machine gun fire, customary during funerals, illuminated the night sky as dozens of men converged in a dimly lit, unpaved alley on the edges of the sprawling slums of Sadr city to pay their respects. A giant picture of Ali Hassan al-Daraaji had been erected outside the family home in north-east Baghdad to announce his “martyrdom” in this week’s US airstrikes on Iraqi armed groups.
The series of strikes left nine fighters dead, including Daraaji, the first Iraqi fatalities linked to the Israel-Hamas war. Even as a tenuous truce takes hold in Gaza, the pace and intensity of clashes in Iraq has picked up, highlighting the risk of spillover in a country that has long been mired in conflict.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, the US targeted fighters it believed were responsible for dozens of attacks carried out on American troops in Iraq and Syria. The operations have been claimed under the banner of the so-called Islamic Resistance in Iraq in response to “the crimes committed by the enemy against our people in Gaza”, according statements released on its Telegram channel.
The Pentagon said it acted in defence of its troops, who returned to Iraq in 2014 to help the Iraqi government fight Islamic State. But the Daraaji family, whose history is steeped in fighting the 2003-11 US occupation of Iraq, sees the latest events as a continuation of a long history of unjust American policies in the Middle East, and as a sign that two decades after its invasion, the US is still treading on Iraqi sovereignty.
The more I’ve learned, the more I’ve thought that fueling tensions around the region was the entire purpose of Hamas’ attack.
As context, after decades, and over a long period of time, majority Muslim nations are starting to waver in their dedication to the Palestinian cause. Egypt of course recognized Israel in 1979 and Jordan in 1994. But under Trump the “Abraham Accords” normalized Israel’s relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco as well. That was in 2020. Israel is making gains.
Trump took a different approach to Mideast peace: not settling the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians but burying the hatchet between Israel and surrounding nations. They basically considered the Palestinians a loss and made an end run around them to settle tensions in the whole region, where past efforts to broker peace have always treated Palestinian freedom as the root cause for all the tensions, and focused on solving that to stabilize the region. Trump bet that a bunch of governments don’t really care that much about the Palestinians and would take a deal to calm relations so they can focus on their own security and wealth. Turns out that one whore knows another when he sees them: he was right.
Now Palestinians are worried that Saudi Arabia will flip, which would actually turn the entire center of gravity in the region toward peace with Israel. I mean, being recognized by Bahrain is… nice… but the Saudis are the economic power in the region. Their government no doubt would be fine with it, whores that they are. But it would upset a lot of their people and that’s why they haven’t done it yet.
So Hamas sparks a war and inflames the whole conflict for everyone to keep it relevant and fresh in all of our minds. They saw their support failing so they triggered a big, polarizing event that would of course enrage their enemies but also bring their friends back to their pole.
The last thing Hamas wants is for the world to tire of their cause and move on, normalizing relations with Israel and making all their “destruction of Israel” rhetoric look just comical and embarrassing. So they started a war. Because getting killed in a war is better, in their minds, than fading to irrelevance. And now they have a lot of people around the world fired up again against Israel - rightly so, but still, this response was manipulated by them for a reason.
Yeah. Keep in mind there is a cold war of sorts in the middle east with Iran and Saudi Arabia and because of that Palestinians have become a Iran coded issue meaning countries allied with Saudi Arabia aren’t taking on the cause anymore.
Yes 100%.
Getting killed in war in their minds is better than getting killed without even fighting back.
Yeah - wither away and die forgotten in jail? Or go to war? Easy choice.