Link to the Article – https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/23/irans-top-diplomat-discusses-israels-war-in-gaza-with-hezbollah-leader
Summary – Iran’s top diplomat met with the leader of Hezbollah, an armed Lebanese group, to discuss efforts to end Israel’s war in Gaza. In the meeting they discussed an upcoming meeting between Palestine and Israel, and the possible outcomes of the meeting. The two sides are still working out the details, so the meeting will not be until after Friday. It is believed that if the cease fire does not continue through this meeting the scope of the war will drastically increase. Qatar is coordinating the meeting between Israel and Palestine in hopes of finding an end to this war. Hezbollah and Iran are also close allies and against Israel, and have reported attacking Israel a lot recently.
Analysis – I think the biggest takeaway from this article is the two possibilities of the meeting between Israel and Palestine. The two outcomes are on such opposite ends of the spectrum, this meeting is critical to the state of the international setting for the next couple of months. Either we see a huge escalation to the war, likely spreading even farther than it already has, or we see a possible end of the fighting. The conflict is not going to end as it has been going on for the past century, but the violent war going on now could de-escalate. I also find it interesting that a meeting between Iran and Hezbollah is being publicized as they are both such strong Palestinian supporters, so a meeting between two people on the same side is interesting. The article also talks about how each Iran and Hezbollah have had war with Israel and the damage Israel has done to their countries or places of origin.
Connection to class – This relates to the idea of the waning of war. Not in the fact that they are not having war, but the amount of deaths in this war compared to those of the past. Past wars we have seen upwards of 75 million deaths in one war, but now we see so much about this war when there has likely been less than 50,000 deaths. This is not to say that those 50,000 lives were not valuable and it isn’t a tragedy that they died, but that the scale of war today is much smaller than we may have seen in the past.