Former President Barack Obama said a way forward for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is only possible if people acknowledge the “complexity” of the situation.
“If there’s any chance of us being able to act constructively to do something, it will require an admission of complexity and maintaining what on the surface may seem contradictory ideas that what Hamas did was horrific, and there’s no justification for it. And … that the occupation and what’s happening to Palestinians is unbearable,” Obama said in an interview on the podcast “Pod Save America.”
The former president’s comments come as the Israeli military focuses its offensive against Hamas in Gaza City and northern parts of the enclave.
Israel is adjacent to an incredibly strategic shipping location - the Suez Canal. The Suez Canal links the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean without having to go around Africa or around Siberia.
Israel isn’t strategically important because it has big oil reserves. It’s strategically important because it’s near a lot of important things. Oil and shipping play a bigger role than you’d think.
You mean the canal that is entirely within Egypt? That argument seems like a stretch to me, and clearly wasn’t the argument the above was trying to make either.
They’re a democracy and have historically been opposed to many counties the West was already opposed to. Their strategic importance is military, not oil.
Israel, the UK and France invaded Egypt in 1956 after Egypt expropriated the Suez Canal from its French & British owners. Then they fought a war in 1967 to keep it open. The conveyance of European trade through the Suez Canal is a major part of Israel’s geopolitical importance.
Great point.