Israel’s planned takeover of Gaza would be an act of destructive futility. It would solve absolutely nothing. It will merely pile fresh military, humanitarian and political problems on to the mounds of those already created in the conflict. It will make every human agony worse, not better. Governments around the world must do whatever they can – the US above all – to stop it.
There is still time. The plan announced on Friday is for an operation to take military control of Gaza City, home to a million displaced Palestinians. They will be forcibly evacuated, yet again, to the southern Gaza Strip over the coming weeks. Aid distribution is certain to be a secondary consideration, logistically challenging and woefully inadequate for a population where malnutrition is already severe. The threat to life in Gaza, including to the remaining Israeli hostages captured on 7 October 2023, will get much worse.
Friday’s announcement leaves open the question of whether the operation will be extended later to the entire Gaza Strip. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said this is his wish. The current decision to limit the takeover seems to reflect objections from Israel Defense Forces (IDF) chiefs. But there is no guarantee that an even larger takeover will not then follow. Mr Netanyahu always ratchets up. The sum of his choices amounts to perpetual war.
This is a strategy that ensures, for the moment, that Mr Netanyahu remains in power. But it does not ensure a military victory. It escalates the fight with Hamas without any way of ending it. Twenty months of attacks may have devastated Hamas, but the capacity to mount a limited insurgency remains. Such insurgencies are hard to defeat, as the US found in Vietnam and Iraq, and Britain learned in its former empire and in Northern Ireland. “Everybody is going to be in this meat grinder,” a senior Israeli former soldier graphically told the BBC this week.
The misery will be felt in Israel too. The plan could be a death sentence for the 20 or so living hostages. It could also guarantee that the bodies of about 30 believed dead will disappear for ever. Mr Netanyahu’s decision, in effect, to put punishing Hamas above the freeing of Israeli hostages will agonise their families and deepen domestic political divisions. The strain on Israeli society is already intense, with IDF chiefs opposing the Gaza takeover and arguing unsuccessfully for more targeted operations. Now more Israeli soldiers will die too.
The takeover shows how cavalierly Mr Netanyahu is willing to deepen Israel’s political isolation as long as he has Washington’s support. Other foreign governments have condemned the plan. Britain said it was simply “wrong” and “will only bring more bloodshed”. Germany, Israel’s second largest military supplier, put a ban on weapons for use in Gaza, a significant move. In realpolitik terms, however, everything comes down to the US. President Trump should condemn the takeover plan and match the German stance. US allies should insist that he does so. Hamas’s allies must be pressured too.
Mr Netanyahu’s approach is not merely wrong. It will make things worse, much worse for people in Gaza in the short term most of all, but worse for Israelis in the long term too. His policy is exactly the kind of historic folly so well described by the historian Barbara Tuchman as “a perverse persistence in a policy demonstrably unworkable or counter-productive”. Mr Netanyahu is sowing dragon’s teeth for years to come, and the sooner he is stopped the better.
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