Keir Starmer says unless there’s a ceasefire and a peace process leading to a two-state solution, Britain will recognise the state of Palestine at the UN in September. The UK prime minister is following a similar, alebit unconditional, pledge from the French president, Emmanuel Macron.
They are reacting to what Starmer referred to as the “intolerable situation” in Gaza. In Scotland, Donald Trump has also complained at the humanitarian catastrophe of people starving in Gaza, saying: “We’ve got to get the kids fed.”
Does this mean western politicians are finally prepared to act? Quite possibly. Will it have any discernible effect on Benjamin Netanyahu? Doubtful.
Trump still appears to trust Netanyahu to feed the people of Gaza, or so he told reporters as he flew back from his weekend of “golf buggy diplomacy” on July 29. And as long as the US president supports Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister can act with few restraints.
True, the vigorous international reaction to the food crisis in Gaza has finally had some effect. But the Israeli response so far has been largely symbolic.
It has comprised air drops of aid by Israel and the United Arab Emirates, and some “tactical” or “humanitarian” pauses in the assault in parts of the Gaza Strip to allow for the delivery of aid. Air drops are good for publicity, but the amount of aid they actually deliver is very small and hugely expensive.
How did we get to this point? The current phase of the conflict started in mid-March, when the Israeli government began blocking all aid to Gaza.
That lasted two months until some shipments were allowed. In recent weeks, an average of about 70 trucks a day have crossed the border. But the reality is 500-600 trucks a day are required to support and restore heath to 2 million people.
Meanwhile, more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed – mostly shot – since May while trying to get food at one of the four overcrowded distribution sites run by the private, US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). Before being replaed by the GHF system, UN agencies ran 400 distribution points across the territory.
What the daily pauses in some areas, which began on July 27, actually represent is far from clear, given that fighting continues in much of the Strip. There is little sign that Netanyahu’s government wants an early end to the war. From its perspective, there can only be peace when all the hostages are returned and Hamas has been destroyed.
But Hamas is proving far more resolute than expected. Its survival is little short of remarkable given the huge force the Israelis have used to try and destroy it.
The usual Israeli military priority in dealing with an insurgency is to follow what is known colloquially as the “Dahiya doctrine”. If an insurgency cannot be handled without serious casualties, then the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) directs its operations at civilian infrastructure and the general population to undermine support for the insurgents.
The tactic is so called because it was developed as a way of dealing with a Hezbollah stronghold in the Dahiya suburb of west Beirut in 1982. The reduction of much of Gaza to ruins is taking the doctrine to extremes, yet it is failing – Hamas is still there.
This is reportedly common knowledge in IDF circles, but rarely admitted in public. A notable exception is the senior retired IDF officer, Major-General Itzhak Brik.
Brik’s publicised view is that Hamas has already replaced its thousands of casualties with new recruits. They may not be trained in the conventional sense, but they have learnt their craft while surviving in a war zone and seeing so many of their friends and family killed and wounded.
No end in sight
Israel’s demands may be that it will end the war if Hamas surrenders and disarms, then goes into exile. The problem with this is Hamas doesn’t think Israel would end the war.
Instead, it believes Gaza would be forcibly cleared and resettled, and the occupied West Bank would see a huge increase in settlers. In this scenario, a two-state solution would be a pipe dream, and Israel would be the regional superpower able to rise to any future challenge.
So, is there any prospect of Israel being forced to compromise, to accept a UN-monitored ceasefire and seek a negotiated settlement? External political pressure is certainly rising, especially the potential formal recognition of the state of Palestine by the UK and France.
But in both cases, the conditions for the road to peace are such that they are effectively non-starters. Macron envisages a “demilitarised Palestine” living alongside Israel. Starmer has called for Hamas to disarm and play no role in the future governance of Palestinians. Neither plan has the slightest chance of getting off the ground.
In any case, without Trump’s full backing it would still mean little. Economic and social sanctions by a state or group will have little impact because there will always be states or organisations sufficiently supportive of Israel to bypass them.
We are left with two possible routes to a settlement. One is that Trump is sufficiently motivated to insist Netanyahu negotiates.
That is unlikely, unless the US president somehow gets the idea that his own reputation is being damaged. Even then, the influence of the Israel lobby in the US, especially the support for Israel of tens of millions of Christian Zionists, is formidable.
The other route to a peace deal is if the war is becoming problematic for the Israeli military. If more of the IDF’s top brass recognise that this war, right from the start, was always going to be unwinnable, this might yet move the conflict in the direction of a settlement.
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Paul Rogers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
