It is that time of the year when the world’s biggest talk shop puts on a show on the grand stage of world affairs at the United Nations in New York. The edifice built for the collective of 193 sovereign states may, however, have already failed in its moral obligation to try and bring about a ceasefire in any of the three wars that are being fought in the world currently — in Gaza and Lebanon, in Ukraine and the civil war in Sudan.
As more than 12 million people have been displaced in Darfur and Gaza and close to two lakh people may have died thus far in three wars, the only ones laughing their way to the bank are those who run the military industrial complex. The UN’s founding principles and ideals may be crumbling but its General Assembly session at least serves the idea that to keep talking is a way to maintain focus on the senselessness of wars.
Addressing the UN this week will also be Benjamin Netanyahu who said a year ago at the same venue that Israel was poised to become a bridge of peace and prosperity between Asia and Europe. Today, he is the world’s primary warmonger even if the constant existential threats his country faces were exacerbated by the barbaric October 7 attack by Hamas from the Gaza Strip and in response to which his forces have reduced Gaza to rubble.
In opening a second front in bombing action against the Iran-backed Hezbollah deep into Lebanon after an innovative attack on pagers, walkie-talkies and other devices, Mr Netanyahu seems unconcerned about the risk of a far wider regional conflict. The sense of impunity driving his military actions is helping push the world to the edge of a precipice even as the globally more powerful leader Vladimir Putin of Russia is pounding the cities of Ukraine in response to a counterstrike by Ukraine in the Kursk region.
With time to be called soon on his long innings as a world leader, US President Joe Biden may be desperate to crown his four-year White House stint with a negotiated ceasefire in Gaza, resolving which holds the key to giving peace a chance in a sharply divided world. Given he is a backer of both Ukraine in its struggle against a Russian invasion and Israel in its permanent squabbles in the Middle East, it is hardly likely that history will judge Mr Biden as a peacemaker.
There is no doubt that Israel’s military operations are run to war cabinet prompts. The reason why it has been asked to take on a second front even when its action against the Hamas militants is incomplete in the Gaza Strip is to enable Mr Netanyahu to stay in power. He is in no position to face in peace time polls his people’s anger over the fate of the hostages taken by Hamas on October 7. The solution to his personal political position seems to be more military action.
Hezbollah has been consistently hurling rockets and missiles at northern Israel from October 8 forcing much displacement among the Israeli population there, but it has vowed to stop the attacks if there is a ceasefire in Gaza. And yet it is Mr Netanyahu’s reluctance to countenance even the smallest concession to the Palestinians of Gaza, and the West Bank, that may have dissolved any chance of an extended ceasefire crucial to negotiations over the future of the two-state proposition for bringing a lasting peace to the region.
