 Welcome everyone to another capsule international relations capsule for the chunker days academy. Today our topic is the Israel Hamas conflict which has been in progress since October 7th. There's a massive surprise attack by Hamas into Israel crossing all the defense arrangements that Israel has like the iron dome etc. I don't know unexpected day when the people of Israel were enjoying themselves or some cultural festival and the attack was such that within a day or so they not only killed the number of Israelis as well as took some of them as hostages. The Israeli government immediately came to action and within hours a massive bombing started on Gaza. This has created an extremely dangerous situation. There have been wars before between the Palestinians and Israelis. There have been occasions when the entire Arab world fought wars with Israel. On all these occasions Israel had a decisive victory. As a result which Israel which was set up by the United Nations in 1945, 1947 had become bigger. They had in fact accumulated more territory and the Palestinians were pushed to Gaza, a small territory with 2.3 million people and the West Bank or the Jordan River where there is the Palestinian Authority. Of course the United Nations had created two states, Israel as a Jewish state and Palestine as the Palestinian state. So the idea was that there would be two states both independent and sovereign. But as it happened Israel not only was established but also gained strength but Palestinians were scattered, they were in any case scattered in different parts of the world. They could not come to a home, the homeland which was earmarked for them could not be occupied because of the various conflicts that took place and Israel's total injection of the UN plan of Jerusalem being the capital of both countries and so on and so this long history of conflict. Some stability has taken place in the sense that Israel became a very powerful nation and with powerful friends and Palestine still only in the name of a Palestinian Authority which is not even a member of the United Nations but an observer and whenever the Palestinians rose and revolt what are called the Inti Padas in order to gain freedom for themselves were completely oppressed and depressed by the Israeli government. And so the last two or three years there has been a kind of uneasy peace in this region and what happened at that time was a gradual acceptance by the Arab countries of Israel as a state. None of the Arab countries had recognized Israel and so Israel's claim was that it was insecure even within their boundaries because these states have not recognized Israel and therefore they even justified their nuclear capability as something essential for their survival and protection because the Arabs were believed to have chemical weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. So and the first country first Arab country to normalize relations Israel was Egypt back in 1979 that was the first country and then several Arab countries began dealing with you know informally with Israel and later official recognition was afforded and the latest was of course UAE and Bahrain etc where the recently the Abraham Accords. So the Palestine while the Palestinians were watching helplessly without a place for themselves without a land for themselves they noticed that the Arab world was generally moving towards Israel and very important recognition important deals were made and it was believed that another deal would be made between Saudi Arabia and Israel and the United States would guarantee it and it was at this point that the Palestinians particularly the extremism and the Hamas thought that the time had come to bring the Palestinian issue back to the forefront because nobody was talking about Palestine at any of these meetings Israel had very deep relationship with UAE UAE even changed the holiday the weekly holiday to Sunday with respect to make foreigners feel more comfortable in their country and big deals were made there was in fact a second quad the Middle East quad with India Israel UAE and United States so very dramatic changes took place in this and all this Palestine was watching as to whether anybody was there to support them or raise their issue Iran was probably the only country which took this step fast but even Iran started doing various things like bringing Saudi Arabia and Israel close to each other and so there was this very possibility very important the possibility of an agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia and which would be guaranteed by the United States so it is possible that the Hamas and the other Palestinians perhaps felt that this should be stopped otherwise history will be reversed and the Palestine idea itself will disappear from the face of this may have been a provocation this is the feeling but they had prepared themselves for a long time they had armed themselves possibly with Iranian arms and also you know slowly put into Israeli territory and this massive attack takes so it is true that they brought the the agenda back to the forefront and the Arabs had to look at themselves once again as to see whether they were doing the right thing for the Palestinians but what face the world was a very very intense warfare in in Gaza the Israelis with all their might bombed Gaza for long for several days and then they penetrated and bombed vital locations they have no water electricity their first class humanitarian situation came up more than 10,000 Palestinians were killed and many of them taken hostage and Israelis were also taken hostage on the first two days and the war continued mercilessly after that there was no sign of any kind of ceasefire the United Nations made some people attempts that the general last for a ceasefire others asked for a ceasefire but neither the friends of Israel nor the friends of Palestinian were willing to have a ceasefire because they felt that the ceasefire would give Israel an upper hand having occupied a lot of territories they would stabilize them further and therefore even the Palestinians the Hamas were not willing to have a ceasefire so the Security Council met several times several proposals were examined and the first instinct for the whole world was to ask for a ceasefire but even that became impossible because Israel said that our idea is to finish off Hamas even today that is what they say that whatever else may happen this war will not end till Hamas lays down its arms and they disappear as a force or Palestinian force in that sector so so many many attempts were made there was no agreement for a for a ceasefire even opposite people the rest the whole proposal for a two state solution was forgotten by most people Israel said that our objective is to clear Gaza of Hamas and also push the Palestinians who are living there about 2.3 million people down to the south of Gaza and be possible to the West Bank of course the idea was that this should not happen so Israel is felt very much insecure and they argue that this was the only way to solve the problem no second state and elimination of Palestinian correctly is their experience to win but today is a hopeful day because in fact an agreement was reached between Hamas and Israel to have a humanitarian pause as it were it is not a ceasefire as yet but humanitarian pause in the sense that war will stop for a while for a specific period of time three days four days to allow humanitarian material to enter Gaza from Egypt or from any other source and also the people to be the wounded had to be you know treated and the dead bodies had to be uh cremated and all this to allow all these humanitarian things to happen they say they finally agreed for a short pause uh in um in the war uh so that uh and this was basically a rock heard by Qatar Qatar who is what relations with Israel as well as Palestinians and of course Egyptians were also there everybody was trying to do what they can to stop the war whatever may be the fruits of life so now there is an agreement to uphold a brief ceasefire in Gaza to allow for the release of 50 hostages and during the which was taken that is Israel is during the Hamas assault and the release of about 150 Palestinians held prisoners in Israel so this is the immediate solution because for Israel the most serious consequence of the Hamas attack was the hostages taken by Hamas and Israel was not sure where they were where they were secured or where they've been killed and all speculation was there and the focus was very much on getting the prisoners out that is the hostages out and that is where there was a start of a discussion among all of them so the start was indicated that is for four days and the humanitarian pause would be called and allow for more aid to go to the for civilians and on the Palestinian side there were 200 boys who were in detention as of this week and 75 women and some teenage girls also were enrolled and for them also getting back the hostages or the prisoners was an important objective and all this is possible because of the resolution which is adopted by the security officer the one and resolution which is adopted without any veto was a Maltese resolution Maltese Maltese as Maltese as you know is a is a small European country and they are non-permanent members of the Security Council and among the many efforts that many countries made Malta happened to be lucky enough to have a very extensive consultations with all of them and they pointed out they fixed the at fixed their attention on the hostage issue and humanitarian supply and these are things that nobody can question like motherhood who can question that hostages should be released who can question that humanitarian this should go so whatever may be the political objective of either of the two countries it was important for war to stop but the world ceasefire was not acceptable to United States it was not acceptable to UK and other friends of Israel and therefore the way the Maltese went about getting support for the resolution must have been very hard negotiations but also since it is Malta which is which is a small country which does not have a particular agenda rather than peace that may have helped so in any case quite unexpectedly on the 15th of November we had a resolution of course United States could have vetoed it Britain could have vetoed it but they did not do that and because they had also great interest in the hostages and they thought that releasing some of the Palestinians may not do any harm to their own national interests but without giving up their ultimate objective of defeating Hamas and eliminating them making them you know surrender all their arms and then recognize Israel at the only authority in that region they would continue to fight and then they continue to maintain that this in spite of this if there is any kind of problem of intensification of war all this would be would be cancelled and one of the most serious things that happens the things that happened was the Al-Shifa hospital the only hospital in Gaza was attacked directly by the Israeli army on foot as well as from here and of course the argument given by Israel was that this was being used by Hamas as a military command station there were tunnels under the hospital and these are all claims of Israel we don't know but they claim that there are tunnels or communication centers there are probably even hostages Israeli hostages there and therefore they directly attacked al-Shifa hospital and actually destroyed it that means throwing the wounded under and the dead out into the open without any any hope and so what happened in the debate regarding the Maltese resolution was very interesting because people explain their positions in a very explicit manner because everybody understood that this was very essential that this should happen and so the in a sense we can say that tiny Malta has gone down in history as a ray of hope for humanity when it managed to persuade the members of the United Nations Security Council to stress humanitarian principles they expressed they mentioned the the principles like as humanity impartiality neutrality independence and the obligation to respect and protect humanitarian relief personnel so these are principles which nobody could question and they are like motherhood rarely challenged by but nations who are members of the security council particularly the permanent members consider these them indispensable when there is a challenge like this so and the it was Malta with the support of others which brought out these principles which were unchallenged so but they are with the the big powers were insensitive with this massive tragedy and neither in russia and ukraine war or in the gaza israel war union these principles were absurd and so this adoption of this resolution in favor of an extended humanitarian posts and corridors throughout gaza was a small little land lit by the morkies and three permanent members abstained from the resolution in the original chapter if you read it specifies that any resolution to pass it must have the positive approval positive vote of all the five permanent members but over the years this has been somewhat diluted and so strictly speaking the an abstention should not be a support not be treated as a support but somehow there has been an agreement over the years that if a permanent member abstained on a resolution that will be treated as a positive vote by by experience so for this for the result of that even though three permanent members did not support the resolution three for three different reasons and the council might move towards action or indicated them so from 15th onwards this gained momentum and that is what we are seeing today as some kind of an agreement so certainly the negotiations which took place in the security council on the malta resolution gave an opportunity for a resolution to be adopted so in the preambular paragraphs of the resolution the careful selection of accepted language in the UN charter and elsewhere were put together and but one could see that it was very important not to pick any word or or phrase which would cause any concern for the others but it is clear that the eventual outcome made as they say in the United Nations equally unhappy everyone equally becomes unhappy and that is when the consensus is reached so the categorical rejection of forced displacement of the civilian population including children in violation of humanitarian law must have been painful for itself but it is balanced by an unequivocal demand or immediate and unconditional release of all hostages held by Hamas so these are the main points in the Maltese resolution but nothing good happened even after the resolution was adopted it was clear that there was an opening there and the humanitarian efforts but the resolution identifies the action required without anyone making concessions that affect their national policies so the it became clear to everybody that killing by itself is of no interest unless they give the war infactions on tactical advantages it is clear that Israel is on a revenge drive which only adds to the returns on the other hand cessation of hostilities under any pretext will eventually end conflict and that is a good consequence so the Maltese resolution envisages a win win situation for both sides which the two parties failed to see in their mode to bring each other to book punishment is the is the slogan of Israel they don't say calling revenge but it was revenge there were no more to discuss peace efforts and their objective was very clear but this resolution brought the kind of understanding or need for peace into open air and the concept in the voting pattern and the statements made it is obvious that the Maltese delegation engaged all the members of security council individually as there was no p5 position sometimes on such some issues all the p5 think allies no non-aligned movement position also because the non-aligned caucus in the security council was also divided and therefore since there was no group protection for any any country and countries were operating fairly independently so they were able to Malta was able to accomplish this feat of a resolution without even the threat of a veto so that is an important point the fact that Malta was a small country which had no extra grind may also have been a factor in its success but curiously a normal amendment was made by the Russian delegation after the resolution was put forward which it describes as the lowest common denominator lower than what the council cannot allow and the amendment was to add a reference to paragraph one of a general assembly resolution referring to major commas illegal Israeli actions in occupied Palestinian territories so after the resolution was tabled in the security council Russia did not even put in a written amendment so obviously they were not very serious about it they were just going on record to say that you know the illegal Israeli actions in occupied territory should not be and on that the text Russia abstained they did not vote for the resolution so the oral amendment was defeated by a vote of five in favor one against and nine abstentions most of the countries the non-aligned countries and neutral countries obviously they all support abstain and only five countries supported it and that was rejected and so the when the vote was the resolution was put to a vote the result was 12 in favor to none against and that was a significant achievement and there were three abstentions Russia UK USA all given different reasons for them not to have supported it they said that they would not accept anything that would jeopardize the security of Israel and therefore they could not support it at the same time they did not want to veto it because no resolution was possible if there was any veto so the US said after their vote that it did not vote against the resolution because it worked with others to adopt a resolution on the war situation so they realized the shame that security council is facing that they are not able to take the action so in a sense it is the security council itself that suggested this this pause and then it was picked up by the countries concerned and today we have a situation where there is possibility of a ceasefire and and also possibly a ceasefire situation but US also said that was horrified that a few council members cannot bring themselves to condemn with terrorist attacks that Hamas carried out against Israel on October 7th the US UK also highlighted the demand for release of the host in this by Hamas so the Russian deluge remarks that humanitarian pauses are not and cannot be a replacement for a ceasefire or even a truce so they also did not support the resolution China remark that council should have adopted a more comprehensive and more robust resolution much earlier the reason they said that the reason why it did not happen was the obstruction statute of the United States so China characterized the adopted resolution as a first step towards a ceasefire averting even a greater catastrophe the observer of the state the Palestinian states naturally regretted that the UN did not ask for a stop to the king particularly civilians including women and children they said that the Israeli narrative of killing should not prevail and he said there is an alternative reality in which Palestinians are free and no Palestinian and no Israeli is killed it's time for it to prevail it is time for peace this is what Palestine said Israel of course naturally stated that no resolution which did not restrain Hamas would create peace and finally Israel said should Hamas choose to lay down their arms turn themselves in and hands over the hostages unscathed this war would end immediately so Israel has three conditions the Hamas should lay down their arms the war should end turn themselves in to be arrested taken over by Israelis and hands over the hostages without danger to them then only this war would end so the security council meeting did not end in any any hope that anything will happen but obviously the negotiations that took place in the security council was reflecting a new mode of exasperation around the whole world that this would lead to very many serious consequences so that became urgent and therefore neither Palestine nor Israel should resist it and that is the reaction that we are seeing today and we should give predict more for having produced this resolution but this does this is not a not a happy ending as yet many things are yet to be sorted out in the meantime there are things spreading out like in a red red sea hijacking of a ship by the Hutus in Yemen there's another escalation of the of the war so in any case today we can be we can feel somewhat comforted by the fact that the beginning of peace has started and that certainly is because of the intervention of countries like Qatar and also China has been taking a major effort to wondering about this China was approached by Iran and China has made certain statements that this must end so on the whole there is some peace in the horizon but killing has not stopped any any moment it could fire up again but the kind of situation that remains before the 15th of now has changed and there is some hope and also some resurrection of the security council you know major issues like Russia playing war or the pandemic or 9-11 security council could not do anything terrorism is still around but now the security council was able to at least to make a feeble effort and that I think will give the security council a certain comfort so that is the situation today it can turn in any direction tomorrow but today is going to be the happy day for us to think that there is some hope for the next. India's stand is very clear there are supporters we are of course support support in support for peace and against terrorism our problem basically is terrorism by Namas because we cannot accept India cannot accept any success together it is in our own interest and for the interest of the world so that was our main concern and secondly we are supportive of Israel because of the victory that took place unexpectedly and they were in grief and we supported them in that sense also but as far as peacemaking concern we are all always supportive of those but the two sides if they are willing to come to an agreement with India would be very happy and India must be working behind the scenes to persuade this country to somehow stop the war and start negotiations for a two state solution that is the most important thing and we support the two state solution both Israel and Palestine should be independent states secure within their boundaries without any terrorist or armed aggression so that is our position and India's position has not changed it has been reiterated that we cannot condone what Hamas has done at the same time we would like peace to come yes that is a only problem that is the issue because the Israelis feel that their security will be threatened if there is a Palestine state next to their next to their borders around their borders and they would like to control the situation by keeping the Palestinians under their control like open prisons because Gaza is not an independent territory Gaza is Israeli territory they are in occupation and the Palestinians who are simply allowed to exist there they didn't have to auto freedom they could not administer themselves the Palestinian authorities sitting in the on the west bank and they also have any political power and they were just continuing their effort to have the two two states of the United States has accepted it but they don't have the courage to push it down the throats of Israelis they want Israel to somehow come to the understanding and then accept and when the Israeli shifted their capital Jerusalem from Jaladi Jerusalem is supposed to be shared by all the faiths the three faiths in that region and and that was violated when Israel went and declared itself declared Jerusalem as the as the capital this happened during president Trump's time so that means they have no intention to allow two states though the United States itself which is the greatest supporter of Israel is inclined towards a towards a two state solution but the condition is that Hamas should lay down their arms and maintain peace and then they will consider or think about these issues these are the ironies of history one situation doesn't apply equally to the other so it is quite possible that people have two different positions on two different issues naturally it will Palestinians will not be happy that India is not totally neutral in this situation in fact India was totally supportive of Palestine in all these years when I was in the UN for many years we were the strongest support of Palestinians in fact we used to speak very harshly in the Security Council and others and at the same time we worked behind the scenes to bring the Palestinians and Israelis together all this we did over the years but we moved after the end of the Cold War when we established diplomatic relations we always had but when we put up and we set up a mission in Jalawi not Jerusalem mind you so in Jalawi we have an embassy and as a result of that we have to be more attentive to the Israeli needs and also the Middle East squad if we have members of then you know when there are understandings between the United States Israel and UAE which is also an important factor so our relationship with Israel has improved and they supplied arms to us while we are not getting as many arms from Russia we need weapons of various kinds if we are getting from Israel and therefore our relationship with Israel somewhat different from what it was before but on the question of Palestinians escapes we have not changed our position we recognize Israel as a state not just as an observer and we Arafat was which had a head of state as far as India was concerned yes the West Bank is also not independent it is close to Jordan therefore Israel keeps saying that Jordan is Palestine you know as though on the West Bank itself there is no place for for Palestine they want Palestine to be merged with Jordan and of course Jordan resist that Jordan doesn't concern itself with Palestine so though it is comparatively peaceful because of the Palestinian authority I have known fighting mandate and therefore they are still trying to make a living keep the movement Palestinians in northern have discussions with countries because they have a status and they occupy the position of the observer of Palestine in the United Nations so all these reasons they are peaceful there but if everybody is pushed there and Israel attacks West Bank which is possible then the situation will change there also but Israelis are embarrassed more than anybody else because of the peace being built between Israel and the Arab countries Israel was feeling somewhat relaxed about their security I suppose because they are about to sign an agreement with Saudi Arabia and the United States so possibly there was a certain amount of I shall we say a sense of security in Israel that could be one reason the other could be that they managed with so well that they were able to escape and who helped them in this is an issue which nobody is able to answer people suspect that it was Iran they equipped them so much so many missiles and so many other and also of course when somebody is willing to kill himself then he can penetrate anywhere and that is the principle which has been seen in the world how many highly protected the personalities have been assassinated by some trick or the other so if people are willing to die for it it's not possible to create havoc because he will have to die but then he would think that history will you know understand his action so that is what would have happened and so nobody is totally saved from all these possibilities so and there is a failure of intelligence there is a failure of equipment it's a failure of people it was a celebratory occasion people are enjoying music and so on that was when they hit so obviously they had planned it for a long time equip themselves for that and attack so Israel learn to now review their security they learn to see whether the iron you know shield was really effective at least for once because that is because they were able to penetrate inside the shield they could not have bombed from outside and that is why they managed to get through and create havoc with the Israelis never expected so we have to look out for what happens next there were so many strands which have to be dried up if you have any peace and the Israeli statement the security was once it was absolutely clear as to what will bring peace nothing other than the total elimination of one so how are they going to accomplish it not so easy so more bloodshed before that's all they will come to their senses and realize the importance of peace because without that nobody can focus and the world has enough conflict the Russia plane war is still going on with serious consequences to the entire world and even this will have that kind of consequence because it was also in an oil rich region and anything had happened so let's hope it's set is sooner than later and the two states policy is probably the only answer and also both sides will come towards it and there the key player is the submit the trust finally say to Israel but this is a reality that okay shall we close them yes sir thank you sir all right thank you very much you again