A drone view of the remains of a ballistic missile, as it lies in the desert following a massive missile and drone attack by Iran on Israel
| Photo Credit: YAIR PALTI

West Asia supplies the most extractive resources for the world’s energy consumption, which makes peace an imperative in the region. Yet tensions are escalating in the region on account of the Israel-Gaza conflict, the hostilities between Iran and Israel, and the attacks and counter-attacks between Israel and Iran-backed militias from Lebanon and Yemen.

Apart from this, the region has also become one of the most heavily militarised in the world. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s ‘Trends in International Arms Transfers 2023’, four of the top 10 largest importers of arms last year were from West Asia, with the U.S. being the main supplier (Table 1).

All this has resulted in West Asia becoming a powder keg.

Table 1 | The table lists the top suppliers of arms to West Asian countries. Figures in %.

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Crises in the region

Israel’s shadow war with Tehran underwent a dramatic escalation recently. Iran launched its first-ever full-scale military attack against Israel on April 14 in retaliation to the Benjamin Netanyahu government’s attack on April 1 on an Iranian compound in Syria in which General Mohammed Reza Zehadi, the top commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was killed.

Also read: A new low: On Israel’s Gaza war and the U.S. response

Israel has been continuing its attacks on the Gaza Strip in response to the October 7 Hamas attack which led to the death of 1,139 people. Nearly 34,000 Palestinians have been killed so far. The conflict persists despite the international community urging for an immediate ceasefire. The 10-month-long Gaza war and the amping up of Iran-Israel hostilities has caused concern among international actors amid existing tensions such as the unresolved Yemeni civil war, the Lebanese political crisis, the 14-year-long Syrian civil war, and the Turkey-Cyprus conflict, among others.

Chart 2 | The chart shows region-wise military expenditure as a share of their GDP.

Amid these crises, West Asia today accounts for almost 30% of the global arms imports and spends the most on the military among all other regions in the world. In the case of military expenditure as a share of the GDP, West Asia and North Africa have been consistently leading for over three decades now, though the share has come down from the peak of over 10% of GDP, reported in the 1990s. West Asia spent 4.6% of its GDP in 2020 on the military, compared with 3.3% in North America.

Share of GDP

Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the oil and natural gas rich nation-states, have consistently spent over 5% of their GDP on defence in recent years, the highest among countries in this region. Jordan, Oman, Kuwait and Israel have also spent close to 5% of their GDP on their militaries in the last decade.

Chart 3 | The chart shows the military expenditure as a share of GDP for individual countries in the West Asian region.

Though Saudi Arabia and Oman’s shares are on a decreasing trend, they continue to lead others in the world in this measure.

Chart 4 | The chart shows the share of labour force employed in the armed forces.

This is also the region where the share of the labour force employed in the armed forces is the highest. Chart 4 shows that 2.5% of the labour force is engaged in the military in the West Asian and North African region, compared with only 1.2% in Europe and Central Asia.

The consistent demand for arms can be attributed to the growing instability in the region fuelled by domestic insurgencies, transnational terrorist attacks, unstable regional boundaries, and, in some cases, foreign policies and the need to project “hard power”.

The hangover of the ‘Arab Spring’ that led to a lot of churning and resulted in the aforementioned issues has also contributed to the increased militarisation.

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Jewish people marked April 22 the start of Passover, a celebration of freedom, and around many holiday tables in Israel chairs stood empty for hostages still held captive in Gaza.

The week-long Jewish festival, also known in Hebrew as the “holiday of freedom”, celebrates the Israelites’ liberation from Egyptian slavery, as told in the Bible.

Passover is traditionally observed with a seder: a holiday feast when families eat symbolic foods and read the Haggadah.

The more than millennium-old text recounts the Exodus and Jewish people’s ties to, and their yearning to return to, the Holy Land.

For many this year, Passover will be stained by absence and anguish; particularly the relatives of the hostages, grieving families and more than 120,000 Israelis displaced from their homes in the north and south of the country because of the war in the Gaza Strip.

“All of the symbolic things we do at the seder will take on a much more profound and deep meaning this year,” said Rachel Goldberg-Polin, whose son Hersh is one of the hostages.

“The bread of affliction, the bitter herbs, the saltwater that represents the tears of the Jewish people when they were in captivity, in slavery.”

For days, Israeli Jews have been making preparations for the holiday: fastidious house cleaning, burning leavened goods eschewed during Passover, and copious food shopping.

How can we celebrate?

But the holiday mood has been dampened by more than six months of war in Gaza, with many Israelis serving in the military away from home.

Above all, the continuing captivity of 129 hostages abducted by Palestinian militants on October 7 has cast a pall over Passover.

On that day, Gaza-based militants launched an unprecedented attack on southern Israel, resulting in the deaths of 1,170 people, Israelis and foreigners, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Militants also abducted some 250 people during the attack.

Israel’s retaliatory invasion of the Gaza Strip has killed 34,151 people, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

Neither military force nor indirect negotiations with Hamas have yet succeeded in bringing the remaining hostages home.

“Everything is deadlocked and nobody knows how to move forward, on our side and on the Hamas side,” said Gershon Baskin, an Israeli activist who has mediated between Israel and Hamas for more than a decade to free hostages in Gaza.

“We’re held hostage by our government and held hostage by Hamas,” he said. “There is no freedom this year.”

For many relatives of the captives, this Passover will not be joyous.

“How can we celebrate such a holiday while… people are still without their freedom, still waiting to be liberated?” asked Mai Albini. His grandfather Chaim Peri was taken hostage on October 7.

Hundreds took their discontent to the street, burning a symbolic seder table in protest outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s house in the evening of April 22.

“He doesn’t want the hostages back because he doesn’t want the war to end or he’ll go to prison,” said protester Guy Ben Dror in the coastal town of Caesarea.

Making this Israeli-Palestinian war the last

Haggadahs sold out

Tzohar, a rabbinic group, the Hostage and Missing Family Forum and President Isaac Herzog have all urged families to leave an empty chair at their seder table, with the picture of a hostage on it.

“There is great hardship” this Passover, said Tzohar’s head rabbi, David Stav.

“Even at the most traditional seder night, the practice is that we also mention that which is missing and difficult.”

The Hostage and Missing Family Forum published a special edition of the Haggadah that “integrates new hopes, and introduces inspiring messages of contemporary spirit”.

It contains contributions from hostages’ relatives, a former chief rabbi of Israel, and Rita, a prominent Iranian-Israeli singer.

It has sold more than 2,50,000 copies in Israel and abroad, said Itay Shenberger, who heads the Haggadah project.

“It’s basically all the stock we had,” he said. The proceeds go to the forum’s efforts to secure the hostages’ release.

Wander in the desert

Many families will mark Passover away from home, driven out by fighting between Israel and militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah that has turned northern and southern border communities into ghost towns.

Around 60,000 Israelis from the north and almost an equal number from southern Israel remain internally displaced, according to official figures.

Hotels still house more than 26,000 displaced, many of whom will hold seders there.

Kibbutz Beeri, one of the hardest hit communities in the October 7 attack, will hold a communal seder in the Tel Aviv plaza that has become the epicentre of the hostage protests.

Nisan Zeevi, an entrepreneur from Kfar Giladi kibbutz near the Lebanese border, said his family has been “uprooted from our homes” for more than half a year.

Political leaders have given them no hint as to when they might return, he said.

“We’re not celebrating Passover in a normal way,” Mr. Zeevi said. Like the biblical Israelites, he added, this year they will “wander in the desert”.