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“Year of killing and broken assumptions has taken Middle East to edge of deeper, wider war”
Millions of people in the Middle East dream of safe, quiet lives without drama and violent death. The last year of war, as bad as any in the region in modern times, has shown yet again that dreams of peace cannot come true while deep political, strategic and religious fault lines remain unbridged. Once again, war is reshaping the politics of the Middle East.
The Hamas offensive came out of well over a century of unresolved conflict. After Hamas burst through the thinly defended border, it inflicted the worst day the Israelis had suffered.
Around 1,200 people, mostly Israeli civilians, were killed. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, phoned President Joe Biden and told him that “We’ve never seen such savagery in the history of the state”; not “since the Holocaust.” Israel saw the attacks by Hamas as a threat to its existence.
Since then, Israel has inflicted many terrible days on the Palestinians in Gaza. Nearly 42,000 people, mostly civilians have been killed, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. Much of Gaza is in ruins. Palestinians accuse Israel of genocide.
The war has spread. Twelve months after Hamas went on the offensive the Middle East is on the edge of an even worse war; wider, deeper, even more destructive.
The death of illusions
A year of killing has stripped away layers of assumptions and illusions. One is Benjamin Netanyahu’s belief that he could manage the Palestinian issue without making concessions to their demands for self-determination.
With that went the wishful thinking that had comforted Israel’s worried Western allies. Leaders in the US and UK, and others, had convinced themselves that Netanyahu, despite opposing a Palestinian state alongside Israel all his political life, could somehow be persuaded to accept one to end the war.
Netanyahu’s refusal reflected almost universal distrust of Palestinians inside Israel as well as his own ideology. It also torpedoed an ambitious American peace plan.
President Biden’s “grand bargain” proposed that Israel would receive full diplomatic recognition by Saudi Arabia, the most influential Islamic country, in return for allowing Palestinian independence. The Saudis would be rewarded with a security pact with the US.
The Biden plan fell at the first hurdle. Netanyahu said in February that statehood would be “huge reward” for Hamas. Bezalel Smotrich, one of the ultra-nationalist extremists in his cabinet, said it would be an “existential threat” to Israel.
The Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar, presumed to be alive, somewhere in Gaza had his own illusions. A year ago, he must have hoped that the rest of Iran’s so-called “axis of resistance” would join, with full force, into a war to cripple Israel. He was wrong.
Sinwar kept his plans to attack Israel on 7 October so secret that he took his enemy by surprise. He also surprised some on his own side. Diplomatic sources told the BBC that Sinwar might not even have shared his plans with his own organisation’s exiled political leadership in Qatar. They had notoriously lax security protocols, talking on open lines that could be easily overheard, one source said.
Far from going on the offensive, Iran made it clear it did not want a wider war, as Israel invaded Gaza and President Biden ordered American carrier strike groups to move closer to protect Israel.
Instead, Hassan Nasrallah, and his friend and ally, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, restricted themselves to rocketing Israel’s northern border, which they said would continue until a ceasefire in Gaza. The targets were mostly military, but Israel evacuated more than 60,000 people away from the border. In Lebanon, perhaps twice as many had to flee over the months as Israel hit back.
Hassan Nasrallah, seen here on a placard held by a young man in Beirut, after his death, was key to Iran’s “axis of resistance”
Israel made clear it would not tolerate an indefinite war of attrition with Hezbollah. Even so, the conventional wisdom was that Israel would be deterred by Hezbollah’s formidable fighting record in previous wars and its arsenal of missiles, provided by Iran.
In September, Israel went on the offensive. No one outside the senior ranks of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Mossad spy agency believed so much damage could be inflicted so quickly on Iran’s most powerful ally.
Israel remotely exploded booby-trapped pagers and radios, destroying Hezbollah’s communications and killing leaders. It launched one of the most intense bombing campaigns in modern warfare. On its first day Israel killed about 600 Lebanese people, including many civilians.
The offensive has blown a big hole in Iran’s belief that its network of allies cemented its strategy to deter and intimidate Israel. The key moment came on 27 September, with the huge air strike on the southern suburbs of Beirut that killed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah and many of his top lieutenants. Nasrallah was a vital part of Iran’s “axis of resistance”, its informal alliance and defence network of allies and proxies.
Israel broke out of the border war by escalating to a bigger one. If the strategic intention was to force Hezbollah to cease fire and pull back from the border, it failed. The offensive, and invasion of south Lebanon, has not deterred Iran.
Iran seems to have concluded that its open reluctance to risk a wider war was encouraging Israel to push harder. Hitting back was risky, and guaranteed an Israeli response, but for the supreme leader and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, it had become the least bad option.
On Tuesday 1 October, Iran attacked Israel with ballistic missiles.
A repository of trauma
Zohar Shpak is still reliving the Hamas attack on 7 October
Kibbutz Kfar Aza is very close to the wire that was supposed to protect Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip. The kibbutz was a small community, with modest homes on an open-plan campus of lawns and neat gardens. Kfar Aza was one of Hamas’s first targets on 7 October. Sixty-two people from the kibbutz were killed by Hamas. Of the 19 hostages taken from there into Gaza, two were killed by Israeli troops after they escaped from captivity. Five hostages from Kfar Aza are still in Gaza.
The Israeli army took journalists into Kfar Aza on 10 October last year, when it was still a battle zone. We saw Israeli combat troops dug into the fields around the kibbutz and could hear gunfire as they cleared buildings where they suspected Hamas fighters might be sheltering. Israeli civilians killed by Hamas were being carried out in body bags from the ruins of their homes. Hamas fighters killed by Israeli soldiers as they fought their way into the kibbutz still lay on the neat lawns, turning black as they decomposed in the strong Mediterranean sun.
A year later the dead are buried but very little has changed. The living have not returned to live in their homes. Ruined houses have been preserved as they were when I saw them on 10 October last year, except the names and photos of the people who lived and were killed inside them are displayed on big posters and memorials.
Zohar Shpak, a resident who survived the attack with his family, showed us round the homes of neighbours who were not as lucky. One of the houses had a large photo on its wall of the young couple who lived there, both killed by Hamas on 7 October. The ground around the houses has been dug over. Zohar said the young man’s father had spent weeks sifting earth to try to find his son’s head. He had been buried without it.
The stories of the dead of 7 October, and the hostages, are well known in Israel. Local media still talk about their country’s losses, adding new information to old pain.
Posters marking the horror are fading
Zohar said it was too early to think about how they might rebuild their lives.
“We are still inside the trauma. We are not in post-trauma. Like people said, we’re still here. We are still in the war. We wanted the war will be ended, but we want it will be ended with a victory, but not an army victory. Not a war victory.
“My victory is that I could live here, with. My son and daughter, with my grandchildren and living peacefully. I believe in peace.”
Zohar and many other Kfar Aza residents identified with the left wing of Israeli politics, meaning that they believed Israel’s only chance of peace was allowing the Palestinians their independence. Israelis like Zohar and his neighbours are convinced that Netanyahu is a disastrous prime minister who bears a heavy responsibility for leaving them vulnerable and open to attack on 7 October.
But Zohar does not trust the Palestinians, people he used to ferry to hospitals in Israel in better times when they were allowed out of Gaza for medical treatment.
“I don’t believe those people who are living over there. But I want the peace. I want to go to Gaza’s beach. But I don’t trust them. No, I don’t trust any one of them.”
Gaza’s catastrophe
Hamas leaders do not accept that the attacks on Israel were a mistake that brought the wrath of Israel, armed and supported by the United States down on to the heads of their people. Blame the occupation, they say, and its lust for destruction and death.
In Qatar, an hour or so before Iran attacked Israel on 1 October, I interviewed Khalil al-Hayya, the most senior Hamas leader outside Gaza, second only in their organisation to Yahya Sinwar. He denied his men had targeted civilians – despite overwhelming evidence – and justified the attacks by saying it was necessary to put the plight of the Palestinians on the world’s political agenda.
“It was necessary to raise an alarm in the world to tell them that here there is a people who have a cause and have demands that must be met. It was a blow to Israel, the Zionist enemy.”
Israel felt the blow, and on 7 October, as the IDF was rushing troops to the Gaza border, Benjamin Netanyahu made a speech promising a “mighty vengeance”. He set out war aims of eliminating Hamas as a military and political force and bringing the hostages home. The prime minister continues to insist that “total victory” is possible, and that force will in the end free the Israelis held by Hamas for a year.
His political opponents, including relatives of the hostages, accuse him of blocking a ceasefire and a hostage deal to appease ultra-nationalists in his government. He is accused of putting his own political survival before the lives of Israelis.
Many of Gaza’s once-thriving communities are now desolate
Netanyahu has many political enemies in Israel, even though the offensive in Lebanon has helped repair his poll numbers. He remains controversial but for most Israelis the war in Gaza is not. Since 7 October, most Israelis have hardened their hearts to the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza.
Two days into the war, Israel’s Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, said he had ordered a “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip.
“There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed… We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”
Since then, under international pressure, Israel has been forced to loosen its blockade. At the United Nations at the end of September, Netanyahu insisted Gazans have all the food they need.
Benjamin Netanyahu and Joe Biden in July – Biden’s role, restraining Israel while also supplying weapons, risks dragging the US into a wider war
The evidence shows clearly that is not true. Days before his speech, UN humanitarian agencies signed a declaration just demanding an end to “appalling human suffering and humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza”.
“More than 2 million Palestinians are without protection, food, water, sanitation, shelter, health care, education, electricity and fuel – the basic necessities to survive. Families have been forcibly displaced, time and time again, from one unsafe place to the next, with no way out.”
– Jeremy Bowen : International editor, BBC News
(BBC News)
FEATURES
Jewels linked to Buddha remains go to auction, sparking ethical debate
The jewels comprise nearly 1,800 pearls, rubies, sapphires, and patterned gold sheets
On Wednesday, a cache of dazzling jewels linked to the Buddha’s mortal remains, which have been hailed as one of the most astonishing archaeological finds of the modern era, will go under the hammer at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong.
For over a century these relics, unearthed from a dusty mound in northern India in 1898, have sat largely unseen, cradled by a private British collection.
Now, as the gems prepare to leave the custody of their keepers, they are stirring not just collectors’ appetites but also some unease.
They come from a glittering hoard of nearly 1,800 pearls, rubies, topaz, sapphires, and patterned gold sheets, first glimpsed deep inside a brick chamber in present-day Uttar Pradesh in India, near the Buddha’s birthplace.
Their discovery – alongside bone fragments identified by an inscribed urn as belonging to the Buddha himself – reverberated through the world of archaeology. Nicolas Chow, chairman of Sotheby’s Asia and worldwide head of Asian Art, believes this is “among the most extraordinary archaeological discoveries of all time”.
Yet as these relics now face the glare of the auction room, experts tell the BBC that a question hangs heavy: can the sale of treasures so intimately woven into India’s sacred past be considered ethical?
William Claxton Peppé, an English estate manager, excavated the stupa and found the jewels
In 1898, William Claxton Peppé, an English estate manager, excavated a stupa at Piprahwa, just south of Lumbini, where the Buddha is believed to have been born. He uncovered relics inscribed and consecrated nearly 2,000 years ago.
Historians agree these relics, intact until then, are the heritage of both the Buddha’s Sakya clan descendants and Buddhists worldwide. The bone relics have since been distributed to countries such as Thailand, Sri Lanka and Myanmar, where they continue to be venerated.
“Are the relics of the Buddha a commodity that can be treated like a work of art to be sold on the market?” wonders Naman Ahuja, a Delhi-based art historian. “And since they aren’t, how is the seller ethically authorised to auction them?
“Since the seller is termed the ‘custodian’, I would like to ask – custodian on whose behalf? Does custodianship permit them now to sell these relics?”
Chris Peppé, great-grandson of William, told the BBC the family looked into donating the relics, but all options presented problems and an auction seemed the “fairest and most transparent way to transfer these relics to Buddhists”.
Julian King, Sotheby’s international specialist and head of sale, Himalayan Art, New York told the BBC the auction house had made a thorough review of the jewels.
“As is the case with any important items and collectibles that are offered for sale at Sotheby’s, we conducted requisite due diligence, including in relation to authenticity and provenance, legality and other considerations in line with our policies and industry standards for artworks and treasures,” King said.
Ashley Thompson, of Soas University of London, and curator Conan Cheong, both experts in Southeast Asian art, have more questions. In a joint statement they told the BBC: “Other ethical questions raised by the sale are: should human remains be traded? And who gets to decide what are human remains or not? For many Buddhist practitioners around the world, the gems on sale are part and parcel of the bones and ash.”
The sale of the relics has also sparked concern among Buddhist leaders.
“The Buddha teaches us not to take other people’s possessions without permission,” Amal Abeyawardene of London-based British MahaBodhi Society, told the BBC. “Historical records indicate that the Sakyamuni clan were granted custody of these relics, as the Buddha emanated from their community. Their wish was for these relics to be preserved alongside adornments, such as these gems, so that they may be venerated in perpetuity by the Buddha’s followers.”
The jewels were unearthed from this stupa in Piprahwa, northern India in 1898
Chris Peppé has written that the jewels passed from his great-uncle to his cousin, and in 2013 came to him and two other cousins. That’s when he began researching their discovery by his great-grandfather.
The Los Angeles-based television director and film editor wrote he had found 1898 newspaper reports – from Reuters to the New York Tribune – announcing the find of Buddha’s remains.
“The colonisation of India by the British had been a source of some cultural shame for me [and continues to be] but, amidst the treasure hunters who hauled their finds back to England, there had also been people focused on the pursuit of knowledge,” Chris Peppé writes.
He noted his research revealed a lot about his ancestors who he had dismissed as “prejudiced Victorians from a bygone era”.
“I learned that Willie Peppé’s first wife chose to travel around India for her honeymoon and loved the country and its culture. Sadly, she died from an unspecified illness. I learned that my grandmother was outraged at the land laws that applied to Indian women.
“And I learned that the excavation of the stupa was an attempt by Willie Peppé to provide work for his tenant farmers who had fallen victim to the famine of 1897.”
The jewels are considered among the most extraordinary archaeological finds of all time
He writes his great-grandfather’s “technical diagrams of ramps and pulleys suggest that he was also a trained engineer who couldn’t resist a project”.
William Peppé handed the gems, relics and reliquaries to the colonial Indian government: the bone relics went to the Buddhist King of Siam (Rama V). Five relic urns, a stone chest and most other relics were sent to the Indian Museum in Kolkata – then the Imperial Museum of Calcutta.
Only a small “portion of duplicates”, which he was allowed to keep, remained in the Peppé family, he notes. (Sotheby’s notes say Peppé was allowed to keep approximately one-fifth of the discovery.)
Sources told the BBC the auction house considers the “duplicates” to be original items considered surplus to those donated, which the “Indian government permitted Peppé to retain”.
Over the past six years years, the gems have featured in major exhibitions, including one at The Met in 2023. The Peppé family has also launched a website to “share our research”.
Four containers made of steatite (a type of stone) and one made of rock crystal were found inside a sandstone box at the Piprahwa stupa
Some scholars argue Buddha relics should never be treated as market commodities.
“The Sotheby’s auction transforms these highly sacred materials into saleable objects, in continuation of acts of colonial violence which extracted them from a stupa and called them ‘gems’ and ‘objects of interest to Europeans’, creating a false division with the ash and bone fragments they were consecrated with,” say Thompson and Cheong.
Chris Peppé told the BBC that in all the monasteries he had visited “no Buddhists regard these as corporeal relics”.
“A few Buddhist academics at western universities have recently offered a convoluted, fact-defying logic whereby they may be regarded as such. It’s an academic construct that is not shared by Buddhists in general who are familiar with the details of the find,” he said.
Peppé said the family “looked into donation [of the relics] to temples and museums and they all presented different problems on closer scrutiny”.
“An auction seems the fairest and most transparent way to transfer these relics to Buddhists and we are confident that Sotheby’s will achieve that.”
Some also point to The Koh-i-Noor, seized by the British East India Company and now part of the Crown Jewels, with many Indians viewing it as stolen. Should the Buddha’s jewels be next?
“Repatriation, I believe, is seldom necessary,” says Ahuja. “Such rare and sacred relics that are unique and which define a land’s cultural history, however, deserve the government’s exceptional attention.”
– Soutik Biswas
(India correspondent – BBC News)
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