It will be for future historians to analyse the many half-truths, quarter-truths and, to use the old parliamentary euphemism, “terminological inexactitudes”, in Benjamin Netanyahu’s astonishing outburst against his French, Canadian and British counterparts on Thursday.
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.
Not to mention the outrageous insinuation by some Israeli ministers that they somehow incited this week’s indefensible fatal shooting of two young Israeli embassy staff in Washington, DC.
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.
And this was despite US officials reportedly concluding as early as August 2024 that Israel had gone as far in defeating Hamas as it could and the (now sacked) defence minister, Yoav Gallant, had rounded on Netanyahu for sacrificing the lives of the Israeli hostages by rejecting the terms of a deal then on offer.This was hardly helping Hamas and the other armed factions.
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.
That has led to a Palestinian death toll which has now passed at least 53,000. It is precisely the threatened reversal of this licence to continue his forever war that has so enraged the Israeli prime minister.
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?
Or the tens of thousands (including many families of the hostages) who are taking to the streets almost daily in protest at the resumption of the war?
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.
Yes, the patently sincere United Nations humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher made a (swiftly corrected) error in telling the BBC that there were 48 hours to save 14,000 babies from starvation.
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.
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Anybody regularly talking to Gazans crowded into the coastal displacement camps knows that food shortages are dire and black market prices impossible to pay for the large majority.
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)?
Taking Britain first, the suspension of talks on a new trade agreement with Israel, sanctions on extreme or violent West Bank settlement leaders, including on Harel Libi, the owner of a construction company heavily involved in building illegal outposts, are welcome despite their lack of impact on the Gaza war.
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.
All of these would have a powerful symbolic impact, and in the case of barring settlement trade, a potential economic one as well.
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.
Indeed, if Starmer’s reluctance to enact many of these measures has stemmed from fear of crossing Donald Trump, now is precisely the time to do it, if only because the UK Government could cite the US President’s repeated, if inconsistent, hints that he wants the war to end.
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.
But the European Union has also long been a sleeping giant in this geopolitical drama because it is easily Israel’s biggest trading partner, furnishing 34.2 per cent of its imports and taking 28.8 per cent of its exports.
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 now, Netanyahu is relying on Germany and Italy to block such a move. But the very fact that EU member states have begun reviewing the agreement is significant.
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.
If Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, who dream of emptying Gaza of most of its Palestinian inhabitants, and their ever-closer partner Netanyahu, get their way, the likelihood is now a combination of rebuilding some of the Jewish settlements abandoned by Ariel Sharon in 2005, the total and exemplary razing of one of Gaza’s urban centres, and perhaps the “voluntary” evacuation of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, which because of the circumstances driving them to flee – if the borders open – would constitute another war crime.
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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