Orientul Mijlociu

Une semaine s’est écoulée depuis les terribles attaques du Hamas contre Israël, et les forces armées israéliennes ont donné une image claire et sans concession de ce qui les attend.

Au cours de la semaine écoulée, des jets israéliens ont bombardé 24 heures sur 24 des cibles non militaires dans la ville de Gaza. Des immeubles d’habitation, des hôpitaux et des mosquées ont été détruits, sans avertissement préalable ni effort pour minimiser les pertes civiles.

Belgian police on Tuesday, October 17, shot dead a man suspected of killing two Swedish football fans in what authorities said was a terrorist attack. The weapon believed to have been used by the man in the attack was recovered, Belgian Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden.

Initial reports of the gruesome massacre carried out by Hamas in Israel on October 7 came with an unpleasant sense of déjà vu. After the last conflagration in Gaza in May 2021, I had written an article with the unfortunate title, ‘Until the next time…’ It was a safe prediction because the scars of the battles of 2008 and 2014 were still raw and the seeds of this escalation were being sown, even as a tenuous ceasefire had started to take hold.

While the world was watching the horrific scenes coming from Israel and Gaza, a comment made by President Biden’s National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan,[1] a few days before the breakout of hostilities, stands out. It conveys, yet again, some of the current U.S. administration’s dystopic views concerning the changing world order.

Israel’s use of white phosphorus in military operations in Gaza and Lebanon puts civilians at risk of serious and long-term injuries, Human Rights Watch said in releasing a question and answer document on white phosphorus. Human Rights Watch verified videos taken in Lebanon and Gaza on October 10 and 11, 2023, respectively, showing multiple airbursts of artillery-fired white phosphorus over the Gaza City port and two rural locations along the Israel-Lebanon border, and interviewed two people who described an attack in Gaza.

“We coordinated with Hezbollah and with Iran and the Axis [of Resistance] before, during and after the battle at the highest level.” — Hamas representative Ahmed Abdulhadi, revealing Hamas coordination before and during the massacre, Newsweek, October 11, 2023.

Washington now sees Hamas the same way as Isis and could offer help killing senior leaders

The US will support Israeli plans for targeted assassinations of senior Hamas officials, a former CIA analyst specialising in the Middle East has told.

The October 7 Hamas cross-border assault on Israel will upend the geopolitics of the region and prompt a reconsideration of many of the assumptions underpinning U.S. and allied policy toward the Middle East.

Although Iran’s role in the attack is contested, its role as orchestrator of an “axis of resistance” will further alienate Tehran in the region, and could cause broader conflict if Iran’s ally, Hezbollah, fully enters the battle against Israel in what would be a second, deadlier phase of the conflict.

The attack demonstrates that U.S., Israeli, and Arab assumptions that the region was headed toward peace and security through normalization agreements and broader de-escalation have proven flawed.
U.S. leaders are likely to return their focus on the Middle East and counterterrorism that characterized U.S. global policy for a decade after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

As the war between Israel and Hamas stretches into its fifth consecutive day, Israel is attempting to keep the conflict contained to prevent further escalation that could bring Hezbollah or Iran into the fight.

Sending a carrier strike group to the Middle East serves as an unequivocal message that the U.S. is firmly behind Israel, yet the so-called “axis of resistance,” led by Iran, responded by issuing its own red lines and threatened to target U.S. interests with missiles and drones if Washington intervenes.