Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center
In her evocative book, Drinking the Sea at Gaza, the Israeli journalist Amira Hass writes, “To me, Gaza embodies the entire saga of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; it represents the central contradiction of the state of Israel—democracy for some, dispossession for others; it is our exposed nerve.” The conflict in Gaza in the past month and a half, since the October 7 attacks by Hamas against southern Israeli towns and military bases, has further exposed this nerve. These attacks and Israel’s brutal retaliation have come to embody the worst of our nightmares. The human and material cost of the conflict, with thousands of children killed and widespread devastation in Gaza, has sent shockwaves across the world, provoking major global protests on a scale not witnessed for years.
The conflict has also triggered a war of narratives, which has exacerbated tensions within many societies, particularly in the West. It has further polarized relations between countries of the global North and South, embedded itself into domestic divides, and raised questions about international norms. It has accelerated trends such as the growth of far-right movements and anti-immigrant sentiment. To examine the contentious dynamics at play, the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center asked scholars from the Carnegie network to each respond to a specific question on Gaza related to his or her area of expertise. What emerges is a range of views and assessments that only reaffirm how what had once seemed to be a largely forgotten issue—the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—in fact retains a capacity to profoundly mobilize populations and communities worldwide.
What is driving this is a host of complex reasons, the most prominent of which is outrage over the mass killing of unarmed civilians. On Israel’s side it also propelled by a shattered sense of security. For those supporting the Palestinians, it is a story of a long occupation, one marked by decades of dispossession, living in what has been described as the world’s largest open-air prison in Gaza, a profound asymmetry of power, and no political horizon. The catastrophic price paid by Gazans, with over 15,000 people killed, almost half of them children, led a Palestinian child, when asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, to respond that Palestinian children did not grow up. The exposed nerve of Gaza will continue to be felt, and these short commentaries, we hope, will help us to see how….
https://carnegie-mec.org/2023/11/24/gaza-war-and-rest-of-world-pub-91106
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