Conflict

This article was originally published on Ahram Online on May 21, 2024.   Southeast Asia's history, marred by prolonged conflicts since the 1950s, offers pertinent lessons for strife-torn regions seeking stability. The spectre of the Cold War transformed countries like Vietnam into battlegrounds for over two decades, pitting communist and capitalist ideologies in a gruelling contest. Laos, too, bore the scars of proxy warfare, enduring a protracted struggle between the communist Pathet Lao forces, backed by a sizable contingent of North Vietnamese troops of Laotian descent, and the royal government, in a conflict that spanned more than two decades.

Since its emergence, Zionism has been an ideology of strategic and ambitious imagination. In his address to the UN General Assembly's 78th session, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu takes every opportunity to confirm the effectiveness of this strategy and ensure the fruition of his vision for a “New Middle East.” Although the address was very much consistent with the Prime Minister’s record of flamboyant public speaking and Israel’s usual public image projection, it was equally revealing of a certain political desperation lurking in the shadows.

The Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem is a hotbed of tension between the Israeli forces and Palestinians. The “clashes” which are often depicted by international media reports as a struggle between two equal counterparts are part of a larger system used by the Israeli government to prevent and put into check any form of Palestinian resistance. However, when it comes to Al-Aqsa, media accounts tend to amplify certain narratives that justify police or military retaliation. Accounts from Israeli official sources vary greatly from the official Palestinian accounts and point to the large role that narratives about rights play in shaping the conflict on the ground. From the Israeli perspective, the presence of Palestinians in Al-Aqsa overnight is framed as a potential security threat while for Palestinians, the heavy presence of Israeli police and frequent raids, particularly during prayer times in the holy month of Ramadan, is a violation of their basic right to worship. Identifying the exact cause of violent escalation then becomes an issue of validating the accounts presented by each side which often pits official reports by the Israeli forces against individual Palestinian accounts and those of rights organisations present in the areas; arguably contributing further to international complacency. However, although the raids on Al-Aqsa Mosque are an annual occurrence, especially during Ramadan, the 2023 raids come under different circumstances than previous years.