In the Middle East, moral clarity remains elusive while simple slogans come easily. Hard questions are harder to answer.
What does a ceasefire mean, exactly? Who could oppose an accord that stops the killing of women and children?
The explanations don't fit easily onto a protest placard or a United Nations resolution.
Just ask the people of Ukraine, whose civilians have borne the brunt of Russia’s unprovoked military assault yet have strongly opposed any ceasefire that rewards Vladimir Putin's gains. The human toll numbers in the hundreds of thousands, yet the fighting grinds on as the Russian President spurns peaceful coexistence.
After the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7, Israel claimed a similar right of self-defence — insisting it must push back against an adversary who vows never to coexist alongside the Jewish state. An early ceasefire would only reward the capture of civilian hostages by Hamas for ransom, Israelis argued.
Initially, Canada opposed a ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza war, arguing that Hamas must first release its hostages and relinquish power. Now, after more than two months of bloodshed, Canada has pivoted to support a UN call for ceasefire — while insisting on essentially the same preconditions.
Yet like many other countries, Canada still supports Ukraine's refusal to lay down its arms. Why the difference in language on two different conflicts?
Even if the Israeli-Palestinian war is unlike any other, it's worth placing it in historical and geographical context.
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The Palestinian loss of life is unbearable to watch — now estimated at about 20,000 Gazan civilians and Hamas militants combined — yet hundreds of thousands have perished on the European battlefront. The fighting in Gaza has lasted just over two months, compared to 22 months Ukraine has been at war with Russia.
More than 10,000 people have died in Sudan since a civil war erupted earlier this year, with little media coverage perhaps because it is Arab versus Arab violence (fewer still heed the cries of genocide in Sudan’s interior, where the victims are from the ethnic groups of Darfur).
In other countries I've covered across the Middle East, many hundreds of thousands of civilians have perished in the civil wars and power struggles of Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan, Syria and Yemen (with millions of civilians also displaced in Syria and Sudan). Elsewhere, the lives of Congolese, Ethiopians and Libyans are being lost without sustained protests.
It is good that the world cares so much about Gaza, lest more lives be lost. That this is because the Jewish state is to be be blamed is hardly coincidental — after all, the Saudis were never seriously called to account for their ongoing aggression and transgressions against neighbouring Yemen.
But two wrongs do not make a right — even if that amounts to a double standard for Israel, and even if that means other warring countries are held to a lower standard. Or no standard at all — and certainly no global protests.
To be sure, a ceasefire in Gaza would spare Palestinian lives if its terms could be enforced, as Canada now argues. And if it is not enforceable, what then?
What if the hostages are never returned? What if Hamas reverts to its past practice of lobbing missiles across the border at will, or digging fresh tunnels for the next incursion across the border?
What if Hamas pledges only a pause, not a peace — reserving and proclaiming the right to strike again at any time in future, as in the past? What if the ceasefire does not give peace a chance, just another chance to prepare for the next war that hurts both sides even more?
Regardless of Canada's pro forma preconditions — that Hamas release hostages and renounce incursions — the pressure for a ceasefire is increasing inexorably.
With good reason. Despite Israel’s right to pursue its attackers and rescue its hostages, it lacks a workable plan to achieve its objectives without an unconscionable loss of life.
It has fallen far short of its stated goal to eliminate Hamas, while failing to live up to its promise to minimize civilian deaths. Israel’s battle plan to defeat Hamas has become self-defeating.
As always, the fog of war is all pervasive. When I asked a former Canadian military commander about the Palestinian death toll, he pointed out that allied bombing in World War II killed nearly 10,000 French civilians in May of 1944 and about 5,000 the month before — almost as many as have died in Gaza these last two months.
Back then, in Europe, that was considered friendly fire. Today in Gaza, the question is whether Israel is flouting the laws of war and its own rules of engagement. Which is how three Israeli hostages were killed by their own armed forces as they sought rescue with a white flag, triggering a reckoning at home and raising more questions about how many Palestinian civilians are being killed with no questions asked.
Against that backdrop, why did Israel wage a war it could not win, starting a fight it could not finish?
This is not so much a war of choice as it is a quagmire that Israel has resisted ever since pulling out of Gaza nearly two decades ago. That left Gazans liberated, until they elected Hamas — which provoked its neighbours (not just Israel but Egypt) into cordoning them off lest they smuggle in weapons and supplies to build tunnels, as they ultimately did.
Today, Israel faces an existential struggle despite its overwhelming military strength — not from the surprise attack of Oct. 7 but its aftermath. As long as Hamas can fire missiles at will from the south, it renders vast swaths of Israeli territory vulnerable and uninhabitable for hundreds of thousands of citizens; and as long as Hezbollah can rain thousands of missiles from the border with Lebanon, the more it makes Israel’s north a no-go zone for hundreds of thousands of citizens — exiles in their own homeland.
The slow drip of missiles amounts to death by a thousand cuts, forcing Israelis into the suffocation of bomb shelters and the dislocation of evacuations. Without secure borders by which to coexist, a country cannot long exist — especially if it is a democracy that holds its leaders to account.
The risk of an exodus is an existential threat. Hezbollah and Hamas knows this, and so they play a waiting game, poking and provoking and then retreating from the retaliation they have orchestrated.
A ceasefire in some form is unavoidable, for the killing is unsustainable. But a ceasefire will not bring peace anytime soon, for both sides ceased thinking about peaceful coexistence.
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