West Bank
“Don’t look now!”
Over recent weeks there seems to have been an acceleration of the actions by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) and a greater willingness to attack targets which ought to be off limits under International Humanitarian Law. Is this a result of the election season which has seen France and the UK involved in snap elections, and the US engaged in the marathon process they have to elect an new president?
All eyes have been focused on domestic issues and will continue to be so for some time. International issues discussed at the recent NATO summit in Washington focused, as one might expect on threats against NATO members. However, it also spent a good deal of time confirming support for Ukraine, much to be applauded, although they are not (yet) a NATO member.
Given its defensive posture focused on member’s borders the absence of any focus on Gaza is perhaps not a surprise. As a potential source of instability linked to Iran and the wider middle East it might have justified some comment as a contingent risk.
Whether NATO might have commented or not, there appears to be a total lack of political focus on amongst the key external players on what is happening in Gaza and the West bank at the moment. Prime Minister Netanyahu seems to be taking maximum advantage of this to the despair of the Palestinian people, and to those in the west, and around the world, watching a process of ferocious but slow motion Genocide taking place before our eyes.
Ceasefire Negotiations?
There is much talk of negotiations of a ceasefire in Gaza inching closer and closer. Notably that is without representatives from Israel yet. Will this prevent a ground invasion of Rafah? My guess would be no. If there is a ceasefire it will at best provide a temporary respite. Prime Minister Netanyahu has made it clear that such a campaign is vital to secure victory in his war against Hamas.
The most likely scenarios are that Israel will not accept the proposed terms with a massive propaganda campaign about how they threaten the security of Israel. Alternatively, a ceasefire is put in place with Israel promising to open up crossing points to allow aid and medical support in and then slow-walking the implementation. Putting a myriad blockages in the way of significant and appropriate scales of aid, all under the rubric of security.
The ceasefire will breakdown amid claims of breaches and failures and the bombing will restart. And shortly after that a ground campaign in Rafah supported by another propaganda barrage about the perfidy of Hamas.
The only way a ceasefire might hold is if PM Netanyahu is replaced. Replaced by someone who can see that the unremitting devastation being wreaked on Gaza and the aggressive settler action in the West Bank are starting to create a momentum in global public opinion against Israel. Hamas may or may not ultimately be destroyed but Gaza already has. And yet when the fighting stops there will still be 2m Palestinians in the devastated territory. What is Israel going to do about that?
Israel’s leaders should remember the diplomatic dictum States do not have permanent allies, they have permanent interests. If Israel’s current allies start to feel their interests in a strong military presence in the Middle East can be served by another, and the public pressure to stop supporting Israel continues to mount there might be a change to the shape of the Middle East but one which is highly inimical to Israels interests. Such an outcome would be dreadful. But worst of all it would be largely self inflicted.
“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.”
northerncomment 