According to the BBC “Israel and militants in the Gaza Strip have stepped up their attacks on each other, in some of the most intense exchanges in recent years.
Palestinian militants have fired more than 450 rockets into Israeli territory since Saturday. Israel says many were intercepted but one man was killed. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) say they have struck about 220 targets in the Gaza Strip over the weekend.
The Palestinians say six people were killed in those strikes. On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had ordered the military to “continue its massive strikes on terror elements in the Gaza Strip”. The flare-up comes despite a truce agreed last month. Egypt and the United Nations have recently been trying to broker a longer-term ceasefire.”
So, Cui Bono, who benefits from this repetition of the escalation between the most violent factions of this unwinnable conflict stifling the voices of Nonviolence and Reconciliation.
From a financial point of view the obvious winners are the arms manufacturers and dealers. Wars are not just about conflict but they are also marketing exercises to show the productos in real scenarios, proving their effectiveness and lethal power as well as their capacity to penetrate defensive systems such as Israel’s Iron Dome.
From a political point of view the most right wing forces of Israel benefit making the fear-mongering policies a simple I-told-you-so strategy, as recent elections showed, fuelling more antisemitism abroad which in turn is used to build more paranoia amongst the Israelis. At the same time the leaderships of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza benefit enormously by the column inches of the international media’s reports on Israel’s atrocities, compounded by the absence of protection to Gaza’s civilian population.
From a philosophical point of view, what gets the highest benefit is the entrenched position that human beings are naturally violent, that there is an unchangeable human nature incapable of emerging form its prehistoric animalistic roots in order to create a different world of peace and cooperation. The most coveted reward for this position: to make nonviolent activists lose faith and abandon the struggle in frustration.
It is, however, clear that even in the midst of such insane episodes of all out destruction many people on both sides manage to discover within themselves the seeds of peace and nonviolence, the capacity for reconciliation, the possibility of looking at those presented to them as “the enemy” and see only human beings like themselves. But their voices are hardly heard in the international media, and during these flair ups they seem to disappear altogether. If we want this conflict, and all other conflicts to reach a positive conclusion, for all involved, we must, in our actions, also become part of those who can find in their hearts the recognition of humanity in others, who feel the flame of an intention that impels us towards a luminous future.
Active Nonviolence is a long term commitment to approaching the roots of conflict with compassion and understanding. It may not be able to stop immediately the rockets but it is the only hope for them to stop for good in the future.
