Non-journalistic writing about current events is tricky, especially when they have military aspects. The maxim "in war, always expect the unexpected" suggests that rapid unforeseen change on the battlefield, accompanied by extreme emotions from all sides, makes it difficult to coherently analyse a present conflict.
Yet this is what attempts. The latest from , Director General of the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, the book takes its title from Operation Al Aqsa Flood, the Hamas-led Palestinian attack on Israel of 7 October 2023, and is published in parallel with the Arabic translation of Bishara's longer , which came out in English two years ago.
For The Flood, Bishara mulled just adding to the translated book or producing a stand-alone work. The outcome was the latter, a mixture of old and new insights: the first chapter, and the longest, was written especially for The Flood, while the other three are based on some of his previous material. The book also includes an introduction, bibliography, and index, as well as lots of footnotes, and several tables and charts.
Following on his earlier analyses, Bishara saw the goal of publishing this small book as helping to understand what is happening in Palestine, but not to research a separate history of the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian cause: The Flood was in fact written to complement the translation of Palestine Matters of Truth and Justice, which can be referred to for background.
A main point made in the new publication is that Israel is now openly trying to reshape the region in its image. For that of course the Israelis must look over their shoulder to their favourite relative, Uncle Sam.
Yet, Israel is not just a passive subordinate to America (like Estonia or Jordan, for example) but has an active agenda of its own: no less than the reshaping of the Arab region. Regarding the nature of the relationship between Israel and America, if the Israelis succeed in short-term endeavours, the Americans will provide support. This has been the case since the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war, but a key lesson of the present conflict is bringing to light Israel's inability to endure without American help.
America could command Israel to go easy on Gaza and the rest of the Arab world but chooses not to, as there is insufficient political justification for that inside the US and apparent successful continuation of the Israeli geopolitical role of America’s aircraft carrier (in Henry Kissinger’s words).
As a result, Palestinians are facing what resembles a new Nakba (the catastrophe of 1948). In any case, Bishara sees Operation Al Aqsa Flood as a pivotal event that divided time into "before" and "after," both in terms of impact on Israel and on the Palestinians.
Among salient events prior to October 2023 were the expansion of settlements, the changes in the Israeli treatment of prisoners, and the “Abrahamic” Deal of the Century, as well as the tightening of the siege on Gaza.
As for the aftermath, he notes precedents set by the response to 7 October, when full-scale slaughter did not truly provoke the world to act meaningfully. The magnitude and nature of the savagery committed, such as the destruction of a whole neighbourhood to kill a few fighters, have become normalised.
A problem noted by Bishara is that Hamas and its allies did not anticipate the operation’s outcome, which went beyond what its planners expected, resulting in the momentary collapse of the Israeli army and police.
Another issue is that Palestinian fighters made a mistake when they kidnapped civilians, an act which could have been controlled by focusing only on military personnel. Once the Palestinian fighters realised they had captured non-combatants, they should have released them immediately to gain the moral and political upper hand.
Of course, all that is a tall order in the fog of war; as well, the traditional Israeli blurring of civilian/military is always a problem: who was to know that the cute Ashkenaz girl from Westchester County NY (where I spent half my teen years) wasn’t a reserve officer? All this made it easier for global mainstream media agitprop to present the by the Al Aqsa Flood operation as a heroic tale: we are back to the Plucky Little Israel propaganda of the mid-20th century.
Bishara further explains that the 7 October attack planners miscalculated when they conducted an offensive in a war already lost, stating that resistance, after Arab peace agreements with Israel and the Arabs’ withdrawal from confrontation, becomes self-defence, not moves to liberate Palestine, a logic disrupted by the Al Aqsa Flood operation.
Bishara concludes on another sombre note: if the Arab region and its self-seeking anti-democratic regimes remain myopically unconcerned with their own true national interests and continue to normalise relations with Israel in exchange for benefits from America, then nothing will help — not any US administration nor protests at Western universities.
The thought that "history in the making is always censored" (attributed to various people) reflects the notion that during significant historical events, information is often controlled to shape public perception.
Though this is more difficult to accomplish in the present age of social media and easy communication, the West and its handmaid Israel continue to operate according to Joseph Goebbels’s principle: we don’t want you to think like us, just to be unable to do otherwise.
Into this moral and intellectual fog, Bishara shines a light, and The Flood will hopefully soon be translated into English to reach a wider audience.
Riad al Khouri is an independent Jordanian economist
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