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The October 7, 2023 Hamas attack fundamentally altered the Middle East security landscape, triggering an Israeli military response that has since expanded into a wider regional confrontation. Now, with Iran, US, Russia and China increasingly drawn into the strategic equation, the Middle East faces profound geopolitical uncertainty and turbulence.
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The Author is former Chief of Staff of a frontline Corps in the North East and a former helicopter pilot. He earlier headed the China & neighbourhood desk at the Defence Intelligence Agency. He retired in July 2020 and held the appointment of Addl DG Information Systems at Army HQ. |
The brutality was unparalleled. For those who get carried away by pro-Palestine rallies across some universities and streets and humanitarian bodies crying foul over the desperate situation in Gaza need a reminder of the event that shocked the world for its barbarism and savagery of October 7, 2023. For us Indians, the "9/11-like disaster" on September 30, 2026 involving Indian Pilot Smit Machchhar in saving the lives of 180 passengers on-board the FlyDubai flight is a stark reminder of the pathological appetite for death consistently exhibited by radicalised individuals and outfits.
The fire that erupted on October 7, 2023 has since engulfed the entire Middle East
During a flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv, Smit Machchhar was stabbed by his co-pilot, leading to a violent struggle in the cockpit. The aircraft lost altitude by nearly 14,000 feet in under 30 seconds. The grievously injured Captain Machchhar remembered to unlock the cockpit door. Passengers and cabin crew managed to enter the cockpit and subdue the co-pilot, allowing the aircraft to land safely in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia. The co-pilot was Hamam Alhamami, an Omani national with ISIS leanings radicalised with history of recent visits to Syria, Turkey and Pakistan.
So, let's recount the apocalypse of October 7, 2023. Early morning quite communities in rural Southern Israel woke up to horror unfolding in their sleepy neighbourhoods. The Hamas attack was marked by extreme brutality, including the murder of civilians, beheading, and sexual violence. Interrogated Hamas members revealed that they were ordered to carry out these atrocities, including killing everyone they saw, rape, beheading victims, and cutting off their legs. The violence left a shocking trail of over 1,200 Israelis dead and another 240 taken hostage.
Fundamental issues underpinning the hostility have never been squarely addressed, deliberately pushed to the background or to the future
These atrocities are on record, documented by the terrorists themselves, using dashcams and GoPro cameras then uploaded to social media, and where, strangely, these individuals exhibit a sense of pleasure, even pride, in the torturing, mutilation and murdering of their victims. Hamas morphed into ISIS and (fighters or terrorists?) filmed themselves barking at cowering Israeli families on the ground; parents covering their children's eyes, desperate to banish reality; Hamas yanking soldiers off tanks and throwing them into the dirt; Hamas grinning as they parade an elderly woman around in a golf cart. There were graphic images of charred and blackened corpses of babies. It was Holocaust at a smaller scale. The world needs a reminder.
The retribution from Israel was swift, equally unprecedented, though hugely disproportionate. Three years down the line, a succession of Hamas and Hezbollah leadership have been hunted down and eliminated by Israel. The fire that erupted on October 7, 2023 has since engulfed the entire Middle East with the US and Israel launching coordinated air strikes on Iran on February 28, 2026.The consequent damage to oil terminals and LNG facilities in the region alongside closure of the Hormuz Strait and threat to Bab el-Mandeb from the Houthis has effectively sucked out nearly a third of global energy supplies as the winter looms.
Fundamental issues underpinning the hostility have never been squarely addressed, deliberately pushed to the background or to the future in the quest for showcasing some imaginary peace and progress. The idea that the very existence of the State of Israel ("the Zionist entity") is illegal and immoral has been ingrained in Hamas' worldview since its founding. Hamas documents taken from Gaza during the Gaza War confirm what Hamas officials had publicly stated and indicate that the plan to eliminate the State of Israel had been regarded in recent years by the Hamas leadership, (and by the Iran-led Axis of Resistance), as executable and highly feasible in the near future.
The Palestinian issue remains an existential challenge to the state of Israel
Cries of 'From the River to the Sea... Palestine will be free' continue to rent the air across streets of New York, London, Berlin, Paris or elsewhere. This just cements the fact that the Palestinian issue remains an existential challenge to the state of Israel and the "Axis of Resistance" has the "same intention" to wipe out the Jewish people as the Nazis. Eight decades after the end of the Holocaust, Israel again faces a "ruthless and brutal" enemy who seeks its destruction.
As a Chief Humanitarian Officer of the UN Mission in Lebanon two decades back, I had received 45 Kurdish refugees from Israel who had crossed over from Syria and organise their housing in UN containers and provide for their food clothing and initiate documentation through the UNHCR. Later it was revealed that in 2006, when the Lebanon-Israel border flared up again, they were moved further North to another container camp but there is still no closure to the issue. This is typical of what confronts the millions displaced every year, sometimes due to famine, floods and fire; sometimes due to wars, terrorism, despotic regimes, and ethnic cleansing but mostly due to a trigger-happy US indiscriminately bombing countries to serve the narrow interest of its 'Deep State' (the Military Industrial Complex, the intelligence agencies like the CIA, the Oil and Pharma lobbies and captive corporate western media).
There will be elections to the Israeli Knesset in three weeks, on October 27, 2026. Almost all parties in the fray are promising a judicial enquiry into intelligence and security failures leading to the October 7, 2023 massacre, to be headed by the President of the Israeli Constitutional Court (equivalent to our CJI). The last time such and inquiry was held, then sitting Prime Minister Golda Meir was forced to resign, taking responsibility for intelligence failure leading to the Yum Kippur War that ominously started on October 6, 1973, taking lives of over 2,400 Israelis. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is on weak wicket.
So is President Donald Trump, as a decisive mid-term election to the US Congress and a third of the Senate is slated for early November 2026. Desperation to hold on to power and win the elections may lead to reckless actions on part of both. A third US aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt is headed for the Middle East carrying 5,000 sailors and 2,000 special forces.
The Middle East is up for a massive churn. The devastating Iranian attacks on US bases in the region alongside continued blockage of the Hormuz Strait has cracked open the Middle East security architecture to the Russians and the Chinese. Taken together, with the war in Ukraine in its fifth year, that has seen a massive flare up recently, with prospects of a direct Europe-Russia confrontation, the world braces for turbulent times.
