The year 2024 has been recorded as one of the most brutal years for the Palestinian people and the Middle East. Israel insistently continued its genocide in Gaza and its expansionist and aggressive policies toward other regional states. Furthermore, it continued to recklessly violate the basic principles of international law and human rights. It seems that the year 2025 will not bring any change for the Palestinian people. Their destruction and resistance will continue.
Israel has been targeting the Gaza Strip for more than 450 days. It has been killing about a hundred innocent Palestinians on a daily basis. However, the international public does not care about the Israeli atrocities and the Palestinian suffering since it has become accustomed to the genocide in Gaza. In addition, innocent Palestinians die not only from being bombed but also due to hunger and cold under dire conditions.
The current balance of power will persist in the Middle East for an unknown future. As long Western countries provide unconditional diplomatic, political, economic and military support to Israel, no power can deter Israel from committing war crimes. The Israeli army targets not only states and non-state actors in the region but also members and vehicles of international organizations. The year 2025 started with their forces opening fire on a convoy of the U.N.’s World Food Program (WFP). The agency officially stated that although the convoy had received security clearances from Israeli authorities, the three vehicles were targeted by Israeli forces.
Hopefully, Israel and Hamas may reach a cease-fire in the near future. However, a potential cease-fire will not stop Israeli attacks since they never respect cease-fires. They reached a cease-fire with Hezbollah in Lebanon but still carried out more than 300 attacks against Lebanon. Even if the Israeli government reaches a cease-fire with Hamas, it will not stop its attacks against Palestinians.
Western countries will continue to support Israel’s aggressive and expansionist policies without any reservation. Major Western countries such as the U.S., the United Kingdom, Germany and France, will continue to provide unconditional support to Israel. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has been repeating that there will be hell to pay if the captives held by Hamas in Gaza are not released by the time he is in office. On the Western front, not even the slightest criticism is made against perpetrators of the genocide. Similarly, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who has stated that Israel’s security is part of Germany’s raison d’etat, justified the Israeli attacks on civilian settlements, schools and hospitals. She claimed that all these places lost their protected status.
Arab regimes will also remain inactive and watch the ongoing genocide in Gaza from afar in 2025. The majority of them have already forgotten the Arab cause or the Palestinian cause. They largely remain indifferent to the ongoing Israeli atrocities against their Palestinian brethren. Since there is no politically or militarily unified Arab world, none will try to prevent Israel from committing war crimes in Palestine.
However, the marginalization of Israel by the international community will also continue in 2025. Although no state can prevent Israel from committing war crimes, all actions taken by Israeli forces and government officials are well-documented and widely recognized by the global community. In spite of the full support of Western mainstream media, the Israeli state has lost its legitimacy in the eyes of millions of people worldwide. The pro-Israeli Western media outlets lost their credibility. It has become clear that the Western governments do not favor universal human rights or international peace and stability. The Israeli atrocities and the complicity of the Western states’ in these crimes have completely destroyed the international order and the U.N. system. No state will feel secure in the coming months and years; even allies may threaten other allies. In other words, a more chaotic period awaits us.
All in all, the unilateral policies of Israel and its Western allies have initiated a new period in world history. These aggressive policies of Israel and its supporters will damage respective national political systems in the Western world. Also, these conflictual unilateral policies will instigate negative reactions from other regional and global powers. If the relevant states do not act responsibly, a systematic conflict, or even a systemic war, may break out. That is, considering the interdependencies in regional and global contexts, the aggressive and expansionist policies of Israel will not guarantee its national security and therefore, it will not meet Western expectations.