The situation in the Middle East is more dangerous than ever. Iran’s allies such as the Houthis in Yemen are taunting Israel. Now the USA and Great Britain have carried out air strikes against Houthi positions in Yemen. And some in Israel are convinced that it is time not only to target Tehran’s henchmen, but also to attack the regime of the Islamic Republic itself. A nightmare scenario.
Will the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip become a conflagration in the Middle East? In order to prevent exactly that, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his German counterpart Annalena Baerbock traveled through the region in parallel this week. But no matter how hard they tried to come up with a plan for the future stabilization of the Gaza Strip, both met interlocutors in Israel who neither believed that an end to the fighting there was in sight nor that the war against Hamas was enough To restore Israel’s security. Meanwhile, the situation on other fronts continues to escalate: In response to the attacks on ships in the Red Sea, the USA and Great Britain have now bombed Houthi militia positions in Yemen.
“Threat perception – the perceived threat”: Since Hamas took hostages and massacred the civilian population of southern Israel at the beginning of October, it has become a decisive factor in the struggle for war and peace in the Middle East, a kind of new geopolitical unit of measurement.
Because the feeling of threat unites Israelis across all camps. Right-wing populists and settlers who fantasize about driving Palestinians out of Gaza; left-wing Zionists from the kibbutz movement, from whose camp a particularly large number of Hamas victims come; People in the south of the country who are wondering when a safe life will be possible again around the Gaza Strip; and also the tens of thousands in the north who have not been able to return to their homes near the border with Lebanon for months due to fears of a conflict with Hezbollah.
The dilemma: Nobody knows how Israel can regain its lost sense of security. That is why the country’s political elite, which has lost massive amounts of trust among the people after the failure of October 7th, is under enormous pressure to show military strength.
It is unclear how much Israel can still achieve militarily. Not only with regard to Hamas, but increasingly also with regard to the arch-enemy Iran.
The situation in Gaza
For almost 100 days, Israel has been fighting the Hamas terror infrastructure with ruthless severity. More than 22,000 Palestinians have died in the fighting, most of them civilians. There is a risk of epidemics and further mass deaths among the 2.3 million inhabitants, one in two of whom is a child.
Source: Stern
I have been working in the news industry for over 6 years, first as a reporter and now as an editor. I have covered politics extensively, and my work has appeared in major newspapers and online news outlets around the world. In addition to my writing, I also contribute regularly to 24 Hours World.
