FEATURES
“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
How a home-made snack empowered Indian women
On a chilly December morning, a group of women wrapped in colourful saris, warm shawls and woollen caps huddled outside a three-storey building in a busy neighbourhood in Delhi.
Within the walls of the building ran a unit of one of India’s oldest social enterprises, owned and run by women.
The co-operative – now called Shri Mahila Griha Udyog Lijjat Papad – was started in 1959 in Mumbai (then Bombay) by seven housewives who made the humble papad or poppadoms, a crispy, savoury snack that is a staple of Indian meals.
Sixty-five years later, the co-operative – headquartered in Mumbai – has spread across India with more than 45,000 women members. It has an annual turnover of 16bn rupees ($186m; £150m) and exports products to countries including the UK and US.
Working mostly from home, the women in this co-operative produce items including detergents, spices and chapatis (flatbreads), but their most-loved product is the Lijjat brand of poppadoms.
“Lijjat is a temple for us. It helps us earn money and feed our families,” says Lakshmi, 70, who manages the Delhi centre.
Ms Lakshmi, who uses only one name, joined the co-operative about four decades ago after her husband died, which forced her to look for work.
“I hadn’t finished my studies and didn’t know what else to do. That’s when my neighbour told me about Lijjat,” she says.
The decision to join the women’s co-operative transformed her life, she says. She now manages 150 women at the centre.
For women like Ms Lakshmi, the co-operative offers a chance to earn a decent income while balancing their work at home.
The women produce spices and detergents among other products
Every morning, the women members take a bus hired by the co-operative to the nearest Lijjat centre. There, they collect their share of pre-mixed dough made with lentils and spices, which they take home to roll into poppadoms.
“I used to go home with this dough and do all my housework, feed my children and sit with my chakla [a flat wooden board] and a belan [rolling pin] in the afternoon to make small round thin papads,” says Ms Lakshmi.
Initially, it took her four-five hours to make 1kg of dried lentil papad, but she says she can now produce that amount in just half an hour.
The head office in Mumbai buys raw materials like lentils, spices and oil in bulk, mixes the flour and sends it to Lijjat offices around the country.
Once the women make and dry the poppadoms at home, they deliver them back to the centre for packaging. Lijjat’s distributor network then transports the products to retail shops.
The enterprise has come a long way since it was founded.
In the 1950s, a newly independent India was focusing on rebuilding itself, trying to strike a balance between promoting small-scale, rural industries and pushing for large urban factories.
It was also a time when the government owned most of the factories in the country. Life for women was especially challenging as they had to negotiate a deeply conservative and patriarchal society to get educated and work.
The group of women who founded Lijjat – Jaswantiben Jamnadas Poppat, Parvatiben Ramdas Thodani, Ujamben Narandas Kundalia, Banuben N Tanna, Laguben Amritlal Gokani, Jayaben V Vithalani and Diwaliben Lukka – were in their 20s and 30s, living in a crowded tenement in Mumbai and looking for ways to support their families.
Their idea was simple – work from home and earn money by using the cooking skills passed down to them through generations of women.
The Lijjat brand of poppadoms is much-loved in many parts of India
But they did not have money to buy ingredients and sought financial assistance from Chhaganlal Karamshi Parekh, a social worker.
He offered them a loan of 80 rupees ($0.93; £0.75 at today’s rates), which was enough to get started at the time.
But the women soon realised that there were no takers for their poppadoms. Narrating the story, Swati Paradkar, the current president of the co-operative, says that the women had to return to Parekh for help.
He again lent them 80 rupees, but this time with the condition that they would repay 200 rupees to him. Parekh – whom the women called Bappa (meaning father) – and other social workers took the poppadoms to local shopkeepers, who agreed to stock them only if they could pay after the products were sold.
Only one shopkeeper agreed to pay the women immediately. “He began purchasing four to six packets daily and gradually the poppadoms became quite popular,” Ms Paradkar says.
As the business grew, more women joined the co-operative – not as employees, but as co-owners with a say in decision-making. The women call each other ben or sister in Gujarati.
“We are like a co-operative and not a company. Even though I am the president, I am not the owner. We are all co-owners and have equal rights. We all share profits and even losses,” Ms Paradkar says. “I think that’s the secret of our success.”
For decades, the co-operative produced its poppadoms without the iconic Lijjat brand name.
In 1966, the Khadi Development And Village Industries Commission, a government organisation to promote small rural industries, suggested that they come up with a brand name.
The co-operative placed an advertisement in newspapers asking for suggestions. “We received a lot of entries but one of our own sisters suggested Lajjat. We tweaked it to Lijjat, which means taste in Gujarati”, Ms Paradkar says.
Over the decades, the co-operative has allowed generations of women to attain financial independence.
“Today I have put my children through school, built a house and got them married,” says Ms Lakshmi.
“Working here, I have found not just an income but respect.”
– Devina Gupta
(BBC News)
FEATURES
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FEATURES
The viral fashion show by slum children that is wowing India
A video of a fashion shoot in India has gone viral and unexpectedly turned a group of underprivileged school children into local celebrities.
The footage shows the children, most of them girls between the ages of 12 and 17, dressed in red and gold outfits fashioned from discarded clothes.
The teenagers designed and tailored the outfits and also doubled up as models to showcase their creations, with the grubby walls and terraces of the slum providing the backdrop for their ramp walk.
The video was filmed and edited by a 15-year-old boy.
The girls chose accessories by watching fashion designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee’s Instagram videos
The video first appeared earlier this month on the Instagram page of Innovation for Change, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) in the city of Lucknow.
The charity works with about 400 children from the city’s slums, providing them free food, education and job skills. The children featured in the shoot are students of this NGO.
Mehak Kannojia, one of the models in the video, told the BBC that she and her fellow students closely followed the sartorial choices of Bollywood actresses on Instagram and often duplicated some of their outfits for themselves.
“This time, we decided to pool our resources and worked as a group,” the 16-year-old said.
For their project, they chose wisely – a campaign by Sabyasachi Mukherjee, one of India’s top fashion designers who has dressed Bollywood celebrities, Hollywood actresses and billionaires. In 2018, Kim Kardashian wore his sequinned red sari for a Vogue shoot.
Mukherjee is also known as the “king of weddings” in India. He has dressed thousands of brides, including Bollywood celebrities such as Anushka Sharma and Deepika Padukone. Priyanka Chopra married Nick Jonas in a stunning red Sabyasachi outfit.
The girls said they stitched about a dozen outfits in three-four days
Mehak said their project, called Yeh laal rang (the colour red), was inspired by the designer’s heritage bridal collection.
“We sifted through the clothes that had come to us in donation and picked out all the red items. Then we zeroed in on the outfits we wanted to make and began putting them together.”
It was intense work – the girls stitched about a dozen outfits in three-four days but, Mehak says, they had “great fun doing it”.
For the ramp walk, Mehak says they studied the models carefully in Sabyasachi videos and copied their moves.
“Just like his models, some of us wore sunglasses, one drank from a sipper with a straw, while another walked carrying a cloth bundle under her arm.”
Some of it, Mehak says, came together organically. “At one point in the shoot, I was supposed to laugh. At that moment, someone said something funny and I just burst out laughing.”
The outfits were fashioned from donated clothes
It was an ambitious project, but the result has won hearts in India. Put together on a shoestring budget with donated clothes, the video went viral after Mukherjee reposted it on his Instagram feed with a heart emoji.
The campaign won widespread praise, with many on social media comparing their work to that of professionals.
The viral video has brought enormous attention to the charity and its school has been visited by several TV channels, some of the children were invited to participate in shows on popular FM radio stations and Bollywood actress Tamannah Bhatia visited them to accept a scarf from the children.
The response, Mehak says, has been “totally unexpected”.
“It feels like a dream come true. All my friends are sharing the video and saying ‘you’ve become famous’. My parents were full of joy when they heard about all the attention we are getting.
“We are feeling wonderful. Now we have only one dream left – to meet Sabyasachi.”
The fashion shoot has won widespread praise in India
The shoot, however, also received criticism, with some wondering if showing young girls dressed as brides could encouraged child marriage in a country where millions of girls are still married off by their families before they turn 18 – the legal age.
The Innovation for Change addressed the concern in a post on Instagram, saying they had no intention to encourage child marriage.
“Our aim is not to promote child marriage in any way. Today, these girls are able to do something like this by fighting against such ideas and restrictions. Please appreciate them, otherwise the morale of these children will fall.”
(BBC News)
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