Israel

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Changing the Middle East

The mediaeval barbarism of 7 October 2023 was cruelly twisted to secure maximum terroristic effect by having its atrocities filmed and then made available to the world, and thus despicably, to the victim’s relatives. Horror shows of murder, mutilation and abduction displaying a disregard for human life and revealing a visceral loathing for Jews.

It is not surprising that this action would instil fear in a nation built to protect its Jewish citizens from precisely this kind of merciless and violent persecution. Something Jews have experienced over the centuries culminating in Hitler’s effort to annihilate them in an industrial attempt at genocide.

Given all this, a strong, not to say fierce, response from the Israeli Government via the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) was inevitable. Actions to defend Israel and secure retribution against the perpetrators was and is justified. Securing some justice for the innocent victims and recovering the hostages was and remains a justifiable goal. However, the scale and the nature of the response has raised questions and concerns from the start which have only deepened and multiplied over time.

Following the attack, Prime Minister Netanyahu announced that Israel was at war with Hamas and it would not end until the group was completely eliminated from Gaza and the safety of Israel was secured.

The United States quickly got behind this goal followed by the UK and a range of other Western nations. This was seen as a war against a terrorist organisation which had carried out a 9/11 type outrage and was thus legitimate.

In addition to this specific if ambitious target, Prime Minister Netanyahu also spoke about how Israel’s response would “change the Middle East”. A much more ambiguous goal but, as the campaign has progressed, an increasingly ominous one.

An ever-mounting civilian toll has eaten away at the unwavering support promised at the outset. The increasing unease of Israel’s allies has resulted in ever more complex circumlocutions about the support and its being tied to care to minimise civilian casualties. With good reason.

Given the atrocious actions of Hamas that triggered the current war, Israel could adopt the moral high ground and very quickly did. At every opportunity it has justified its actions as self-defence by graphic reference back to the bestiality of what Hamas did on 10/7. Everything that Israel has done since then and all the civilian casualties of the Israeli action has been placed at the door of Hamas.

To be clear the actions of Hamas are inexcusable. They are war crimes that need to be brought to justice. However, that does not make them inexplicable. The actions were not irrational, motiveless violence. They have causes in a 70-year confrontation between Arabs and Jews in Palestine. If this history is ignored it is unlikely a viable way forward will be found.

Not only are they not inexplicable but neither do they justify the level of sustained and indiscriminate bombing of civilian Palestinians.

The IDF claims it is only targeting Hamas. However, when one looks at the level of destruction wrought across the North, Central and finally Southern Gazza one can only conclude that the IDF are awfully bad shots. In truth the claim is not credible. In an area which is one of the most densely populated on earth it was inevitable that the scale of the bombing carried out would have a massive civilian toll.

The IDF blames this on the fact that Hamas adopted the morally despicable act of using their own citizens as human shields. However, the efficacy of human shields depends on the humanitarian values of those they are used against. The immoral act of using defenceless civilians as a shield is morally matched, not opposed, by the act of shooting through them.

The moral high ground is a slippery place and the actions of the Netanyahu government from the very start of the offensive indicated very unsure footing. Actions that included the closing of the borders, stopping food and medical supplies, the turning off of power and water to 2.3m people, ordering c1.m residents of Gaza City to move South within 24 hours.

The claims of moral authority because residents were warned to leave and go South ring hollow when those that do are bombed on their journey and again when they arrive in the “safe” South. They are then told to go West, toward the sea. The 2.3m population of Gaza appears to be being herded into a smaller and smaller fraction of the small pocket of the territory they live in.

All of this in order to prosecute a war against c40-60k Hamas fighters is difficult to see as proportionate or in accordance with international humanitarian law.

The treatment of prisoners of war further undermines the moral position of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government and the IDF. Palestinian men stripped to their shorts and filmed in a grossly choreographed display of walking forward with hands above their heads to place weapons on the ground. The weapons, carefully ringed by the IDF to ensure they are not missed. What do they think this demonstrates?

The claim is they had to be stripped to ensure they did not have suicide vests on or hidden weapons. Who do they think believes they could not be searched and have their clothes handed back to them. This was not about security, it was about humiliation. Humiliation filmed and broadcast to the world.

When one looks at what Prime Minister Netanyahu’s forces do it looks like the aim to “change the Middle East” is primary.

What Prime Minister Netanyahu’s war has done is displace pretty much the whole of the population of Gaza making them refugees in the territory they have been confined as refugees in over the past 70 years. He has destroyed Gaza’s economic infrastructure, its health facilities, its educational infrastructure, and many of its religious and cultural buildings. He has humiliated its men and starved its women and children. Worst of all he has achieved this by killing c 33k of its citizens, many of whom are women and children.

This through a campaign of bombing which, at the beginning of December, had inflicted a higher level of damage to buildings than the allies achieved in Dresden and Cologne in World War 2. According to the same source in the Financial Times “Gaza will go down as a place name denoting one of history’s heaviest conventional bombing campaigns.”

Set aside whether you can win any conflict against groups like Hamas with bombs you certainly cannot do it without massive collateral damage. The sustained and comprehensive nature of the bombing seems precisely judged to do just that.

The whole of the population of Gaza has been traumatised unable to find the so-called safe areas they are directed to by the IDF. Desperate to secure food and water for their families they are forced to fight and scramble for any relief that gets through.

What can they look forward to? Suppose the IDF managed to kill all the members of Hamas tomorrow, then what? No homes, no jobs, no functioning health, education, security or other state service. Continued dependence on international relief.

There are three possible responses. First, resign yourself to the fate of a refugee in the largest open prison in the world. Second, seek to escape to somewhere else where you might be able to create a life for yourself. Third, create Hamas 2.0. Someone once said, if a person has nothing to live for they will soon find something to die for.

The West, but more specifically the United States and the UK, have stood shoulder to shoulder with their ally Prime Minister Netanyahu. They have believed his assurances about minimising the harm to the civilian population. As the death toll has mounted and the level of physical destruction become more and more apparent the allies have become increasingly uneasy.

The gap between what PM Netanyahu says he will do and what he does has become so wide that not even the most faithful ally can ignore it. Further, his adamant rejection of advice from his allies has prompted irritation amongst Western leaders which had begun to boil over.

When the killing stops the true numbers of those killed, injured and displaced will be far higher than anything that has been seen in the Middle East since the Six Day War in 1967. Arab losses in that war were roughly 20,000.

The level of physical destruction will be way beyond what might be justified by the doctrine of proportionate defence. The treatment of prisoners of war discussed above. The shooting of Israeli hostages, stripped to the waist waving white flags and shouting in Hebrew, by the IDF does not instil confidence that the IDF rules of engagement will have protected many Palestinian civilians.

In the end what this may look like is what a UN Commission defined as ethnic cleansing “… a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas.”

It is almost certain it will be perceived as that by Palestinian and Arab citizens across the Middle East, which should be a matter of concern to Israel. But what should perhaps be of more concern is the potential spread of this perception to a wider, developing nation cohort across the world and indeed to many citizens in developed nations watching the carnage on their screens.

The strategy of containment which has been pursued towards the Palestinians in recent years is clearly over. The events of 10/7 demonstrate it does not work even on its own terms. What appears to have replaced it is one of making Gazza unviable as a place to live. This is not new. Back in 2015 a UN Report set out the manifold ways in which the Palestinian territories viability was constantly undermined by Israel’s actions.

When this military campaign ends what happens?

Firstly, there will be a global focus on the area greater than there has been in many decades. Unless the civilian death toll is pure Hamas propaganda and the pictures of bombing devastation are deep fakes Israel will be perceived as having committed a whole host of crimes against international humanitarian law. These will be the focus of years of litigation and argument and will undermine the moral authority of Israel.

When it ends, someone will have to administer Gazza. If Israel takes on responsibility or they hand it to the Palestinian Authority the legitimacy of its governance will likely be zero, particularly if there is no prospect of a two-state solution.

If the Israeli blockade and economic strangle hold is maintained it will be a running sore and one which has much greater visibility than it has had in the past. Since its establishment in 1948 Israel has proved pretty much impervious to “international opinion” and has continued that position throughout the current war. Its ability to do this has been because its closest ally has been the richest and most powerful force on the earth.

Israel seems to take the support of the US for granted and abuses that position with apparent scant concern for the risk it might change. This is a mistake.

If Israel does not engage in good faith in a two-state solution what is the future? The plight of the Palestinian people will provide an excuse for new or re-established terrorist organisations to carry out atrocities against civilians in a country increasingly dominated by security. Provoking further state violence against civilians in territories with no security.

Global powers will seek to use the conflict to promote their own interests with merely rhetorical regard for the interests of the Palestinians, but also perhaps increasingly for the state of Israel.

The tit for tat ratchet between Israel and Iran has now been engaged. This may well achieve PM Netanyahu’s goal of changing the Middle East. But, as the saying goes, “be careful what you wish for”. The change might be one which brings continuing misery for the Palestinians but also growing insecurity and isolation for the State of Israel. No one can want eikther of these things.

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“so it goes.”

In Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut’s character, Billy Pilgrim, uses the phrase “so it goes” every time he comes across a dead body. The repetition of the simple phrase tallies the fatalities of war and illustrates how people become desensitised to death. In Gaza death must now be so familiar that people are becoming numbed by its occurrence.

For most of us the loss of a family member is a shock and source of deep sadness. Particularly intense if it is a child. How does one cope when 10 members of your family have been killed in an instant, including brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers? Worse, when the cause of that sudden loss continues to threaten your own existence.

For those removed from the conflict the rolling news coverage first shocks, then disgusts and then it risks becoming sedimented, “so it goes.”

I have no doubt that the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, is working hard to mitigate the actions of the Israeli government in Gaza, the West Bank, and now Lebanon. War in the Middle East would be a disaster for the global economy and for US interests. Not great in an election year.

One detects an increasingly frustrated tone in his comments about the need to protect civilians and focus on the future when Israel ends the war against Hamas. Particularly in view of the fact that Prime Minister Netanyahu not only ignores Blinken but as much as tells him that he will be ignoring him.

Prime Minister Netanyahu may be happy to risk a regional conflict. He may conclude that Israel has previously benefited at the expense of the Palestinians in such events. However, the world is a different place to what it was in the 1940s and 1960s. Prime Minister Netanyahu may be in danger of overplaying his hand.

At the moment there are two players only who can stop what is happening in Gaza. One is Israel. A right-wing prime minister held hostage from the extreme right in a country where many ordinary Jews feel properly aggrieved at the murderous events of 10/7, does not look like a place to find compromise.

The only other player is the United States who could apply pressure through the $3bn per annum military aid it provides to Israel. So far Secretary of State Blinken does not appear to have even threatened to use that leverage in public. We don’t know what he might have said privately. But whatever he has said does not seem to have impacted much on the Israeli government’s plan of action.  

As I have said previously, when this does stop, it is very likely to look like an exercise in ethnic cleansing, whatever the intention. Further, it is going to be difficult for the US and the UK to look shocked and surprised at what has happened. Their credibility in future negotiations with Arab partners after the bombs stop will at best be threadbare.

However much the Palestinians in the West Bank are chased around the strip by bombing campaigns, at the end of the day, they are still going to be there. That reality should be front and centre of any government’s thinking about long term security and screams the need for significant compromise by Israel if they want peace.

Apart from a brief humanitarian pause to secure the release of some of the hostages abducted by Hamas there has been a pretty much continuous campaign of bombing in Gaza. From the start there have been civilian casualties.

On 10/7 around 2,300 Israeli civilians were killed, “so it goes”. Some 240 Israelis, mainly civilians, were abducted, some of whom have since been killed, “so it goes”.  More than 250 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank, “so it goes”. Palestinian deaths in Gaza are well in excess of 20,000, “so it goes.” Of the 20,000 killed, around half have been children, “so it goes”.

The scale of death in Palestine is mind numbing. In three months roughly twice as many civilians have been killed in the Palestinian territories than in Ukraine during almost two years of war, 10,000 Ukrainians, 20,000 Palestinians.

In neither case should we, or more particularly our political leaders, succumb to the dehumanised response, “so it goes”.

However powerful the justification for Israel taking action against Hamas originally, the scale of civilian deaths has undermined the moral force and validity of its campaign. Increasingly the reference back to 10/7 looks more like a rationalisation for something altogether different to a war against Hamas.

If there is no material action taken to apply pressure on Israel to curtail its programme of mass destruction in Gaza there will be no excuses for those that failed to act. The fundamental moral position they have taken will be captured in three words, “so it goes.”