As was predictable, with the passing of the days it is easy to see how the massacre perpetrated by the terrorists of Hamas on October 7th against Israeli citizens, would end up being much more than a conflict between Israel and the Gaza Strip, going beyond even Palestine. At the moment, it is already clearly a conflict with planetary resonance, since it fully affects all the countries in the region, strains relations between the United States, Iran, China and Russia, and places Europe, with its music sounding distinctly out of tune, in front of the mirror of its own national realities. Thus, Brussels strikes a different note in Paris than in Berlin. And what can you say about Madrid, at a time when Spain holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, or about Barcelona.
This Sunday, the president of the European Council, the Belgian Charles Michel, and the other members of the Council, recognized Israel's right to defend itself against attacks such as those perpetrated by the terrorist movement Hamas and stressed that the response must be in line with humanitarian and international law and that the protection of all civilians must be guaranteed. All this is framed in a message to Ursula Von der Leyen exhibiting a certain restraint and correction, and meanwhile Iran and the United States observe each other, and the mobilizations in European capitals in favour of the two sides in the conflict are significant.
In Amsterdam, more than 10,000 people gathered in the demonstration of support for Palestine, and in Morocco, especially in Rabat, there have been large protests in solidarity with Palestine and against the position of Mohamed VI, which normalized relations with Israel in 2020 through the Abraham Accords. In Madrid, several thousand people also took to the streets this Sunday to show their support for Palestine, just as they did in London on Saturday. Several Western countries have beefed up security and raised alert levels, and there is a sense that the invasion announced by Benjamin Netanyahu will take place at any time and that the West is much less safe.
But as the days have passed since the Hamas terror attack, it has become clear that the full-scale ground invasion of Gaza will be long, difficult and complicated, and that the record number of 360,000 reservists called up for military duty, the largest in history, ius no guarantee of the result that Israel expects from the war, which is none other than putting an end to Hamas and ensuring that in the Gaza Strip nothing will be the same again. But it remains to be seen if Iran will allow that or the spiral of an even more dangerous regional war will be set in motion.