By Sola Ebiseni

CALL it Afghanistanism, after all it is also a nation in the Middle East like Israel and Palestine, we have decided to take leave of Nigeria’s labyrinthine issues this week to visit the Middle East though not because its own issues are less problematic. Since October 7, 2023 when the deadly Palestinian militant group, Hamas, launched a horrendous attack on Israel reportedly killing at least 1,300 Israelis with dozens of soldiers and civilians wounded and over 200, including women and children, abducted, raped, abused and still being held in Gaza as hostages, the world has had no respite.

But as characteristic of wars, this initial report is probably the beginning and end of truth as further accounts are shrouded in deliberate lies in order either to justify the war, promote the invincibility of a conqueror or elicit sympathy for the weak. It is for the same reason of justifiable interest that no source is considered reliable.

The CNN reports the conflict under the banner of “Israel At War” invoking the ancient Biblical accounts of the conquest and near invincibility of the household of Jacob in possessing the promised land under the leadership of Moses and Joshua. The screaming banner of Aljazeera reporting on the other hand is War On Gaza whipping sympathy against external aggression on the strip of land “measuring 365 square kilometres with a population of two million people ranking it as the third most densely populated area” and to which the Jews only returned in 1948. 

Aljazeera in its summary reports this Sunday, October 22, says: “At least 4,651 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza since the Hamas attack inside Israel with more than 14,000 wounded. More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed”. CNN on the other hand reports that “officials at several hospitals in Gaza said they were overwhelmed with casualties Sunday, with one describing a ‘bloody day’ and another scaling back treatments amid electricity and fuel shortages. More than 4,600 people have been killed in Gaza since October 7, the health ministry there said”. Israel has rejected as being exaggerated by the officials at the instance of Hamas which has been governing Gaza having ousted Palestinian authorities since 2007.

In one of such on October 17, the controversy was not only on the number of deaths recorded as a result of the blast at the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza but also on which side the responsibility lies. CNN reports that “the US intelligence community assesses that there likely were between 100 to 300 people killed”, while the hospital officials put it at 500. Most puzzling is the claim of Israel, backed by the US, that it was not responsible for the strike because the intelligence community “observed only light structural damage at the hospital”, with no observable damage to the main hospital building and no impact craters, according to the assessment”. The liberty taken by the report on human life is so elastic that it gave a whopping gap of probability of 200 lives by its casual assessment of “between 100 to 300 people killed”. 

Giving the modus operandi of Hamas, as confirmed by Palestinians themselves, which include alleged use of  humans as shields, situating their operations base within civilian residential areas to gain international sympathy or portray their enemy as the villain, it would have otherwise been crazy to give a thought to the claim that Israel might not have been or slightly suggest the responsibility of Hamas for the strike. Unfortunately, as they say,  there is no sentimentality.

It is more so in international conflict where its strategic interest is the most determinant factor of acts of nations. Thus, since the establishment of the state of Israel in May 1948 by the UN,  and bearing in mind the experiences of the Jewish people before then, it has not been pretentious about its defence of the territory and its people by all means and none is considered illegitimate in realisation of that overriding objective. Part of its overall agenda is the full inclusion of Jerusalem as its capital without which the Jewish state is considered incomplete.

The Palestinians who have, by sheer Israeli superior military might, since 1948,  only been confined to the remaining parts of the territory in Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, remain determined for the survival of a Palestinian state in the territory they considered legitimately their own ab initio. It is for the reason Palestine has refused to acknowledge the existence of Israel which has led to the futility of  the two-nation policy  of the UN in resolving the problem.

In spite of demonstrations in different parts of the world to cease its airstrikes and rethink ground operations in Gaza, Israel seems unperturbed insisting that “humanitarian efforts cannot be allowed to impact the mission to dismantle Hamas”. Putting  this resolve beyond reasonable doubt, IDF spokesman, Daniel Hagari declared on Saturday “we will increase our strikes, minimize the risk to our troops in the next stages of the war, and we will intensify the strikes, starting from today, continue to destroy terror targets ahead of the next stage of the war, and are focusing on our readiness to the next stage.”

In spite of its obvious incapability to match Israel and divisions between Hamas and Palestinian National Authority which make the Palestinian struggles now most uncoordinated, they nonetheless lose no focus on the national resolve to re-establish the pre-1948 Palestinian territory. The strikes on Israel on  October 7, suicidal as it was apparent,  and now revealed, has been rationalised by many as the biting of a sheep which has been pushed to the wall. Perpetual humiliation, dehumanisation, even death physically, psychologically and spiritually are the effects of cowardice and mute indifference. 

This may be the reason a guilty UN and its Security Council which created the nation of Israel for the returnee Jews in 1948  and left the Palestinians stateless and in limbo, has no liver to condemn the thoughtless pogrom by Hamas against civilian Jews nor the genocidal retaliation of Israel which has been provided the justification for the annihilation of Hamas. It is obvious that Israel may no longer care to sacrifice over 200 hundred Jewish hostages in Hamas captivity if it is the continuing price, in their view, to pay in ensuring that the state of Israel is no longer under perpetual apprehension of insecurity.

It appears to have also added the Hezbollah and Lebanon among its errant neighbours for this ultimate war which the religious predict as the harbinger of the apocalypse. Coming back home is a place called Sambisa Forest which, according to Wikipedia, has an area of 518 square kilometres, located at the northeastern tip of west Sudanian Savannah and covers parts of Nigerian states of Borno, Yobe, Gombe, Bauchi, Jigawa and Kano. For over a decade, miscreants with no organised army by the name Boko Haram and its ragtag allies, have taken over this glorified forest in the Sahel and exercised sovereignty independent of Nigeria.

Our students in schools have been abducted, railed into the shrubs called forest, raped, bruised and forcefully married or conscripted while half-fed soldiers with antiquated weapons have been made mince meats in the hands of ambushing cowards.  It was for Sambisa Jonathan was labelled clueless and showed the way out while we opted for a General unbothered even if certificate presented was a NEPA bill.

We got a raw deal as Jonathan’s condemnation of the enemy and prayers were soon replaced with admonition for us to learn to accommodate our killer neighbours or choose between our lives and land.  Gaza is under siege not for its sins but for being involuntary host of troublers of Israel. Sambisa, a terrorist enclave  within the Nigerian Republic,  is watered by the tears, blood of daughters, wives, children, clergymen and soldiers, like Uriah sent to battle for the purpose of being killed. Fishermen, farmers and all pay taxes not to Nigeria and its constituent federating states but to the lords of Sambisa. How much is the life of a Nigerian worth. 

Nigeria, we hail thee.

Ebiseni  is the Secretary General, Afenifere and South West Coordinator OBIDATTI Campaigns.