Israel-Hamas: Who and Why NOW?
The most important questions of the conflict are WHO triggered it and WHY NOW. We merely have theories at the moment. Let us look at some important ones.
On Oct 7th, Hamas conducted a “medieval raid” into Israel. Clearly, its objective was to terrorize, get hostages and return. Clearly, Hamas knows Israel will avenge this. Clearly, Hamas knows the cost Israel will impose on Hamas and Gaza will be far higher than they can imagine. So why start this?
War has two elements - emotion and logistics.
Emotions can be fanned by ideology, rhetoric and promises of 72 virgins etc. Hamas was always emotionally unstable. The life of the prophet, mis-documented 100 years after the death of the prophet by the Islamic Caliphs, forms the basis of this hate. That document is an antisemitic document (also hateful to every other religion). So, Hamas always had the intent to end Israel. But Hamas was limited in its ability. Emotions can create intentions but not the ability.
Logistics, on the other hand, creates the ability. Logistics is a cold, hard science and it requires money. Someone put this ability in the hands of Hamas. It took time, planning, and patiently assembling all the things to re-ignite the conflict again.
WHO and Why now are the most important questions.
We merely have theories at the moment.
There are two possible instigators of this conflict - Iran and China. (Russia is engaged for the moment with Ukraine.)
Theory 1: The Iranian regime is losing control. The population is going against them. They want leverage that will prevent population uprising. They believe the US is behind the recent revolt (Mahsa Amini + recent open defiance by the Iranian population denouncing Hamas in the stadium). Iran will play for the Castro or Maduro solution to their regime control challenges.
Theory 2: Iran wants economic parity between the Saudi block and the Iran block. Israel's joining with the Saudi block will effectively end Iran’s chance of parity. It will end any possibility of a Saudi-Iran cold war with a balance of power. Instead, you will have something like India-Pakistan with huge economic discrepancy. Rather, in this scenario, Iran’s end game would be to have a situation like South Korea / North Korea if it cannot achieve parity.
Theory 3: It is China that is orchestrating the entire game called Great Chaos (also called three wars - one in Europe, one in the Middle East and one in Asia - NK-Japan or NK-SK). These create a window of opportunity for the invasion of Taiwan. China believes that if faced with three wars - the US will sacrifice Taiwan. Once Taiwan is under Chinese control, it will be impossible to dislodge China out of Taiwan.
Theory 4: Russia and China are acting in sync destabilizing the US hegemony with wars (Middle East and Europe) and commodity manipulation (Russian Oil and China with rare earth). One may remember, that in March 2023, Putin and Xi promised to bring in changes “we haven’t seen in 100 years”.
What theory do you think is plausible? Or do you have some other alternate theory? Let me know in the comments.