Analysis | What Happens in Gaza Stays in Gaza, the World Says

Sometimes, tragedies and wars offer weird moments of comic relief. Take Russia, for example. On Friday, the first day of exchanges of fire between Israel and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza, the Russian Foreign Ministry came out with a statement that would make George Orwell cringe.

Russia, the statement expounded in utter seriousness and in a worried, compassionate tone, is concerned by the violence in Gaza and calls on Israel to show restraint. Yes, you’ve got that right. Russia was gravely concerned by the violence. It’s that same Russia that invaded Ukraine in the nicest, most polite and most benign, tender and velvety of ways and that has characteristically exercised extreme caution and the highest regard for human life and suffering.

Notwithstanding Russia’s cynicism and blatant hypocrisy, there was diplomatic significance to its statement on the Gaza fighting. If that was how Russia was responding, while the rest of the world seemed genuinely disinterested, then Israel might be spared the usual ritual of condemnations and threats.

Israel interpreted this lack of interest as tacit support, but it’s only because the world no longer cares about Gaza, because the latest clash was limited in scope and destruction and because there are other issues of higher priority preoccupying the international agenda and global interest.

Even a 1 degree variance in where a Palestinian rocket or an Israeli shell had landed could have altered the dynamics entirely. And had Hamas joined the action and broadened the scope and firepower involved in the fighting, the dynamics could also have been different.

For all the world knows or cares, another round of fighting in Gaza between Israel and the Palestinians is like those nature movies in which a lion hunts down an antelope. It’s like those programs that almost always seem to be on National Geographic and the Discovery Channel.

There’s the setting of the seemingly sleepy African savanna, the lion on heightened alert, sensing and then spotting the stray antelope. Then along comes David Attenborough, who dramatically but calmly describes the play-by-play.

The agile lion begins with a jog that turns into a dash toward the frightened antelope, which attempts high-speed evasive maneuvers and acts of desperation. Then comes the fatigue, the eventual cornering of the antelope and its surrender and inevitable and gory end. Until the next time that you flip to those channels.

As far as the world is concerned, Israel and Gaza are a military-political version of such a nature program. Rockets fired on Israeli towns, Israel reducing buildings to rubble, sirens, an endless parade of former Israeli generals explaining verbatim what they had already explained six or 10 months earlier.

They speak of the importance of deterrence, of a decisive conclusion – or that it won’t end decisively. It’s all familiar and predictable and ends in the same way. You and the world don’t really know whether it’s a rerun or something new.

So you gradually but steadily lose interest and flip to other channels, where you can watch the Russian invasion of Ukraine, menacing Chinese naval and aerial maneuvers around Taiwan, a severe heat wave in Europe or the beginning of the new football season.

The United States, the European Union and Britain have all expressed “concern” but added that they “understand” Israel’s need to protect its citizens. The Islamic Jihad was threatening to fire anti-tank missiles and grenades at Israeli targets. A target need not be a tank. It could also be a bus.

British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and Senator Bob Menendez, the chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, both expressed their support. Even Morocco, an Arab country, refrained from the usual and instinctive condemnations and simply said that it was concerned with the deterioration in Gaza.

The United Arab Emirates, together with France, Ireland, Norway and China, asked that the UN Security Council convene, but that caused no alarm in Jerusalem. Usually, when three permanent Security Council members – France, China and that aforementioned righteous country, Russia – ask for such a meeting, Israel braces for harshly worded condemnation, typically followed by an American veto. But that’s not the situation this time.

World reaction to such flare-ups should be assessed based on two factors. The first is the length and scope of the operation, which in this case were limited, and secondly, mitigating circumstances and other global issues on the agenda, which are abundant.

For many years, the working assumption in Israeli planning prior to any operation has been that Israel had 96 hours of diplomatic maneuvering room, which would be followed by a period of criticism, which would then be deflected by the United States, permitting some additional time.

In the first 24 hours, Israel enjoys some degree of understanding and support, given that nearly all these operations begin as an Israeli response to terrorism or rockets launched at civilian targets. In the next 48 hours, Israel still has latitude, but calls for restraint begin to mount.

It’s the final 24 hours when pictures of destruction and devastation emerge from Gaza (or Lebanon) and the world resorts to the usual comparisons between strong and weak, occupier-occupied and the F-16 vs. the refugee camp.

In the usual scenario, conditions on the ground and the absence of any tangible achievement compel Israel to extend the operation by a few days, usually with the qualified support of the United States, and then it’s all about a cease-fire. The end. Just like the lion and the antelope.

In the latest round of fighting, the international agenda and the mitigating circumstances were both favorable to Israel. The war in Ukraine has been raging since February, and for the past week, China has been ominously conducting military exercises around Taiwan, simulating an encirclement.

Both crises have a potential escalatory trajectory. In the case of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the possible escalation scenarios include an invasion of Moldova, provocations against the Baltic states, the use of nuclear weapons and an all-out NATO-Russia war. In the case of Taiwan, the hypothetical and worst-case escalation scenario is a Chinese-American confrontation due to a miscalculation.

No such escalation potential exists in Gaza. A clash in Gaza is limited in area, firepower and time. Even a possible expansion to the West Bank doesn’t qualify as a major escalation of the kind in which that world feels it necessary to intervene. That’s why, as long as the confrontation in Gaza is limited, a fatigued world essentially endorses the notion that “what happens in Gaza stays in Gaza.”

But here’s the catch: Israel may be content with minimal world attention and the absence of condemnation. But it’s not the world that shares a border with Gaza and that has to live with it. Israel does.

So however satisfied Israel is with a limited operation, it’s also resigned to the inertia and cyclical and predictive nature of these confrontations. It’s true that Islamic Jihad has suffered a setback in the most recent fighting, but not one core issue of the Israel-Gaza relationship has been even remotely addressed.

In the absence of a political process or an arrangement providing for a long-term cessation of hostilities, there will be a next round, and when it comes, there’s no guarantee that its scope will be limited or that the world will be apathetic.