By Huricihan Islamoglu
The Israel-Hamas confrontation is spreading to the wider Middle Eurasian region. This marks a turning point in the on-going reconfiguration of geopolitics in Middle Eurasia. Israel is fighting Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon and Houthis in Yemen, the latter disrupting maritime trade through the Red Sea which carries nearly 30% of the world’s maritime container trade and 12% of its oil.
What will the geopoliticisation of the Gaza War mean? Beyond the shaky internal politics and desperation in these two communities, it speaks to new tensions in the global economy where relations among states and economic actors, including mega-corporations, are being reshaped.
Such rearrangements involve challenging the U.S.-led Western dominance of the post-war period, the rise of China, and Russia’s status as a resource-rich region opening to the global economy. It also means the sidelining of the international rules-based order underwritten by international organizations, among them the UN albeit dominated by the West. Israel was firmly positioned in that alliance. Thus, when it defied the UN sanctioned Oslo Accords or the peace process with Palestinians (in the territories Israel occupied in 1967), its behaviour could be overlooked or reprimanded as was the case under the Obama administration, when such behaviour interfered with the larger policy objectives of the U.S. in the Middle East.
Multiple actors are now in the vortex of the reconfiguration: Israel and Türkiye, once allies in the Western alliance, are growing independent of it. Keeping them company are China, Iraq and multinational oil and commercial interests.
The big game-changer for Israel is its turn eastward to secure a place for itself in the emerging configuration of powers in the global economy and politics. In the new arrangement, Israel’s alliance with the West is increasingly one among many multilateral engagements.
For instance, Israel is presently a major technology partner for China in the context of its Belt and Road Initiative. To see this, one only has to look at how Chinese perception of Israel has changed. Israeli studies are no longer classified as “enemy studies” but “area studies.” Closer to home, Israel has normalized its relations with the Gulf states and was in process of cementing them before the Gaza War. Saudi Arabia was to be a deterrent against Iran, while securing markets for its high-tech war industries in this security-obsessed region. Israel also has economic relations with Egypt and Jordan as an exporter of gas to these countries—which may explain the rather subdued response of both Cairo and Amman to Israel’s continued bombing of Gaza.
China, annoyed by........