G20 declaration and Israel’s war on Gaza

When the G-20 summit held in the 2nd week of September in India with the attendance of most of the world’s influential leaders concluded with the slogan ‘One Earth, One Family, One Future’, people across the globe kept their fingers crossed. Indeed, they had reasons to do so as the summit’s final declaration called - G20 New Delhi Leaders’ Declaration - made a clarion call for an immediate end to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war without blaming the war on anyone. Since its very beginning in February last year, the war has not only led to loss of lots of lives and immense sufferings of Ukrainians but also shaken the world with hard economic realities - both developed and developing countries - due to skyrocketing inflation.

The G20 declaration also unequivocally stood opposed to any war emphasising ‘peaceful resolution of conflicts and efforts to address crises as well as diplomacy and dialogue’. But, worryingly, in less than a month after the declaration has been passed unanimously by world leaders, Israel, the blue-eyed boy of the West in general, and the US in particular have declared an all-out war against Palestinians in Gaza, the world’s number one open-air prison, in retaliation of the October 7 attack launched by Hamas, the Palestinian resistance group that controls the narrow piece of land on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Ironically still, the US and its allies extend full support to the Israeli offensive against 2.1 million innocent Gazans on flimsy ground of Israel’s right to defend itself. It is all the more so as they are indulging in the apartheid state of West Asia in conducting atrocities in Gaza, leaving the G20 declaration’s suggestion for peaceful resolution of any conflict into oblivion.

Israeli government led by Netanyahu, a corrupt and highly controversial leader in home and abroad, has already marked the October 7 attack as their 9/11 occasion, although the terror attack on the US twin towers in September 2001 was totally different, both in form and cause, from the former. Hence, one has reasons to fear that the world’s only Zionist state, which was established 1947 on the land of thousands of Palestinians forcing the landowners to languish in makeshift camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and some other neighbouring countries, may pursue a scorched earth policy in Gaza. 

However, as different media reports say, Hamas is not there at all to allow Israelis to do ‘whatever is needed’ without any fight in their bastion. Moreover, according to many analysts, if the catastrophe imposed by Israelis on Gazans continue for long, long-simmering resentments among Israel's Arab minority may explode, coupled with other Arab people forcing their governments to stand by their fellow Arabs in Gaza. In such a situation, one may have little reasons to wonder if the war turns into a regional big one.

Already, because of the Ukraine war, most of the countries in Asia, Africa and South America in particular have been grappling with some grave problems, including rising food and fuel prices. Further instability in West Asia, the global fuel oil hub, will certainly worsen the situation. Even, under the circumstances, Europe, which largely bereft of Russian energy supply since February last year that once met its most energy demand, may find its crises deepen further as well.

As a whole, the world can hardly afford any further escalation in the ongoing Palestine-Israel conflict. Time is running out for the global players to calm down Israel and find out a peaceful solution to the crisis respecting the resolution laid down in latest G20 declaration.