But let’s take the biggest: that by threatening “concrete actions” against Israel without a halt to the renewed military offensive and the unprecedentedly cruel aid embargo threatening Gaza’s residents with famine, Sir Keir Starmer, Mark Carney and Emmanuel Macron were siding with the “mass murderers, rapists, baby killers and kidnappers” who perpetrated the 7 October Hamas attacks.
If the three leaders wanted to “embolden Hamas”, why (leaving aside the repeated condemnations by the West of the 7 October atrocities) is it only now that the three heads of government have sought so robustly to call a halt? After all, Britain had – apart from ritual urgings to protect civilian life and, in September 2024, an embargo on a small proportion of arms that it sells to Israel – had declined to intervene as it now has.
Instead, the effect, if not the intention, of this inaction – and exponentially more so, Joe Biden’s – was to allow Netanyahu to pursue his surely unattainable twin aims of eliminating Hamas while rescuing the Israeli hostages by force.
And is Netanyahu also accusing the large majority of Israelis – 68 per cent in a recent poll – who want to see an end to the war and the release of the remaining 58 hostages – of being handmaidens of Hamas?
Then there is the question of aid to a population under threat of famine – aid which Israel’s government has started to admit, if very falteringly, at levels vastly below what is needed, and only because of pressure from the US.
But in making great play of this, Netanyahu did not mention this month’s World Health Organisation report which warned that, on present trends, 71,000 children under the age of five will be acutely malnourished over the next 11 months. Or that its own clinicians now only have supplies to treat 500 malnourished children (“a fraction of the urgent need”). Or its citation of a Hamas-run health ministry report saying that 57 children have already died of malnutrition since the new blockade began.
square PATRICK COCKBURN There is little point in recognising a Palestinian state reduced to rubble
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So what is the likely impact of the three government heads’ threatened and enacted “concrete actions” (which Netanyahu claimed were targeting Israel but not Hamas, despite the fact that France, Canada and the UK have long proscribed or sanctioned the latter)?
But there are other options, including a complete ban on arms sales – including parts for Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning military aircraft -, a ban on all trade with occupied West Bank settlements, and sanctions (now thought likeliest) on the two most extreme Jewish supremacist members of the Netanyahu coalition, security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and finance minister Bezalel Smotrich.
Lastly, there is the pressure from France to join it in formally recognising Palestine next month. Again, this step, which Starmer is still said to be hesitant about, may not have any short-term practical effect but it would carry big diplomatic heft.
It is rightly assumed that the greatest power to stop the war – largely because of its relentless flow of arms to Israel, but also because of its veto in the UN Security Council – lies with America.
Any move to suspend the tariff exemptions that Israel enjoys under its EU trade agreement – and the existing one with the UK – would have a real effect on Israel’s economy.
For without real international pressure – almost certainly by Trump – to stop the war, a true catastrophe, unimaginable even during the past 18 months, awaits.It is a commonplace that Netanyahu is prolonging this war to save his own political skin. But a less noticed paradox is that in part he does not want to stop the war because it is so unpopular. Once it ends, that unpopularity is likely to overwhelm him at the ballot box.
Israel’s Western allies (above all but not only the US) are therefore all that can now prevent Netanyahu and his government from dragging his unwilling country towards the justified pariah status of a rogue state.
Donald Macintyre is the author of Gaza: Preparing for Dawn (Oneworld Publications, £12.99)
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