For many other countries, this attack by Israel is illegal, cynical, and brutal. Four new states have now begun the process of officially recognizing the state of Palestine, joining the other 144 countries that already recognize it. EU foreign ministers have met to discuss possible sanctions against Israel, which could have significant consequences given that 32% of Israel’s imports come from the EU, 25% of Israel’s exports go to the EU, and there are 344,000 Israelis with dual EU citizenship (https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-foreign-ministers-sanctions-against-israel-micheal-martin/). The truth about this invasion of Rafah is that it has been meticulously prepared for months by the Israelis: the main issue is not the legality of the action, as Netanyahu has the Americans as the indefinitely contracted bodyguards of their illegalities, but what will happen to the millions of surviving Palestinians who will have to be exiled from their last safe location in Gaza. Another major international issue is the potential diplomatic isolation of Israel and the US due to this continued carnage. In this article, I will use the realist theories of the well-known John Mearsheimer to explain what is actually being pursued through the war in Gaza, as well as the unintended consequences on global geopolitics.

The Purpose of the Gaza War

Of course, in official statements, the purpose of the war is presented as the destruction of the terrorist organization Hamas. Reality contradicts this: almost three months have passed since the initial attack and most analysts believe that Hamas has not suffered significant damage, and the hostages taken by them have not yet been recovered. In fact, we have yet to receive a credible explanation of how Hamas’s initial operation was so successful, given Israel’s military and intelligence capabilities. It is now clear that the main goal of the combined operations is related to the exodus and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.

Until the attack on Rafah, the two options for resolving the conflict were the “one-state solution” – the option of a unitary state for both Israelis and Palestinians – and the “two-state solution” – the option previously favored by most diplomatic efforts, first articulated 77 years ago, which consists of creating a Palestinian state along the borders established in 1949, before the 1967 war and the subsequent expansion of the Israeli state. Neither solution seemed very feasible before the attack: the creation of a unitary state would not be a feasible solution for the Israelis, as their population is relatively equal to that of the Palestinians, but the Palestinians have a much higher birth rate. Thus, in a few years, the Jewish state would become a state dominated by Palestinians. The second solution, not favored by either Netanyahu or Hamas, was encouraged internationally and seemed the most likely long-term resolution option for the conflict.

Since the conflict began, this possibility is no longer viable: how could Israelis accept that Palestinians who voted for the Hamas group have their own state, with their own army, right on their border? Therefore, the tacitly agreed solution so far has been to keep Palestinians under an apartheid system, defined in international legal conventions by three basic elements: the intention to maintain Israeli dominance over Palestinians (most Palestinians do not have equal rights), systematic oppression (Palestinians are constantly controlled by Israeli forces), and one or more inhumane acts on a systematic and widespread level (regular intimidation attacks on the population resulting in large numbers of deaths and forced displacement of Palestinians.

Israelis have managed to maintain this stable apartheid system in recent years, but now, following the attack, it is being replaced by the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the area and the creation of an expanded Jewish state, which will contain only a small Palestinian population, as the sole possible goal of the sustained war. Through multiple lethal attacks on the civilian population, Israel has tried to create organic migration from Palestine but now is forced to resort to more drastic, horrifying measures that essentially mean killing an even larger number of Palestinians. The exodus and ethnic cleansing thus remain the only variant of resolving this war, at least from the common viewpoints of Israel and the US.

In the region, Egypt seems prepared to receive many of the Palestinians following the exodus, building a wall in Sinai that will isolate the refugees from the rest of the population when they inevitably arrive Egypt would have accepted this after being offered significant funds from various Western institutions controlled by the US: $8 billion from the IMF, $6 billion from the World Bank, and €7.4 billion from the EU, sent without the necessary approvals from the European Parliament, strictly at the order of Ursula von der Leyen, who cynically argued that it is an emergency matter

It becomes somewhat evident that Israel and its American “bodyguard” have been working on this ethnic cleansing project for some time, sending aid to Egypt again shortly after the conflict began, although this aid had been previously blocked. As proof, Egyptian, Israeli, and American officials have recently met to discuss opening the border to Egypt.

Recently, Israeli authorities declared that the war will last at least another seven months, needing time to complete the planned exodus of Palestinians (https://www.jns.org/israeli-national-security-adviser-hamas-war-wont-end-before-2025/). In the last month, approximately one million Palestinians have already evacuated Rafah, and the UN Commissioner for Refugees has declared that the attack on Rafah makes the relocation of Palestinians from Gaza to Egypt “the only available safety option” and that it is “impossible to solve the Palestinian refugee problem as a result of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” (https://thecradle.co/articles/around-one-million-evacuate-rafah-in-three-weeks-unrwa; https://www.firstpost.com/world/exodus-from-gaza-into-egypt-will-complicate-crisis-un-official-13759112.html). So, the goal of the war now becomes clear: the creation of a “Greater Israel,” through which they can ensure that Palestinians remain a small, insignificant, and easily controlled minority.

Consequences of the War: Who is the Winner?

 It is evident that both the US and Israel suffer greatly from this war on all possible geopolitical fronts. It has also been demonstrated that the US cannot control Israel; in fact, the relationship is quite the opposite. This was most clearly shown when Israel attacked the Iranian embassy in Syria on April 1 without informing the Americans, aiming to provoke the extension of the conflict and the direct involvement of the Americans on the battlefield. This did happen, as half of the missiles in the Iranian attack on April 14 were intercepted by the Americans, not by the Israelis.

Consequently, the Americans then showed that they no longer control global international relations. At the last UN vote, only seven small states voted alongside the US and Israel against granting official UN status to the Palestinian state. However, the Gaza conflict is against American interests, as they have been trying to focus on China since Obama’s famous “pivot to Asia” announcement 12 years ago. Thus, the US remains stuck in the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine, wars that consume enormous resources without offering favorable and lasting solutions.

Moreover, the Americans can no longer compete for influence in the Arab world with Russia and China. The Russians have long established themselves as defenders of the Palestinians. Besides sending weapons to the Arab world for decades, they have just signed an agreement with the Palestinian Ministry of Health to provide medical aid to the victims, as the Americans have not managed to send aid or evacuate the wounded for several weeks.

The Chinese, on the other hand, want to re-establish themselves as global peacemakers. After mediating a peace treaty between Iran and Saudi Arabia last year, reuniting Egypt and Ethiopia in BRICS+, and proposing peace treaties for Russia and Ukraine, they are now focusing on resolving the Gaza conflict. Last month, Hamas and Fatah, the two rival Palestinian factions, met in Beijing, and the Sino-Arab forum took place this week in Beijing, where Xi Jinping met with the leaders of the Arab states, and the Gaza war is first on the agenda. This is an important meeting, considering that all Arab states (22) are part of the BRI, and China has already built more than 200 projects in the Arab world. Let’s see if Beijing can once again impose itself as a global peacemaker and achieve another victory in the fight against the Americans.

Finally, I reiterate that international public support for the US, but especially for Israel, is greatly suffering as a result of this war. The number of protesters worldwide is continuously growing, and even in the US, most citizens now hold an unfavorable opinion of Israel and consider the situation in Gaza a genocide. More and more employees from the State Department are resigning because of the American support for Israel. The Israeli regime is also suffering internally, with half a million Israelis leaving the country in just two months since the attacks began.

Two days after this new attack on Rafah began, an investigation by The Guardian revealed that Israelis have been intimidating International Criminal Court officials for nine years, ever since they received the right to investigate the situation in Palestine. Israel is shown to intercept all information about Israel and the Palestinians through Mossad and coordinate with the American administration to put pressure and sanctions on ICC officials. Despite these pressures, three Hamas leaders, as well as Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Galant, are under arrest warrants for crimes against humanity. Thus, in addition to the negative publicity of the arrest warrant, Netanyahu also faces the accusation of blackmailing a respected international institution.

More problematic than public opinion is the fact that in the military strategy of states in the region, Israel now seems much weaker than before the conflict. The fact that it needed allies to counter the Iranian attack and failed to neutralize Hamas in almost eight months is extremely embarrassing for a country that presented itself as one of the world’s greatest military powers. Furthermore, by attacking the Iranian embassy, the Israelis gave the Iranians the necessary reason to build nuclear weapons and prepare for a possible war. Iran continues to battle Israel indirectly through Hezbollah, which constantly bombards northern Israel, displacing between 60,000 and 100,000 Israelis, and through the Houthi rebels in Yemen, who recently launched the first missile on Israeli territory and constantly attack ships headed for Israel both morally and militarily, as they attacked more robustly during the April dispute.

So, to recap, the Gaza war will continue until the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is carried out, but this endeavor does not help either the Israelis or the Americans. The real winners of this war, as observed, are the countries of the Russia-China-Iran axis, which despite sanctions have managed not only to establish themselves as important powers in the Middle East, a region where American power should be strongly consolidated after decades of efforts in this direction, but have also rehabilitated their image internationally, consolidating their public positions as peacemakers on the side of Palestinian victims, their allies in the fight against the West, which no longer respects international laws or treaties. The US and Israel have realized this undesirable and fatal consequence, but it is too late now: they are stuck in a war that will continue to dismantle their international geopolitical power and, more seriously, exhaust their resources.

By Daria Gusa