The Middle East gets caught in a seething cauldron today. The region has become a hotspot of violence and a valley of deaths for decades with the Palestinians and Israelis both claiming the holy land of Jerusalem, Al-Aqsa Mosque, Temple Mount, the Dome of the Rock and so many issues you name. Not a single week you can remember has elapsed without let or hindrance, without provocation, without violence, hostility and bloodshed. One side is busy occupying and expanding its territory and eyes on that of another. On the other hand, the other is hellbent on safeguarding its promised land. That protector-predator game is going on there for decades. That very Middle East has now turned into the most troubled place on this planet earth. A full-scale war between Iran and Israel has begun amid the Hamas decimation drive by the expansionist Israel.
Looking back to the recent history of the Israel-Palestine conflict, the watershed moment came on 7 October 2023 when an artillery barrage rained down on hundreds of Israeli revellers by the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement or Hamas in abbreviation. All hell broke loose with the rumble of rocket strikes on that fine, cool, breezy night of 7 October. The result was anybody’s guess: the retaliatory action by Israel through land and air strikes, the burning of Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Ramallah, Khan Younis and whatnots! Israel has used all its military might to shatter the small territory, which has been losing its land every year to illegal settlements. According to latest tallies, more than 56,000 Gazans have been killed in the Israel-Palestine war since October 2023.
Amid the Hamas-Israel war begins a flare-up between Iran and Israel in an attempt to rein in Iran’s nuclear programme. The two countries, which are located in a distance of no less than 2,000 kilometres, have engaged in a theatre of war on the skies, with Israeli strikes targeting the complex nuclear, missile, intelligence and military network in Tehran and tens of other strategically important cities in the early morning of 13 June 2025. Israeli shells and fighter jets have by far taken hundreds of lives, including military top brass like the chiefs of Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the armed forces and military intelligence, and top nuclear scientists, and devastated key structures. The Shia-dominated Islamic Republic also promised the earth to counter the unprecedented, unprovoked attacks on its territory. So far, Iran has launched hundreds of missile and drone attacks on key locations in Tel Aviv and Haifa cities of Israel, destroying military installations and habitats near them.
In tit-for-tat strikes, both warring factions are out to display their firepower and thereby losing countless lives of innocent civilians and also major facilities worth billions of dollars. This escalating military conflict has every likelihood to spread like conflagration elsewhere in the region and across the world in direct, cold or proxy war between nations, with key global powerhouses like America, Russia, China, India, Germany and France staying the course, aiding and abetting their sides in the ongoing war. The United States is nakedly backing Israel as its closest ally in a bid to feed its own interests in the combat zones through supplying arms and ammo, strategic plans and war tactics. It is needless to talk about the top world body, the United Nations, as it has nothing to do anything more than condemning attacks, censuring culprits and/or adopting a resolution. Veto-yielding powers always stand ready to stop the paper tiger UN and not the hellfire. The international community is virtually split into two divisive camps.
The current demonstrations of inhumanity in Palestine, Iran and even in Israel have crossed all limits and lines of patience. It seems this lone liveable planet is becoming an unsympathetic kind and its inhabitants are lacking in sensitivity, humanity. However, the global conscience is still crying for unity and a durable, lasting solution to the Israel-Palestine crisis and the Iran-Israel conflict. The war between David and Goliath (Hamas and Israel) and the one between archrivals Iran and Israel have left the rest of the world shocked and awed. The cold-shoulder attitude of the opportunistic world leaders has given birth to some questions for the way they thump down the global cry for the Palestinian statehood and the rights of the inhabitants on their own land.