:23:00
Chris Bartlett
The First Intifada ended with the Oslo Accords in 1993, further raising hopes of a two state solution and giving Palestinians limited autonomy in exchange for recognising Israel.
00:04:23:02 - 00:04:41:23
Martin Kear
The Oslo Accords was sold to everyone as a peace accords, but it's never it was never about peace between Palestinians and Israelis. Hamas had always criticised the Oslo Accords as being the great betrayal of the Palestinian national cause. And if I'm honest, I actually think that they're right.
00:04:42:00 - 00:04:56:05
Anas Iqtait
The two state solution has been dead since the mid 1990s and it baffles me when I hear Australian officials, Minister Wong and others talk about the two state solution in all seriousness. It's absolutely baffles me.
00:04:56:07 - 00:05:04:02
Chris Bartlett
Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and when Hamas won local elections in 2007, the Palestinian cause split.
00:05:04:04 - 00:05:26:09
Anas Iqtait
The Palestinian Authority has been playing the political game because they do very well understand that without playing this political game that the international community wants to hear, which is the two state solution, and to finding a just and peaceful settlement with Israel based on the two state solution model. Without this tokenistic rhetoric, the Palestinian Authority would be cut off from international aid.
00:05:26:11 - 00:05:37:07
Chris Bartlett
In Gaza, Hamas increasingly turn to violent resistance as a way of maintaining legitimacy. Wars erupted in the tiny enclave in 2008 and 2014.
00:05:37:09 - 00:05:45:08
Martin Kear
Hamas has been excluded from the political process. It has no legal recourse to against the occupation. So it's left to violence.
00:05:45:10 - 00:06:12:21
Chris Bartlett
Isolation meant that Hamas struggled to fund the services for its people. Extreme poverty is just one of the many grim factors of daily life as foreign aid is controlled by Israel and Egypt. Hamas's funding comes from primarily outside sources, most notably Qatar and Iran. Some believe with strings attached. Since the gruesome Hamas attacks on October seven, Israel's response has not been entirely focussed on Hamas.
00:06:12:23 - 00:06:19:21
Chris Bartlett
A series of Israeli air strikes have targeted Syrian infrastructure, while the militant group Hezbollah has come under attack in Lebanon.
00:06:19:23 - 00:06:28:18
Martin Kear
But I think about a lot of it sending a message to Iran, certainly message to Syria. This is not just about Gaza. Don't think about stepping in.
00:06:28:20 - 00:06:42:18
Chris Bartlett
Hezbollah is a political movement and militia which holds significant influence in Lebanon and is heavily backed by Iran, born out of that nation's civil war of the seventies and eighties. It has an estimated 20,000 fighters in its ranks.
00:06:42:20 - 00:07:01:03
Anas Iqtait
For Iran, Hamas is less of a strategic, has less of a strategic imperative that Hezbollah. Hezbollah is really the Iranian proxy here. It's also unclear whether there was direct coordination between Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah at the start of this war.
00:07:01:05 - 00:07:31:09
Chris Bartlett
The sheer amount of these groups being funded in different conflicts across the region concerns many of a wider war. Zoom out further and you see the military power of Iran and the financial power of Saudi Arabia as key since the Islamic revolution of 1979. Iran and Israel have been on a collision course. Iran still denies Israel's right to exist and refers to it as a Zionist entity where Israel works to destroy Iran's nuclear weapons program.
00:07:31:11 - 00:07:34:10
Benjamin Netanyahu
This is a bomb. This is a fuse.
00:07:34:12 - 00:07:45:02
Chris Bartlett
Iran funds a series of groups to fight against Israel in conflicts closer to home. However, a direct confrontation could cripple an already ailing Iranian economy.
00:07:45:04 - 00:07:57:19
Anas Iqtait
From Iranian perspective, again, I highly doubt that they will be fully engaged in this war through Hezbollah or even directly with the Israeli government. There is just too much to lose at the moment.
00:07:57:21 - 00:08:23:00
Chris Bartlett
During the presidency of Donald Trump, the US helped broker the Abraham Accords, bringing some Gulf nations closer to Israel. Saudi Arabia, too, is normalising its relations. It shows an obvious split between Arab leaders and the Palestinian struggle and also reflects the increasing isolation of Iran as Iran appears to fuel the Palestinian resistance. Saudi Arabia grows closer to Israel.
00:08:23:02 - 00:08:32:11
Anas Iqtait
So the Saudis remain to be more interested in economics and business rather than politics, and they are very hesitant to engage.
00:08:32:17 - 00:08:52:14
Chris Bartlett
It can also be viewed through the lens of Iran's proxy war with Saudi Arabia. The two have been in opposition across the region, not just in markings on a map, but seen in the hollowed out buildings of Syria and the famine in Yemen. The region is reshaping itself once again, but the pain is felt most by those with no power to stop it.

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Geopolitics in the Middle East are clearly being reshaped by Israel’s war in Gaza but how still remains unclear.

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Explainer: Could Israel’s war in Gaza reshape the Middle East?

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