A “MUD MAP” OF THE MIDDLE EAST by Ray Barraclough

An Article by Ray Barraclough [A Progressive Christian Voice (Australia) Inc.]

The following is simply a “mud map” of notes as regards a number of the issues pertinent to the ongoing tension in the Middle East. 

From Australia’s geographical perspective, the region is actually to the West-North-West, and in another hemisphere. So it is far from Australia’s actual context of “national security” - to use an over-used two-word phrase often quoted to avoid, rather than invite, legitimate public awareness.

This collection of notes is meant to be a fragmented “mud map” not a coverage of every nook and cranny of what is a complex situation. 

1. October 7, 2023. The world awoke to news of an unprovoked attack by Hamas armed fighters of innocent Israeli civilians in a neighbouring kibbutz or attending a musical festival just to north of Gaza. At least 1,200 civilians were killed and 251 hostages taken in to captivity by Hamas.

Israelis’ reactions varied. There was understandable horror and outrage at the killings and abductions. Amongst some Israelis there were concerns immediately raised as to why there had been such a major and catastrophic security breach under a supposedly powerful government. 

The trauma contained in the first reaction will live on. As regards the concerns raised in the second reaction, the Israeli Defence Force released a report acknowledging that the much more powerful Israeli army had misjudged the militant group’s intentions and underestimated its capabilities. Media reported that “The findings, released (Thursday 27/2/2025) could pressure Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to launch a widely demanded broader inquiry...”

2. The suffering of the people in Gaza.

Israel began military operations on the ground in Gaza on 13 October and then on 27 October, a full-scale invasion was launched.

An unmistakable feature of the subsequent hostilities catalysed by the 7 October attack was the largely disproportionate number of people killed by the two opposing forces. Those killed by Hamas numbered at least 1,200. Recent estimates of Palestinians killed by the Israeli Defence Force are 48,000. Of that number two-thirds (over 30,000) were women, children and infants. The actual number of unidentified Palestinians lying dead under the rubble in Gaza would number in the thousands.

3. Israel: The history of the modern (secular) state of Israel has too many integral layers to be adequately summarised here. The following are limited reflections on expectations of this democratic state.

Israel is a democratic state:

Basically, Israel is described as the only Western-style democracy in the Middle East.

In being such a democracy, it has held regular elections since its foundation in 1948. This stands in contrast to the failure of the Palestinian Authority to conduct any elections since 2005.

Israel is the only Western-style democracy that still retains military oversight of outside territory over a period of 57 years [1].  This territory was militarily overrun in armed conflict in 1967. According to international law, no civilian buildings are to be erected on such Occupied Territories. We shall note the illegal settlements again later.

Currently the IDF has moved troops and tanks into several Palestinian refugee camps in the Occupied West Bank, destroying Palestinian homes and infrastructure and restricting medical care in that Occupied territory. Below is a Memo which opens a window on the cost in Palestinian lives of this continued Occupation. 

Some statistics:

The taking of Israeli civilian hostages has revived for Israelis the trauma of their past history, especially of their people being persecuted for centuries in Europe. The Holocaust – wherein 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazi rulers of Germany (1933-1945) and their pro-Nazi collaborators in Nazi-occupied Europe - will never, ever, be forgotten by Jewish communities throughout the world.

We recall that 1,200 Israelis were killed in the attack by Hamas on 7 October, 2023.

Below are statistics as regards Palestinians killed in the West Bank in recent times:

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs  [OCHA – unrwa.org.au], between 7 October 2023 and 17 February 2025, 883 Palestinians were killed in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Of those, 498 Palestinians were killed in 2024. Armed Israeli illegal settlers also participated in these events.

The Israeli Forces large-scale operation that started in Jenin Camp on 21 January 2025 is now the single longest Israeli Forces operation in the West Bank since the second intifada in the 2000s. Tens of thousands of refugee camp residents remain displaced, primarily from the Jenin , Nur Shams  and Tulkarm refugees camps, where conditions are near-uninhabitable following weeks of sustained violence and destruction.

Following the withdrawal of Israeli Forces from El F’ara Camp, most families displaced from therewere able to return, and UNRWA services resumed in full...  [2]

To repeat a statistic quoted earlier: It is the only Western-style democracy whose military - the Israeli Defence Force [IDF] – has in modern times (through its bombardment of Gaza) killed some 30,000 women and children.

4. Israel hostages:

As noted above, the taking of Israeli civilian hostages has revived for Israeli Jews the trauma of their people’spast history. Israelis want all hostages released. But the country is currently divided. It is divided in regard to the perception (for a significant number of Israelis) that the Prime Minister and his government have put as decidedly first priorities his remaining in power, together with utilising Israel’s overwhelming destructive military power into action against the inhabitants of Gaza. In their perception they see the freeing of the hostages as absolute priority. Many also are dismayed at the extensive destruction of Palestinian civilians’ lives.

5. Illegal settlements:

Israel continues to permit the building and protection of settlements in Occupied territory – a practice that is illegal under international law. The settlers are well protected. Their inhumane treatment of the (majority) Palestinian inhabitants of Hebron is well documented. They are able to carry arms, and their intimidation (and even killing) of 2 Palestinian farmers and young Palestinian shepherds is unhindered by the Israeli authorities.

6. The Palestinian Authority – The Oslo Accords

“The Oslo Accords agreed to by Israel and Palestinian representatives in 1993 established the Palestinian Authority (PA) to govern Palestinians in pockets of the occupied West Bank and Gaza under the control of Israel’s occupying army. The PA was supposed to be an “Interim Self-Government'' and only last “for a transitional period not exceeding five years.” The final status agreement was supposed to be based on United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, which called for Israel to withdraw from the territories it occupied during the June 1967 war, including the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza. 

At the time most Palestinians believed that the Oslo Accords would create an independent Palestinian state in the occupied territories alongside Israel, as part of the so-called “two-state solution” in Palestine/Israel advocated by the international community.” [3]

Currently a significant number of Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank see the PA as both ‘administering’  and continuing the Israeli occupation, not ‘dismantling’ it so that a Palestinian state can emerge. 

7. A possible (?) two-state solution.

While the events in Gaza have catalysed a much wider international call for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, two current immovable objects stand in the way. They are: The current government of Israel and Hamas.

The current right-wing Israeli government has recently passed motions through the Israeli Knesset opposing any creation of a state of Palestine as a neighbour to Israel.

Hamas can be described through Western eyes as a fundamentalist Islamic organisation and armed force committed to the removal of the state of Israel. It won elected power in Gaza but then subsequently in armed conflict forcibly ejected Fatah supporters from Gaza. Currently Hamas exercises an authoritarian rule in Gaza.

8. The following is a summary description of Hamas:

"Origin of Hamas - As an organisation, Hamas was conceived primarily by the religious leader Ahmed Yassin and was founded in 1987 in the midst of the escalating Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It emerged in opposition to the Palestine Liberation Organisation(PLO), the socialist and nationalist group led by Yasser Arafat, which had hitherto been the legitimate authority among Palestinians... 

What is Hamas?

Hamas’  ideology combines nationalism and the political Islamism of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. In terms of religion they are Salafist, meaning they adhere to a strict interpretation of Islam. This is why they seek a Palestinian state governed by Islamic Sharia law... 

Hamas’ denial of the legitimacy of the state of Israel has been a constant point of friction in the region...

What are Hamas’ methods?

The approach taken by Hamas to achieve its political aims combines social mobilisation, political organisation and negotiation, and the use of violence. Hamas is therefore usually considered a jihadist group given that it does not rule out violence as a political strategy to further its aims.   

The UN, along with the European Union, the USA, Canada, Japan, Australia, Paraguay, the Organisation of American States, and Egypt currently list Hamas as a terrorist organisation. However, other countries, including Switzerland, Norway, Russia, Brazil, Turkey and China, do not." Edited source: Theconversation.com

9. The selective ‘rubbery’ use of language

People experience terror when the cities and towns in which they live are targeted by overhead missiles, or drones, or bombs. There was the bombing ‘terrorising’ civilians in Lebanon, and the West Bank. A similar scenario has been played out in the Russian bombing of Ukrainian civilians.

When organisations perpetrate bombings that kill civilians they are called “terrorist organisations”. They have terrorised a civilian population. When states terrorise whole communities of people by extensive aerial bombing (as in Gaza, Lebanon or Ukraine) are they not rightly to be regarded as “terrorist States”? 

So, too, the naming of those involved. When Jewish members of the Stern Gang and Irgun carried out bombings that claimed civilian lives, the British authorities, who were administrating the Mandated Territory of Palestine, labelled them as “terrorists”. That is the blanket label now used by Israeli spokespersons on Western media whenever an armed Palestinian nationalist opposes the overwhelmingly powerful armed Israeli presence in the West Bank.

As the saying goes: “Our armed resistance fighters are Patriots. Their resistance fighters are Terrorists”. And if both Israelis and Palestinians are fighting for their nation, are not both groups then Nationalists?

10. Two differing Australian responses – “Restraint” and “No Restraint”. With the brutal assault by Hamas on Israeli civilians on 7 October, 2023, the ALP Government Foreign Affairs Minister, Penny Wong, called for an appropriate and restrained response by Israel. The leader of the Liberal Party, Peter Dutton, called for there to be “no restraint” in regard to Israel’s armed response. Wong did not elaborate on “restraint”. Dutton has not said a word since about the cost in Palestinian civilian lives which are entailed in there being “no restraint”on the bombing of the people in Gaza.

There is not space for me to even briefly explore other aspects/ sides to the current conflict. Aspects such as:

11. The scope of anti-Semitism. It’s rise in Australia. Its effects on Jewish Australian’s sense of insecurity. Are not Palestinians also a Semitic people?

12. Supplies of arms in the conflict, especially the American arms deals with Israel - from Obama and Biden through to Trump. The current Trump administration is ramping up delivery of armaments to Israel.

13. As regards international players, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are two Arab states that have made positive noises. Egypt is leading the current Arab States proposal to re-house the ravaged Palestinians in Gaza. WhileSaudi Arabia (which had been holding covert cosy conversations with Israel) has been prompted by the carnage in Gaza to declare that further conversations would only occur after a Palestinian state is established. The Crown Prince did include the West Bank as well as East Jerusalem in that announcement. Time will tell how substantial such initiatives will turn out to be.

Trump’s “solution” for Gaza - his “real estate” view - is, to use an economic term, a “morally bankrupt” conception. His narcissistic mind seems to possess as much empathy with, and awareness of, human suffering as a cash register. 

1. Documented in Antony Loewenstein’s book entitled The Palestine Laboratory - How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World, Scribe Publications, Brunswick, Vic., 2023.

2. unrwa.org

3. Institute for Middle East Understanding – https://imeu.org/article/explainer-the-oslo-accords

Ray Barraclough – March, 2025
Article Source: Supplied