The Middle East: The Tense Situation - Ishraq Ahmed Hashmi

The tense situation in the Middle East is spreading with each passing day. Israel is bent on trying every tactic of cruelty and brutality even after staining its hands with the blood of 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza. After Iraq, Lebanon and Syria, Netanyahu seems to be giving a new challenge by attacking Iran as well. On Wednesday, in Tehran, the capital of Iran, Israel sent a clear message by targeting Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the Palestinian resistance organization Hamas, and his guard with a guided missile that it does not care about the international public opinion, and it does not want to solve the Palestinian issue on these lines. is interested in solving which many important countries, including the United States, have been contending for work for the past years, if not decades. Ismail Haniyeh was in Tehran to attend the swearing-in ceremony of the newly-elected Iranian President Masoud Al-Badzikian. According to a news report regarding the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei has ordered a direct attack on Israel in a meeting of the Iranian National Security Council. Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis have also announced retaliation against Israel.

There have been reports of various actions against Israel, including firing missiles by resistance organizations, while some activities have also been felt in the nearby seas, with regard to which the United States and the United Kingdom had to take some measures, now the new situation. In the context of the current situation, the statement of Izzuddin Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, should not be ignored that "the killing of Ismail Haniyeh will take the war to a new level". Many countries, including Pakistan, Russia, China, Turkey, Iraq and Qatar, have condemned the killing of the head of Hamas, while the United States, where it showed indifference to the attack, has once again announced the defense of Israel. Qatar, which has been working with Egypt and the United States for a cease-fire in Gaza, says that the killing of Haniyeh, the chief negotiator of Hamas, has put the whole process in jeopardy.

The question raised by Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani on X is worthy of consideration by the international community, especially the United Nations: "How can mediation be successful when one side kills the negotiator of the other side?" Although not commenting on the situation, the manner in which an Israeli minister expressed his happiness over the incident on social media seems to reveal a lot. Pakistan's Foreign Office expressed its condolences to the family of Ismail Haniyeh and the Palestinian people, rightly pointing out that Israel's increasing misadventure is a cause for concern. The Foreign Office made it clear that Israel's latest actions are a dangerous addition to the already existing instability in the region and that such actions undermine peace efforts. The impression of the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs is also that the aim of this attack is to expand the war in Gaza to the regional dimension.

In this scenario, the US Secretary of State Antony Blanken is declaring a cease-fire in Gaza as inevitable, so the question arises as to why the US efforts in this regard are still not met with success. In the context of the new alignments, the fears of the war limited to the Gaza Strip spreading far and wide are not unfounded, on the one hand, the United Nations peacekeeping forces will have to be used to remedy them. On the other hand, the Muslim world organized its powerBy doing this, we have to play a more dynamic and active role on the global platform.