The war Israel is fighting in Gaza is very similar to the week-old situation in India, writes Gwynne Dyer

There is a striking parallel between the 20-month war in the Gaza Strip and the week-old, not-yet-war between India and Pakistan.

Both confrontations were set off by horrendously cruel mass murders by terrorists whose goal was obviously to start a war that drew the attention of the world back to their own goals and grievances.

Hamas, in the Gaza Strip, was keenly aware that the Palestinian cause was gradually fading from the international agenda. Seventy-five years of failure to push back successfully against Israeli control of the disputed territory of former Palestine had left the rest of the Arab world keen to change the subject.

Subscribe now to access this story and more:

Subscribe or sign in to your account to continue your reading experience.

Create an account or sign in to continue your reading experience.

The ‘Abraham accords’ were the last straw from the perspective of the Palestinians: an Israeli-Saudi peace deal would be the death knell for their hopes of building a state on the land they claimed, or at least part of it.

Only a big war could reawaken Arab and Muslim concern for the plight of the Palestinians, so Hamas chose to start one. It began with as big an atrocity as possible: more than 1,200 Israelis killed, many of them in their beds. Israel took the bait, but under Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s........

© PNI Atlantic news