THE Chief Rabbi, alarmed at a perceived shift in the Government’s policy on Israel, has requested a meeting with the Prime Minister. Labour is restoring UK funding to the main Palestinian relief agency, the UNRWA. It is reviewing the sale of British weapons to Israel, after suggestions that some have been used in the devastation of Gaza. And it is dropping its opposition to the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu, along with three Hamas leaders.
All this is a welcome shift in the delicate balance between upholding Israel’s right to defend itself and protecting the rights of the innocent women and children who have become victims of Israel’s scorched-earth policy in Gaza.
The recent assassination of the Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran, constitutes a gear shift in Israel’s policy of eradicating enemy leaders. At least 39 senior members of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Revolutionary Guards have been killed in Lebanon, Syria, and elsewhere since this war in Gaza began. But the assassination of Mr Haniyeh is of a new order — for three reasons.
His death occurred in the capital of Iran, a new level of provocation that risks triggering a full-blown regional war. He was the man with whom Israel was negotiating a ceasefire that would bring about the release of more than 100 Israeli hostages. The White House was infuriated that it was given no advance notice of the move. Indeed, Mr Netanyahu gave a decidedly contrary impression to President Biden in Washington the week before, when the US President pressed him to close a deal with Hamas.
He is not the only one urging a deal. The head of Israel’s army, its intelligence service, and its Defence Minister have all told Mr Netanyahu that there is a good hostage-ceasefire deal on the table, and that he should take it — instead of repeatedly inserting extra conditions that he knows Hamas won’t accept, to ensure that a deal cannot be reached.
The grim truth is that Mr Netanyahu knows that he must keep the war going, because, once it is over, he will face elections, and lose power, and the corruption trial against him will come out of abeyance. Like Donald Trump, he knows that political power is his best defence against criminal proceedings.
Israel says that it has now killed half of Hamas’s commanders, and more than 14,000 combatants in Gaza. But its security chiefs know that, of Hamas’s 24 battalions, eight are still combat-effective. They have been reconstituted from the ashes of those destroyed by the Israeli army, whose devastating attacks have proved Hamas’s best recruiting sergeant. Nearly half of Hamas’s military battalions in northern and central Gaza have rebuilt some of their fighting capabilities. One US security source suggests that “the ability of Hamas to reconstitute its fighting forces is undiminished.”
Israeli and US security sources and the White House know that, in the end, the solution to the crisis must be political, not military. Sadly, it does not suit Mr Netanyahu’s personal interests to acknowledge this. His assassinations may be tactical victories, but they will prove strategic losses for his nation. His war without end offers no hope for Israelis and Palestinians alike — and small chance of ever bringing out the hostages alive.