NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN sat down in the House of Commons on 2 September 1939. Instead of declaring that Britain would go to the aid of Poland if Hitler invaded, he had just delivered a speech of dither and delay. Arthur Greenwood rose to his feet and announced that he was speaking for Labour. A voice cut through from the Tory benches behind Chamberlain. It declared: “Speak for England, Arthur!”
A speech can be a turning point in history. We heard one last week at the United Nations Security Council. Tom Fletcher, a former British ambassador to Lebanon, and now head of UN relief operations, spoke starkly, to ask what future generations would think of us for doing nothing “to stop the 21st-century atrocity to which we bear daily witness in Gaza”.
We are now at a tipping point in the war between Israel and the Palestinians. Israel has a right to defend itself, as it did this week when its special forces entered Khan Yunis in disguise and assassinated a Hamas terrorist leader. But, in its increased bombing, Israel has abandoned any pretence of proportionality. The sudden upsurge in deaths shows that the Netanyahu government is ever more reckless in the killing of civilians.
In Mr Fletcher’s words, Israel has “deliberately and unashamedly” starved Gaza of food, medicine, and water for more than ten weeks. Benjamin Netanyahu allowed a face-saving trickle of aid, after an internal Israeli intelligence report warned that death from starvation would soon be widespread — and President Trump publicly expressed concern. Yet, by Wednesday, that token trickle was not being distributed.
“Deliberately and unashamedly” is more widely apt. It was Israel that ended the previous two-month ceasefire with a series of massive air strikes. Although Israel proclaims itself a beacon of liberal democracy in the Middle East, government ministers, such as Bezalel Smotrich, make statements such as: “We will destroy Gaza so completely that no Palestinian will want to live there.” This is not the language of security: it is the language of ethnic cleansing.
Alarm has been growing, and not just among Israel’s usual critics. At long last, allies such as the UK, France, and Canada have decided that “the level of human suffering in Gaza is intolerable” — which is diplomatic language to cover Tom Fletcher’s description of how “children scream as we peel burnt fabric from their skin.” The UK has suspended talks on a trade deal with Israel and imposed new sanctions on illegal West Bank settlers who are terrorising Palestinians there.
Those governments have ended their complicity of silence. But they must now spell out to their ally what it needs to do. Mr Fletcher was clear. Israel must: stop recklessly bombing innocent civilians; stop using starvation as a weapon of war; end its deliberate obstruction of the work of humanitarian agencies; and remember its clear obligations as an occupying power under international law. If it does not, the UK must go further.
Last year, Britain suspended 30 of 350 arms export licences to Israel. Since then, we have sent it 8630 “bombs, grenades, torpedoes, mines, missiles and similar munitions of war and parts thereof”, plus four shipments of 146 items for “tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles”. We should now put a stop to them all.