In the days of yore, Roman soldiers often rushed into battle with a Latin war cry, which went: MORS TUA, VITA MIA. Translated, it meant "You must die, so that I may live". This saying appears to be forever relevant for the Middle East in general, and Palestine in particular. Ever since I became intellectually curious about international relations, which was practically since my childhood, one of the most frequent phrases I have been exposed to regarding geopolitics, has been "the Middle East is in turmoil"! Why has this been so, and what has been its core problem? Undoubtedly the reason, the core problem is, as it always has been, Palestine.

This thread appears to run through much of history; from the crusades between the Christians and Muslims in the Middle Ages, to the contemporary conflict between the Arabs and the Jews, or to be more precise, and politically correct, between Arabs and the Zionists. For, as is evidenced in the demonstrations currently sweeping the US academia, many Jews have signaled huge empathy with Palestinian sufferings! These Jews have tied themselves to the suffering Arabs, both Muslims and Christians, of Palestine. The irony is that despite being the slice of geography that gave birth to all three Abrahamic faiths-Judaism, Christianity and Islam, each of which has preached peace, Palestine, through the annals of humanity has remained man's most violent battleground. It is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the Biblical warning that this region will also be the scene of the final Armageddon.

Some weeks ago, in a book club I belong to called 'The Reading Circle' we discussed, the Pulitzer- prize winning novella called "Minor Detail", authored by a Palestinian writer, Adania Shibli. It was written in two parts. The first was the true story of a young Bedouin woman, captured, raped and killed by a group of Israeli soldiers in the Negev desert during the war of 1948, also known as NAKBA, or 'catastrophe'. It provided a laconic view of a sordid crime. In the second part, decades later, a Palestinian journalist courageously set out to comprehend the senseless event, and met a similar senseless end, at the very spot of the occurrence of the first killing. Nothing had changed in the long intervening period in terms of the odium of illegal occupation, the normalization of injustice, and the degradation of character. This piece of literature is a mix of fact and fiction, but tells the story of the pains of Palestine, with its litany of laments, better than a dozen text books.

Indeed, nothing has changed from those times to this day, when over 34000 Palestinians are dead in Israeli hands, more innocent ones are being threatened every day, with the United Nations warning about an imminent famine. The Israeli Prime minister Mr Benjamin Netanyahu is waiting for an appropriate moment to launch the attack on Rafaa, now crowded with Gaza survivors of Israeli atrocities, which is bound to have horrendous humanitarian consequences. Even in the Western world support for him and his actions is rapidly shrinking. Across the United States, students and other sympathizers, signifying a historic shift in sentiments, are encamped in campuses in protest against Israeli government. They are calling on their universities to divest their endowments from Israeli companies or defense establishments supplying weapons to Israel. A common slogan resonating across America is "Disclose, Divest, we will not stop, We will not rest"!

It evoked memories of the anti-Vietnam protests in the same Campuses in the late 1960s following the North Vietnamese Tet offensive in January 1968. It is possible that future historians will compare it to the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023, linking them in terms of their political impacts. The US Campus protests after Tet produced slogans patently antipatriotic. Students chanted: "From without and from within, we shall fight for Ho Chi Minh! We shall fight and we shall win, Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh!". Eventually it led to a change in Administration in Washington. Mr Donald Trump may be checking out that bit of analogy, and history.

In Israel, to add insult to injury for the authorities, the International Criminal Court (ICC) is said to be contemplating issuance of arrest warrants for war crimes against Mr Netanyahu and senior members of his cabinet. Visibly shaken, the Prime Minister sharply criticized the ICC stating that, the ICC was set up, not to put Israel on the mat, but to prevent future holocausts. It is very possible that the ICC believes that by issuing the warrants, they may be doing just that! An angry Mr Netanyahu also described, apart from the Hamas, the Iranians as "barbarians". As someone who is given to invoking the Bible and Jewish history frequently, he seemed to have forgotten the solace and succor that the Persian King, Cyrus the Great, had brought the Jews, when he freed them from their Babylonian Captivity, for which the Jewish scriptures view him as a Savior!

The United Nations Special Rapporteur for Occupied Palestine, Francesco Albanese, an Italian legal expert, has unequivocally asserted that the Palestinians are involved in an existential struggle in their historic homeland. They are, according to her, in great danger of ethnic cleansing, even genocide. Genocide is defined as the intentional targeting of a people based on national, ethnic, or religious lines, with the intention of destroying it in all, or in parts. The key factor here is 'intention', not how many have been killed or 'cleansed' at any given point in time. Her reports would justify the invocation of the principle of 'Responsibility to Protect ('R2P'). The principle adopted at the UN by world leaders in 2005 was designed to prevent four types of humanitarian crises: genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. It is based on the norm that sovereignty comes with a 'responsibility to protect' all population from the above negative situations. If a country is unable or unwilling to do so, this 'responsibility' would devolve on the international community, which would discharge it, working through the UN and its Security Council. The State of Israel appears eminently qualified in legal terms for this kind of intervention from the UN or international community.

An appropriate end to the essay would be a reminder of the message in the Biblical parable asserting that power does not necessarily reside with might. The seemingly powerful and mighty Goliath was felled by the apparently smaller and weaker David by a single pebble shot from his sling! It is a fitting takeaway from the scriptures which Mr Netanyahu and his government would do well to heed.

Ambassador Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury (Retd.) PhD, President, Cosmos Foundation and Former Foreign Advisor (Minister for Foreign Affairs) Bangladesh Caretaker Government (2007-2009)