Taishi Sakura CEO Nippon Ichi Co., Ltd.
Hamas Attack Stops Normalization of Diplomatic Relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia
The Wall Street Journal reported that members of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, which reports directly to Iran’s Supreme Leader, and senior officials from Hamas and other organizations have met since August, and that the Iranians formulated and supported an attack plan. The Financial Times argued that since Hamas had the capability to fire more than 3,000 rockets, “it is necessary to reexamine how deep the relationship between Hamas and Iran had deepened.
It would have to be seen as natural that Hamas and Iran, although one is Sunni while the other is Shia, are teaming up for an operation against Israel. Then there is a good reason why this is the right time.
This is because Iran wants to obstruct the normalization talks with Saudi Arabia that Israel is pursuing. It was believed that if the two countries established diplomatic relations, the balance of power in the Middle East would change dramatically and Iran would be isolated. Therefore, the view that Hamas, backed by Iran, launched the large-scale attack on October 7 with the intention of sabotaging the talks is probably correct. It is not hard to imagine that the rockets, of which 3,000 to 5,000 have been reported from both sides, are supplied by Iran. (There are also reports that fragments of some North Korean-made missiles were found at the site.)
Then, on October 14, Reuters reported that “Saudi Arabia has frozen diplomatic normalization talks with Israel, which had been underway under the Biden administration’s mediation. The move is seen as a response to growing anti-Israeli public opinion in Arab countries due to intensified fighting between Hamas and Israel. Even if the talks are resumed, it is certain that the Saudis will demand significant concessions from the Israelis on the Palestinian issue, raising the possibility that the talks will run into a deadlock.
President Joe Biden had hoped to take credit for the normalization of diplomatic relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia in his next presidential campaign, but an unexpected chain of events has caused that plan to fail. And, should be noted that the Biden administration continued to start wars. I am talking about two wars: the war in Ukraine and the war in Hamas. I can assure you that if it had been a Trump presidency, the war in Ukraine would 100% not have happened.
In fact, not a single world war occurred during the Trump presidency. This is the difference in his skill in international diplomacy. In fact, he was able to enter North Korea through Panmunjom on the 38th parallel, shake hands with Kim Jong-un, and get him to halt his nuclear tests and missile launches. It is often said that “Democratic administrations wage more wars than Republican administrations,” and unfortunately, this is true.
Donald Trump is a “tough negotiator” and Joe Biden is a “bad negotiator. The massive failure of Russian diplomacy based on Russian hostility and the failure of Middle East policy have cast a dark shadow over the future of the planet. The Hamas war is just another example of the failure of Joe Biden’s Middle East policy. The hegemonic president’s lack of discernment and negotiating skills resulted in enormous grief of the people, blood, and the tragedy of the destruction of cities.
Thus, it can be said that the military action by Hamas this time went according to Iran’s intentions and succeeded in preventing Iran from becoming isolated as the normalization of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel changed the power structure in the Middle East and changed the balance of power.
The view that I have just described is only for political reasons. In reality, “emotionalism” must be stronger. Hatred of Israel has built up and exploded. I think they put their hatred in rockets and fired them into Israeli cities.
Iran’s war intervention notice weighs heavily.
Iran has notified the Israeli government that it will intervene if Israeli forces carry out a ground offensive. This means that the Israeli army’s entry into the ground war in Gaza will directly lead to a war with Iran. Therefore, the Israeli government has not yet contemplated the start of a ground war and has not immediately implemented it. President Joe Biden’s meeting in Israel on October 18 may have decided the X-Day.
Israel will have to fight “Hamas,” “Hezbollah,” “Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps in Syria,” and “Iran” at the same time. It is also expected that Palestinian armed guerrillas in the West Bank will also join the war. What should we do?
On the evening of October 17, there was news that a Gaza City hospital was attacked by Israeli fighter jets, killing more than 500 people. Israel denies the attack and refutes that it was a misfire by rockets fired by militants in the Gaza Strip who are hostile to Hamas. Despite its denial, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, heads of state and government of other countries, and the United Nations have criticized the attack as “an unacceptable act of humanity. In other words, they have decided that Israel is lying.
President Joe Biden was scheduled to visit Jordan after his visit to Israel on October 18 to meet with the King of Jordan, President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Interim Authority, and the President of Egypt, but he was denied the opportunity to meet with the President of the United States, an ally of Israel, who has committed inhumane acts against Israel, due to a political decision that the meeting should not take place now. However, the meeting was unexpectedly turned down due to a political decision that Israel should not meet with the President of the United States, an ally of Israel, who had committed such an atrocious act. That was the U.S. being turned down for the meeting, not the U.S. turning it down.
Israel is losing support due to the visual images.
President Joe Biden’s meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, in which he expressed support for Israel’s denial of involvement in the Gaza hospital explosion, is a failure of a visit to the Middle East to return home from the Middle East after meeting only with Israel, which committed the great crime of attacking 22 medical facilities, without meeting with the Arab side The United States has been a failure to visit the Middle East. Just as the world’s sympathy and support for Ukraine has grown after seeing the horrific images of the bombing, the daily images of destruction, blood, and screams from Gaza have increased condemnation of Israel’s indiscriminate attacks that transcend self-defense, and have increased sympathy for Palestine.
Modern warfare has become a media war in which international public opinion is greatly influenced by the power of images delivered from the front lines. With the tragic images of the refugees in Gaza, Israel can no longer be said to have the upper hand. People around the world have a prejudicial attitude toward weak countries that are overrun by large powers, as was the case in Ukraine. Therefore, if Israeli forces invade Gaza and forcefully enter into a ground war, killing more Palestinians than ever before, it is inevitable that international public opinion will completely turn away from Israel.
Already, South African President Matamela Cyril Ramaphosa has declared solidarity with Palestine. The Global South is increasingly taking a pro-Palestinian position. In addition, the mass deaths in the bombing of a medical facility in Gaza City have made the anti-Israel position even clearer in the Arab world.
Iran’s intervention into the war is synonymous with the outbreak of war in the Middle East.
If Sunni Iran joins the war, this war will become a large-scale war with heavyweight additions. If the Israeli military were to bomb and destroy nuclear power plants and uranium enrichment facilities from the air, which is its forte, this could lead to an all-out war.
In the Russo-Ukrainian War, only Russia possessed nuclear weapons, but in the war between Israel and Iran, it is a war between nuclear powers. Although Iran is officially a non-nuclear power, the fact that it has nuclear power plants and uranium enrichment facilities should indicate that it has already developed nuclear weapons. Nuclear development is not that big a technology, and if Iran does not have nuclear weapons, it can simply purchase them from North Korea or Russia. Iran must be considered a nuclear power.
Although it is impossible to predict exactly what will happen in the future because various unexpected events occur every day, we believe that this war will trigger a major trend toward a “Fifth Middle East War. There is too much hatred in the Middle East, and people are looking for an outlet for it. If we continue to watch images of Arabs being killed by infidels like insects, it is not surprising that the Arab nations will rise up in unison to defeat Israel, fostering a feeling of “Israel cannot be forgiven.”
Peace is far away.
With the support of international public opinion, Israel and Palestine concluded the “Palestinian Interim Autonomy Agreement” in 1993, with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Chairman Yasser Arafat mediating between the two countries and President Bill Clinton. This is known as the “Oslo Accords. Then, in 1994, an interim autonomous government was established in Gaza. The international community even awarded Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Chairman Yasser Arafat the Nobel Peace Prize as a reward. The world was surprised at this, and the value of the prize got downgraded because it was perceived as a deeply political decision. The award to Barack Obama made clear the decline in its prestige.
The world hailed the Israeli-Palestinian agreement as a historic accomplishment, and it seemed to be the beginning of a thaw in the conflict between the two sides, but this did not turn out to be the case. The 75-year-long hatred between the Palestinian people will not melt away so easily, and it may be natural that the recognition of the interim government will not lead to a fundamental solution, since the refugee situation will remain unchanged.
Conversely, in 2001, when Ariel Sharon became Israeli Prime Minister, he suspended Middle East peace negotiations and built an 8-meter high wall in the Gaza Strip to isolate Palestinian refugees in Arab neighborhoods. Relations between the two sides, which had briefly reached a compromise shortly before 2000 AD, reverted back to a cold relationship after 2001. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a domestic Zionist youth after the “Oslo Accords” were signed, and Chairman Yasser Arafat died of illness. The efforts of both men came to nothing. And during the Trump administration, the U.S. even issued a declaration recognizing Jerusalem as the capital, which strongly provoked the Arabs and left the Middle East in chaos.
The hatred of the Palestinian people and all Arabs for Israel runs deep throughout its historical history and will not disappear until the state of Israel is extinguished from the land of Palestine. I mentioned briefly that it will disappear, but Israel’s population is currently about 9.5 million, and its disappearance would mean unimaginable things.
In East Asia, Xi Jinping has asserted Taiwan’s sovereignty and is prepared to launch a military attack, but China and Taiwan are of the same race, and although the problems that lie between the two countries are territorial issues similar to those in Palestine, there is no buildup of hatred that would cause an explosion.
The CCP government has never claimed Taiwan as its territory, so Taiwan has not been taken away from it, nor has it ever been under mainland rule in any part of its historical past. The Chinese Communist Party’s desire to “bring Taiwan under its control” is merely the result of its growing national power and its unlimited territorial aspirations. However, the hatred between Israel and Palestine is so great that it will not end until it is decided which side will win. By “win” I mean “perish.
Behind Hamas is also the shadow of Russia.
Russia, for its part, is clearly pro-Hamas. There is no reason for Russia to support Israel, the protégé of the United States. Russia is probably too busy with the war in Ukraine to suddenly get involved in a war in the Middle East, but it has provided Hamas with more than $93 million in virtual currency, and Russia is one of Hamas’ most powerful shareholders. Russia is one of the major shareholders of Hamas, and it is certain that Russia is behind Hamas and will not hesitate to support the group if its front expands.
As described above, Hamas is connected to “Iran,” “Russia,” “Arab Sunni countries,” and “armed civilian organizations,” so it must be viewed not as a one-on-one war of “Israel vs. Hamas” but as a “coalition of Israel and Hamas. To be more precise, it is a “Israel-Western coalition vs. Hamas coalition.”
Shouldn’t trigger a world war.
Just as the war in Ukraine is a proxy war between the West and Russia, the “Israel-Hamas War” has the potential to become a proxy war that includes the West, Arab nations, and Russia. The near future of the “Israel-Hamas War,” which may include all Arab countries, may exceed the scale of the Ukrainian War, which is a proxy war between the West and Russia, and may become a major war involving the world beyond the region.
If not that, the world is now in the midst of a war in Ukraine that has clarified the antagonisms and completely bifurcated the world. President Vladimir Putin has visited China, and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has visited Russia and also paid a visit to China. It was China and North Korea that helped Russia, which was orphaned by the war in Ukraine and orphaned by the world. And so, as the theory goes, the “Russia-China-North Korea tripartite alliance” has come to be. This is the worst possible situation for Japan and the world.
Furthermore, Russia’s allies in Syria and Iran are certainly on its side. Iran is a good friend that is so close that it conducts joint naval military exercises with Russia and China. Other countries that are friends of Russia include Turkey, Vietnam, Mongolia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Cuba, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Bulgaria. And India, a great power, wisely maintains friendly relations with both Russia and the U.S. and engages in a two-fronted diplomacy, but does not necessarily join the Western camp in the event of a world war. Prime Minister Modi’s diplomacy is defter than one might imagine. In the event of a clash between the two camps, India will be a key player.
If China takes advantage of the chaos and firestorm in the Middle East to launch military action against Taiwan, or if North Korea crosses the 38th parallel and moves south, it would be World War III itself, and with the further modernization of weapons and the possession of countless weapons of mass destruction, the damage would be incomparable to that of World War II. This is the reason why we have already discussed this issue in the first section of this paper. This is the worldview of the fulfillment of “Armageddon” described in “John’s Revelation”, and it cannot be accepted. It is not a worldview that can be accepted, but it seems to me that the world is heading in that direction. The terms World War I and World War II were named after the war was over, not when it was being fought. I cannot help but feel that World War III has already begun.
I am sure that Israel thinks that it can easily crush Hamas, which does not have a legitimate army, but I do not think that this will happen easily. This is the same as when the Vietnam War broke out and the U.S., the world’s most powerful nation, optimistically believed that Vietnam, a backward country, was no match for the U.S. and that the war would be won in a short period of time and easily ended. Hamas is a joker for Israel.
Israel continues to fight the Arabs with its massive military might, but it faces a dilemma: if it wins, it will become more isolated; if it loses, the state will collapse.