Following Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine, society was shaken by a new war, the one in Israel, which manifested itself through atrocities, bombardment, hostage taking and thousands of deaths and injured persons during several days. Even if Israel is situated further than neighboring Ukraine, the breath of this war reached Moldova too, in the form of a Moldova who was killed there, in the form of tens and hundreds of Moldovans who are in danger, who have to return home or who cannot escape from the war zone. The experts invited to IPN’s public debate “War in Israel: What is it and what should we expect?” discussed this new large-scale war and its possible consequences.
The permanent expert of IPN’s project Igor Boțan said that Israel is the state of the Jewish people. It has a population of approximately 9.7 million and about 7 million of these are Jews (74%), 2 million are Arabs (21%), while 500,000 are of another ethnic origin (5%). The Declaration of Independence was proclaimed on May 14, 1948 based on the United Nations Resolution 181 adopted on November 29, 1947. “According to the Declaration of Independence, Israel is a Jewish state. It is simultaneously a multiethnic and democratic state in which, alongside Jews, all the other ethnic groups, regardless of religion, have equal rights. It is an undividable state, a parliamentary, democratic republic. It does not have a constitution as a single supreme law. It is divided into six administrative districts,” stated the expert.
Igor Boțan noted that Israel’s territory is about 22,000 square meters in area. The country takes the 96th place in the world in terms of population. It is situated in the Middle East, on the Eastern side of the Mediterranean Sea. Hebrew is the official language, while Arab has a special status. It is a postindustrial state with a very developed economy. Its nominal GDP is almost US$500 billion – US$53,000 per capita. It takes the 22nd place out of 193 states by the Human Development Index
According to the expert, the Gaza Strip is a territory on the bank of the Mediterranean Sea which de jure is the second part of Palestine, which is partially recognized alongside the West Bank. It borders Israel in the northeast and Egypt in the southwest. The Gaza Strip is about 40 km long and 6 to 12 km wide. Its total area is about 360 square meters. Its capital is Gaza city.
In accordance with the 1947 UN Plan for the partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states, the Gaza Strip formed part of the territory allocated for creating the Arab state. Following the Arab-Israeli war of 1948-1949, an Arab state wasn’t created and the sector in 1948-1967 had been under Egyptian control. As a result of the six-year war, from 1967 until 2005 the sector had been under Israeli control. By the Oslo Accords of 1993, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) was created based on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In August 2005, under the unilateral disengagement plan, Israel withdrew its troops from the sector. Following the coup staged by the Islamic organization Hamas in July 2007, the governmental institutions of the PNA and its security forces and then the whole strip were brought under the control of Hamas, which does not obey the PNA.
Ex-minister of defense Vitalie Marinuța said the Hamas grouping is the one that has legally managed and controlled the Gaza Strip for over a decade. Even before winning the elections and coming to power, it controlled the Gaza Strip by terror and by being a militarist organization. “It was founded in 1987 based on three declared pillars – religion, charity, even if this may seem strange, and fight for the extermination of Israel. It was founded by two persons – Sheikh Ahmad Yasin and Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi. It acts based on so-called Al-Qassam brigades created in the 1950s. When Israel was formed, a militarist wing was created immediately,” explained Vitalie Marinuța.
He noted that today it doesn’t go only to Hamas as this grouping is now not the one that existed ten years ago. In 2018, all the militarist groupings in the Gaza Strip and other groups with political intentions reached a consensus to form the so-called Joint Operations Room of the Palestinian Resistance. Over 30 military wings came to terms to coordinate their actions against Israel and staged military exercises at each yearend in 2019-2022. Hamas is at the top among 12 rather powerful military fractions that struggle against Israel.
The ex-minister said that this grouping includes several tens of thousands of terrorists who coordinate their actions. The recent attack on Israel was rather massive and a summary analysis shows that it was similar to other, previous attacks – very swift incursions, hostage taking etc. But the scale is yet larger as for the first time they attacked several places. The hostages were taken to different points so that it is harder for the Israeli army to recover them. The recent attack was much more brutal, with the use of information technology, including strategies and tactics that are also used in Ukraine. The secret preparations had been thorough.
Foreign policy analyst Mihai Isac, a permanent invitee of the foreign policy program Global Impact on TVR Moldova, said that approaches have been made the past few months to normalize the relations between Israel and other Arab states. All these efforts supported by the American diplomatic services are known as the Abraham Accord. “In these attacks, we practically see terrorist groups’ attempts to justify their existence, including in front of the Arab population in the region. In practical terms, this attack was conceived and implemented to destroy any chance of negotiation between Israel and the Arab states. Now Israel, which has the right to defend itself and no one can deny this right to defense of Israel, employing its huge war machinery against terrorist forces that use the asymmetric war and civilians as human shields, launched an operation to punish the culprits and to also free the hostages taken by Hamas,” noted the analyst.
According to him, Hamas launched missile attacks on civilian targets to primarily take hostages so that it could negotiate with Israel. In 2010-2011, the movements in Gaza kidnapped an Israeli soldier for whom Israel set free over 1,000 Palestinian detainees who were primarily convicted of terrorism and crimes against Israeli civilians. By the current operation, Hamas managed to take hostage several hundred people. The exact figures haven’t been made public yet.
The attacks threw the peace process at least 10-15 years back and offer the radicals from both camps the occasion of asserting themselves on the political arena in Israel and on the Palestinian political arena. The massive response of the Israeli army will regrettably have collateral victims as Hamas uses civilians as human shields. “Hamas also uses the affiliated organizations, such as the Palestine Islamic Jihad. It uses civil infrastructure, like UN-sponsored schools, as places for storing armament or as command centers. Owing to the harsh Islamist propaganda, the civilian population in the Gaza Strip is ready to live in those locations so as to discourage the Israeli airstrikes. Israel is perhaps the state with the strongest army in the region and has also nuclear capacities. At the moment, the Israeli army is considering not destroying Hamas, as it can do it, but destroying the terrorist infrastructure without causing collateral victims among civilians,” stated Mihai Isac.
The public debate entitled “War in Israel: What is it and what should we expect?” was the 291st installment of IPN’s project “Developing Political Culture through Public Debates” that is supported by the Hanns Seidel Foundation of Germany.
