After the Hamas terror of 7 October and Benjamin Netanyahu’s horrific retaliation in Gaza, some long overdue truths need stating. First, Israel is not going to “destroy Hamas”, as its leaders promise – not even by destroying Gaza.
Although Israel is damaging Hamas militarily, maybe significantly, with many of its tunnels eliminated and its fighters fleeing, Hamas is a movement and an ideology that, in many respects, Netanyahu’s extremism helped to promote.
Rightwing Israeli governments have thwarted serious negotiations with Palestine’s more “moderate“ party, the late Yasser Arafat’s Fatah, since the Camp David summit in 2000 – more than 20 years ago. They have also consistently oppressed Gaza residents, imposing a near-constant state of siege. Is it really surprising that many Palestinians turned in desperation to an extremist alternative in Hamas?
The lesson of all modern conflicts must be that failure by the powerful to end injustice and negotiate a solution breeds extremism. As Britain’s troubled history in Northern Ireland vividly demonstrates, when politics doesn’t work, violence fills the vacuum.
British governments refused for decades to officially negotiate with the IRA because of its terrorist outrages. But when they finally did so, it resulted in the 1998 Good Friday agreement. Although an immensely painful pill for unionists to swallow, it was supported by the US president, the UK prime minister and an EU president, all of whose successors have apparently forgotten that fundamental lesson.
As for the notion, peddled by leaders of the global north, that only negotiations with a discredited Palestinian Authority leadership in the West Bank can be countenanced – that won’t work either. Global north governments have a history of trying and failing to promote their “favoured” candidates on peoples demanding self-determination to choose their own representatives. Hamas will have to be included in some way.
In the end, the solution has to be political. Palestinians of whatever political stripe cannot defeat Israel militarily, but nor can Israel defeat Palestinians militarily. As Tony Blair’s former chief of staff Jonathan Powell wrote compellingly in his book Talking to Terrorists, such conflicts cannot be resolved except by negotiation. And, despite their public postures, Netanyahu, Joe Biden and Rishi Sunak have been negotiating with Hamas over hostage and prisoner releases, albeit mainly through Qatar.
Yet Israel’s rightwing leaders have spurned negotiation, instead dedicating themselves to turning Palestinian territories into occupied dependencies. The West Bank, small islands of which are nominally administered by Fatah (but in practice controlled by Israel), now contains about half a million Israeli settlers; East Jerusalem has nearly a quarter of a million Israeli settlers. Leaders in the global north wring their hands, pointing out that such settlements are illegal, but do nothing, tolerating still more settlers and also the long siege and now near-total destruction of Gaza.
And what has all this got Israel? Not more security but less, as the pogrom on 7 October palpably demonstrated. Israel’s rightwing rulers have monumentally failed to protect their own citizens – and, by prosecuting their ruthless horror in Gaza, they will endanger them even more.
The former Israeli Labor government adviser Daniel Levy was right to say recently in a TV interview: “Israelis can never have security until Palestinians have security. The equation that you can impose a regime of structural violence on another people, you can deny another people their basic rights, and you will live with your own security, that equation never works … because when you are oppressing people, you know in the back of your mind that you are generating a desire for retribution. You can’t actually sleep securely at night.”
Of course, the real agenda of the current Israeli cabinet may be to push Palestinians out of their territories and into Jordan and Egypt. The recent flat rejection of a two-state solution by Netanyahu’s ambassador to the UK merely repeats what he and others in his cabinet have said. No two-state solution, just permanent Israeli domination – with escalating violence and regional instability.
The aim surely must remain security for Israel and self-determination for Palestinians. If a two-state solution is no longer viable, then maybe some form of confederal state could be? One in which Palestinians have self-government and Israel enjoys security?
Instead of presidents and prime ministers in Washington DC, London and Europe colluding in terrible failure, they should support a regional summit involving Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia – and, yes, Iran too – along with Jordan, Qatar and the UAE. For there will be no stability in the region unless all parties are included.
Not since Barack Obama’s presidency has there been serious diplomacy and engagement. As Obama’s envoy John Kerry wrote in his autobiography: “In foreign policy … there is rarely enough focus on the risks of inaction. That is especially true about peace in the Middle East.”
I write this from Cape Town where decent South Africans of all races and creeds are contemptuous of what they see as profound double standards by global north leaders – wanting backing for Ukrainian self-determination, but being complicit in the denial of Palestinian self-determination and culpable in the horror in Gaza. The geopolitical breach with the global south is deepening, and will cost Washington, London and Brussels dearly in an increasingly turbulent world.
Meanwhile, I remain a friend to both Israelis and Palestinians. That is no sellout of either, but a recognition that they share a future together or they share no future worth having.
Lord Hain is a former UK Middle East minister and Northern Ireland secretary of state
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