Mint | The world cannot escape repercussions of the ongoing war in West Asia

The externalities of Hamas’s perverse terrorism and Israel’s massive military retaliation will haunt the whole world for at least another generation. The conflict is still in progress, but its course over the past month has already given us three terrible assessments. First, Hamas demonstrated that terrorism can succeed in advancing political objectives. In this, it has reversed the post-9/11 strategic consensus that terrorism is not only ineffective as a political strategy but can delegitimize the political cause it seeks to advance. The world had forgotten the Palestinian cause. A month ago, Israel was close to a rapprochement with Arab powers, while Western powers were focused on Russia, China and Iran, and Palestine was off the global agenda. Even before Hamas invaders were beaten back, the ‘two-state solution’—meaning the creation of a viable Palestinian state—was back in circulation. Read the full article here.