The Middle East’s oldest conflict has perhaps reached its darkest hour. The current onslaught, which began after Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, has killed nearly 30,000 Palestinians and over 1,000 Israelis. With vast stretches of urban land in Gaza erased, over 80 percent of its residents are displaced. 

Five months since this chapter of the war began, the hope for a ceasefire seems far-fetched as the Israeli military’s offensives on the ground, air, and sea continue in Gaza.

To understand the history of the conflict and scrutinise its various facets, Abhinandan Sekhri speaks to Israeli journalist and columnist Gideon Levy, former Indian ambassador and author Talmiz Ahmad, and The Hindu’s foreign editor Stanly Johny. 

Levy, a fierce critic of Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory, says Zionism’s “biggest lie” is that “people without a land came to a land without people”. Ahmad says Benjamin Netanyahu was earlier admired as a “magician”, but not anymore. “The ferocity of the war and the mass killings have no strategic purpose at all. It is entirely to prolong the conflict so that the day of reckoning for Netanyahu and the generals doesn’t occur.”

The conversation moves to the USA’s previous “diplomatic efforts” to bring peace in the Middle East, and the possibility for a two-state solution. Levy says a one-state solution would “convert the apartheid state into a democracy”. 

However, Stanly calls it “utopian”. He says a two-state solution would mean a “sovereign Palestinian state”, but Israel “does not have a clearly demarcated border”.  

Tune in. 

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