A war without objective?

Amid the welcome 'humanitarian pause' of Israel's relentless air and ground assaults on the Gaza strip, termed Hamas-Israel war in the media, the exchange of Palestinian and Israeli prisoners has been taking place from Friday, November 24. Notably, such an exchange has been possible, thanks to the agreement reached between the Islamic Resistance Movement or HAMAS (Harkat al-Mugawama al-Islamiya), also commonly termed, Hamas, and the state of Israel on November 22 brokered by Qatar, Egypt and the USA.
The scenes of prisoners meeting their near and dear ones on either side were emotion-choked. And it was naturally so. Following the release of the Israeli prisoners held by Hamas, the Israeli premier, Benjamin Netanyahu, is reported to have said that each of the children and women freed from Hamas's captivity was a universe to them. If the lives of Israeli women and children are so valuable to Mr Netanyahu and his people, the Palestinian lives are also equally important to their people. No human life is more or less important than another. The lives of children, women, adults and old people of Gaza are dear not only to the community they belong to, but they are also precious to entire humanity. But this simple truth is often forgotten in times of war and communal conflicts.
Now consider the thousands of children, women, adult and old people gratuitously murdered by 48 days' indiscriminate bombardment of Gaza's residential buildings, schools, hospitals, refugee camps, you name it, by Israel. If one is to condemn the killing of Israeli men, women and children during Hamas's October 7 raid into Israel, then one has also to condemn Israel's massacre of Gazans. That condemnation has to be in proportion to the number of people so killed, maimed and mutilated. Putting aside the argument of just and unjust wars, or who did what first, can what has been happening in Gaza following October 7 be compared as proportional? The Hamas gunmen, who broke through the heavily guarded Israeli perimeter fence, as reported, landed by sea and air (using paragliders) and carried out attacks on military posts, kibbutz (agricultural farms run by settlers) and participants of a musical festival, killed 1,200 people and abducted 1,400 people, mostly civilians as hostages.
But how many Gazans have been killed by Israeli air strikes in Gaza so far? According to a BBC report quoting information provided by the Hamas-run government in Gaza, more than 14,000 people have so far been killed in Gaza, two-thirds of them being women children. More might have already died and are dying under the buildings reduced to rubble by Israeli bombardment and more than 70 per cent of the entire Gaza population of about 2.4 million have been displaced internally during the seven weeks' aerial bombardment.
Assuming that Israel had not launched its counter-offensive with such disproportionate use of military might, how would the October 7's Hamas attack on Israel be described internationally? Even though Hamas had its arguments of a long history of persecution of the Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli military as well as the settlers, many, even from pro-Palestinian camps, would like to critique Hamas's attack as unacceptable. But then how should one having common sense respond to the punitive Israeli expedition launched against Gaza's mostly civilian population, which was not only out of proportion, but was charged with an open display of hatred towards the Palestinians, as expressed without any qualms by some Israeli leaders? It is indeed unprecedented in modern times. It seemed the targets of the Israeli attacks were something less than human.
To the Israelis, their victims of October 7's Hamas attack were not equal to the Gazans killed by Israeli bombardments, but far superior homo sapiens! That means, war or no war, Palestinian lives are expendable. But since humans became civilised, the ancient tribal culture of treating the defeated adversaries from other tribes not as humans, but animals, has long disappeared.
On the contrary, in modern warfare, the conqueror and the conquered are treated as equals and with equal respect. But it is only during riots, as in the case of Rwandan genocide (between April and July 1994), when the majority Hutus termed the victims, the minority Tutsis, 'cockroaches'. It happens only when communities forget their sense of humanity. The blind rage with which the Israeli military descended on the already besieged Gazans, in what is often termed an 'open air prison', without access to water, food, fuel and medicine, bears the hallmark of a superior race dealing with an inferior one. Oddly enough, historically, today's Israelis, or Jews to be specific, belong to the same racial stock that the people of Palestine in Gaza or in the West Bank have also descended from.
When all is said and done, what is then going to happen after the four-day pause in the ongoing Hamas-Israeli hostilities is over? Going by the words of the Israeli premier before the temporary truce came into effect that the Gazans are to experience a bloodbath on a greater scale until what he said the Hamas is totally vanquished, then, one wonders, what the present exercise in peace does mean.
Evidently, after this declaration by the Israeli premier, one cannot also expect that, Hamas, Israel's enemy, will be waiting to be exterminated. In that case, should one assume that the cycle of violence is going to continue with more deaths and destruction in Gaza? The question then naturally arises, is there any objective of the Israeli campaign in Gaza? The question before the parties behind the four-day truce, or to the bigger international community at large is, will they allow the madness to continue on their watch?

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