The Irish Times view on the Middle East: the risk of a wider conflict

Following Hamas’s reprehensible murders of Israeli civilians last weekend and the huge Israeli military retaliations and buildup on Gaza’s borders since then, fears are growing that an escalation of the fighting in coming days could spill over into a wider Middle Eastern war. Major diplomatic approaches to prevent that happening all confront the stubborn reality that efforts to contain the violence will also have to make renewed efforts to agree an Israel-Palestinian peace settlement as a constituent part of regional stability.

Israeli leaders have concentrated on normalising relations with neighbouring states in the hope that mutual interests between them and the mainly autocratic Arab leaders would marginalise the Palestinian question. Saudi Arabia. the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco were all drawn into this process, joining earlier agreements by Egypt and Jordan to recognise and develop relations with Israel.

This had enthusiastic support from the Trump and Biden administrations in Washington. It made economic and political sense for Arab rulers at a time of geopolitical shifts which saw the Saudis asserting their own autonomy from US support, including by accepting a Chinese initiative to restore ties with Iran this year.

The brutal Hamas attacks have caught all these states by surprise. Together with the Israeli military siege of Gaza they highlight the Palestinian issue in the region. That matters for autocratic rulers because opening up Israeli relations without making Palestinian statehood a condition of any normalisation remains deeply unpopular among their citizens, according to recent surveys. Such feelings are bound to increase as the huge Israeli operation proceeds. Already their cutting off of water, power, medicines and food supplies to two million people in Gaza breaches the rules of war and humanitarian law, as do indiscriminate bombings of civilian neighbourhoods. An invasion of Gaza with the aim of eliminating Hamas’s military capacity is bound to polarise regional opinion even more.

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International leaders should maximise pressure on Israel to avoid vengeful actions that would in fact play into the Hamas agenda of escalating regional tensions and spreading conflict. The Biden administration has a special responsibility to take the lead, though dealing with a right-wing Israeli government will not be easy. The Iranian-aligned Hezbollah military machine in Lebanon is a particular tinder box. The Fatah regime running the West Bank is another, and the Iranian government sees an opportunity to increase its influence and leverage.

Previous maximalist Israeli responses to Palestinian attacks have rebounded in the longer term by recreating the forces opposed to them, as this one also threatens to do.